After a fantastic summer, I am ready to start working again. We have some new members on the staff which I am very excited to begin working with. Being able to work among people and seeing them progress in their work was very fulfilling last semester.

There are also some returning members who I’m ready to start back working with.

This is my second semester as news editor and being able to see my peers progress during this time has been motivating.

I feel as though I have progressed over the summer as far as journalism and am looking forward to utilizing those skills and allowing you all to see them.

I have a lot of things that I am looking forward to including the Illinois Collegiate Press Association awards taking place in February. It is the state awards for college students, and I had a pretty fun time there with the team last time.

Another thing I am looking forward to is bettering my work. Since I first started here, I have gotten a lot better. Looking back at my first article, is not that terrible, but if I wrote it again, it would be a lot better.

I’m very proud of the work I did last year and look forward to continuing that work.

Aside from the regular news articles that I do, I also write movie reviews and co-host a podcast called Two Dudes Talk Movies, which you should check out on Spotify and Apple Podcast.

Movies are a huge passion of mine and I wish I could spend the rest of my life just watching movies. Everyone that knows me knows how much I love movies and that I could talk about them forever.

I am going to continue writing the reviews. I wrote some reviews during the summer that are ready to be published, just so I could have more time for other things during the school year and won’t have to worry about that.

I am also going to continue recording the podcast. That is the most fun I have while working at the Daily Eastern News. It never feels like work, and it is the easiest way for me to notice how I can get better.

Going back and listening to the first podcast is very rough. All we did was record and publish with no other editing.

With time and experimenting with other things, our latest episode sounds a lot better. I’m just really excited to try new things and get better with the podcast in general, honestly that’s what I’ve been most excited about this semester.

I’m hoping to start doing video podcasts and getting familiar with that type of editing.

Last year I grew a lot and hope to continue this incline this year.

I have made a lot of connections throughout my time at The News which has made my job little easier, and I’ve become somewhat of a familiar face on campus, which is kind of a nice thing.

Overall, I’m just ready to get things started and continue to get better with my work.

Cam’ron Hardy can be reached at cahardy@eiu.edu or 217-581-2812.