Over the past 16 weeks in my entrepreneurship and media innovation class, I was introduced to not only a great deal of information about how to get started in the media industry, but also new ways of thinking.

Though I learned many things throughout this course, one thing that was the most helpful were the lectures about startup ideas. After a semester of learning about startup ideas in class and being assigned many readings/ listenings discussing the same topic, I can honestly say that if need be, I think that I have the tools needed to go through with one.

Another thing that I learned this semester is that no matter what you create, you need to know your audience. This point came up several times throughout the semester and was said by multiple guest speakers. Knowing your audience is important for many different reasons, including:

1. When you’re aware of who your audience is, you know what direction to go with your product/ idea. For example, if you wanted to create a YouTube show about music, then you’d need to find a specific genre(s) to cover that you know your audience will tune into.
2. It’s also important that you remain loyal to your core audience. If say you know who your audience is but then start to create content for other audiences, then you may start to lose your core audience, thus causing you to start back at square one and re-evaluate your show.

Going into this course, I never really thought anything about entrepreneurship because my dream is to become an entertainment reporter post-graduation. However, now I’ve been thinking about different avenues/ paths I can take that would help my dreams come true sooner.

However if I were to create something on my own, it’d be media related in the sense that it had something to do with my future career, which is why I’ve had trouble coming up with an idea. But all great things take time coming together.

Throughout the course of the semester, our class was split into five different teams, to create our own product that would hopefully be good enough to actually become possible to pitch at the end of the semester. During the course of the semester-long project, we learned how to work together in teams. I personally think that it was a good experience even though there were ups and downs — but that’s to be expected with anything that you do in life.

Going into this project, one of our group members had already had their own product, which was a podcast. So our goal was to expand on what already existed and see what we could do to help it evolve and become bigger. This project overall helped me realize how important it is to work in teams.

It also reminded me of an interview that actress Issa Rae did where she stated that, “We have a tendency that when we network, we try to network up, and it really is about networking across. Like who’s next to you, who’s struggling, who’s in the trenches with you, who’s just as hungry as you are? Those are the people that you need to build with.”

Working with a team may not give you a better show at something than had you did it yourself, but it does give you more power and more access to resources and networking opportunities thus allowing the process to possibly go faster.

My overall favorite part about this course was hearing from guest speakers who were all established and very successful in their careers. Hearing them speak was so enjoyable because it gave you a sense of hope that if they did it, while starting in the same position that I did, then I can as well.

This class has changed my way of thinking in a positive way by giving me a better outlook on how I want plan out my future. Before this course I wasn’t necessarily sure about how I wanted to do certain things, but with the tools and knowledge acquired in this course, I’m less nervous and more excited all while knowing that while things won’t be easy, they’ll be more enjoyable because I know that there’ll be ups and downs, but in the end I’ll make it.