Business Story Breakthrough

This morning when my journalism professor told us about this week's story, I kind of freaked out. For the past month, I've been following the same issue, basically rewriting the same story three times. Just when I got into a fairly comfortable routine of calling up the same four sources for information, Prof threw us a curveball and instead of continuing with our issue stories, we now have to do a business story.

We have to profile a local business, talk to owners, customers, ask people what's good, what's bad, walk around the strip mall and ask people if they would go to that store or not. Even worse, this week in class we have to write a story on the unemployment rate. Upon hearing this, apparently my internal dread leaked through onto my face, because the girl behind me just started laughing and said I didn't look particularly excited for this assignment.

Fast forward a couple hours: I was telling Sumegha about how much I didn't want to write this story when she suggested I just profile our local Indian grocery store. I thought about it for a minute and realized what a genius idea that was. We already go there a lot and I know the owners pretty well. I had to come home tonight anyways, because tomorrow I'm going to get my visa to study abroad.

Fast forward some more: Papa and I were running some errands and I was completely dreading going to the grocery store. You know me - I hate interviewing people, especially when I know that all they want to do is buy their dal and go home. But I sucked it up, walked into the store and explained my assignment to the Uncle who owns the store. And just like every other experience this class has forced me to endure, once it began, it wasn't really that bad at all. Uncle was more than happy to talk to me, and he said some really great quotes.

But now came the worst part. I had to walk up to customers and ask them what they thought about the store. I took a deep breath and walked up to one woman who was standing in the checkout line. I told her what I was doing, and she just started chatting away, telling me how great the store was. Alright, I thought, this isn't so bad after all. I talked to a couple more customers, and one even said something about how the store could be improved. I was so relieved when he said that, because Prof emphasized that this article was not to be an advertisement for the store. I wandered around the store writing down random details that might come in handy, and even talked to one of the employees. Thirty minutes later I walked out of there totally set. All I've got to do now is write this bad boy up, and the journalism assignment I was dreading only twelve hours earlier will be finished and ready to go.

See, I shoulda known. Things always work out. Freaking out is just wasted effort.