Heart and soul

The thought that I’m getting closer to achieving my dream excites and scares me at the same time. Doubts fill my head from time to time: “What if I don’t make it? What if I’m not good enough?”

I shrug at the thought every time and tell myself this: “You won’t give up. It’s not going to be easy; you will probably get rejections, but you won’t give up. You are going to do whatever it takes to be good enough, and to make it out there.”

It’s easy for others to tell me that I can always try something else if I actually don’t make it. What they don’t understand is that I don’t want anything else. Being part of the media isn’t going to be just a job for me: It’s my passion. It’s everything I am, and I can’t imagine myself doing something else. I want a job that I’ll never get tired of doing, a job that touches people’s lives, a job with a purpose, a job that serves the country. And that’s what the media do. The media can shape how people perceive something. How the media framed a report greatly affects the decisions of the person who read/watched/listened to it. It’s a great responsibility.

In my four years of study in the university, every single project that I and the other students had to do for the course had to pass these considerations: Is it developmental? Who is it for? What are your objective/s?

It was tedious work and we had to do it right, for it wasn’t just a project and it really did affect the people. In the course of our studies, we went to the people, listened to them, made an output out of their stories, and gave it to them in the hope that it could be of use, that it could somehow help them help themselves in improving the state that they were in.

I’d like to be part of the media because I’d like to hear more stories. I want to help the media tell a story to the public, the real scoop, all angles taken in, not just one side of the coin. I once told a friend that I’d like a job where I get to work even on holidays, where I’m sometimes forced to get up in the middle of the night, where, while everyone is forced to stay home because of a typhoon, I get to be there, holding a microphone, letting the people know what they need to know.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m a scaredy cat. So how is it that I know I’m cut out for the job? Well, that’s easy: It’s because I love people, and when you love people, you are going to do everything you can to show that love to them. I will do it by delivering to them the truth without any icing on top, just the truth, and I’d be swallowing my fear every time it pops up just to get it done.

This is my heart, my soul, my passion, my everything, and this is what I hope to do for our country. (Just a few days before I graduate… Fingers crossed!)

Joan Miranda, 20, completes a degree in development communication this month at the University of the Philippines in Los Baños.