Thoughts about the seminar of Media Institutions in Munich: My experience

When I first signed up for this seminar course, I wasn’t really expecting much outside of the typical university class stuff: lectures, classes to attend, hanging out with fellow schoolmates and, depending on the quality and engagement of the lessons, something that I will remember very fondly or something that I will forget as time goes by. It’s safe to say that I have been pleasantly surprised by the way that this seminar course was handled, what with how we went through various media outlets and journalistic houses to learn about the various ins and outs of how media institutions work in not just Munich and Bavaria, but in Germany as a whole. Visiting the actual institutions instead of just talking about them not only makes it so we can apply what we are learning from this seminar in a concrete way by interacting with the very same industries that we are studying and learning about, but it also allows us to gain noteworthy experiences for us if we plan to actually work for them later down the line. It’s a very innovative model of teaching, but one that requires ample amounts of preparation compared to the traditional learning plan of setting up lessons and explaining to the students, requiring also lots of connections and comunications in order to set up all of the trips. Despite all the preparation, when it works, it absolutely works, and it’s something I can definitely say for certain about this course. The course also promoted lots of interaction between classmates and the class itself via asking questions and team based assignments both in class and in the various field trips we did: the highlight of them were absolutely the presentations: the classes were all divided in 4 groups and they all explained a different topic related to media, journalism, and other related elements such as streaming and such. It was really fun working on them and seeing everyone’s projects flourish, and I’m very glad I got to be a part of this class!

Something I was able to learn and gather from this seminar is that during these field trips, I’ve noticed how willing to work with young people these institutions are: while I’m not super interested in working in the journalistic field myself, it’s really nice to know that they are very open minded and willing to offer a helping hand to any of my fellow students that wish to work in this field: it’s something that in my opinion feels lacking in this current state of the world demanding younger and younger employees that want at least a couple of years’ worth of experience, and it’s quite admirable that they’re willing to give us a helping hand to deal with this. Mediaschool Bayern is another institution that deserves an additional shoutout in my opinion, as it doubles down on helping out young people interested in working with media to develop new skills, help make their projects unfold and create things such as podcasts and radio shows and let them learn how social media and video platforms work.

Overall, I’m very glad I could experience this seminar: my classmates have all been super lovely, the lessons were really interesting and I look forward to apply the things I’ve learned here in my future endeavors: it’s sad that I’m no longer gonna see everyone here anymore, but every thing must sadly come to an end, and unfortunately so will this Erasmus period.
If anyone from the seminar or the IfKW group is reading this, I hope you all have a wonderful day and life ahead of you and I hope we could see eachother in the future, maybe in Italy, maybe where you live as well. Thank you all for being a part of my life, I will cherish any and all interactions I’ve had with all of you!!!!