Who knew speaking into a microphone could be so fun?
On the 2nd of April, I, and a number of other people had our first SYN radio information/training session. And I’ve got to say, in my five weeks of university, this is the most fun I’ve had so far.
As every first meeting for ANYTHING goes, we all had to introduce ourselves. Upon hearing everyone’s introduction, I noticed one thing that stood me out from the rest – I was the only one you didn’t listen to radio. But Reza, why are you doing a radio training course if you don’t even listen to radio in the first place? Well, one thing about myself is that I’m a very open-minded person when it comes to my career. Ultimately, I want to be somewhere in the media industry, but I don’t really mind where as long as it’s enjoyable. I’m leaning more towards the editing side of things, but if an opportunity presents itself elsewhere, I won’t have any second thoughts about taking it up.
The training session was labelled as an ‘intense’ training course. This meant that they condensed all the knowledge they usually teach in a few lessons, over two days. We learned about basic panelling techniques, policies that we have to follow, copyright and legal information, and a whole bunch of other things I didn’t listen to. Because this was an ‘intense’ training program, we were thrown right into the deep-end, and were forced to do a 2-3 minute radio show in groups of three. We had about twenty minutes to come up with a show idea and the things we would talk about. This part was surprisingly easy. Mostly because I was in a group of like-minded people, so coming up with what we wanted to talk about was a breeze. The topic we chose was on morning routines. Sounds boring, but I’ve learned that you can make anything interesting with the right levels of energy, charisma and passion. I feel as though if you enjoy talking about it, that ‘feeling’ will come through and be felt by listeners.
The first thing I noticed when recording the show is that time goes extremely fast. We had about six or seven dot-points on what we wanted to talk about. In the end, we only got through two dot-points within our two-and-a-half minute show. But I definitely think it’s a good idea to have a lot of things to talk about in your show, just for backup. But I find that if you talk with people who you genuinely enjoy talking to, you can talk about a single thing for at least ten minutes, if not more. I feel like we could of been a lot more natural in the way we spoke, but since it was our first time, I’ll be lenient for now. In saying that, I think that we did a pretty good job, and I definitely look forward to produce more radio content in the future!