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A giving spirit
seems to pervade the Elon community. It's a part of the people who
live and work here; people come to be members of the community because
it is a commonality they feel and share; and it's a characteristic
that keeps former Elon students returning to inspire the young people
who have taken their places at the university.
School of Communications
alumni regularly visit in courses, and in one recent busy week faculty
and students were treated to several stellar in-class presentations.
Allison Deiboldt,
a 2002 graduate who now works as a researcher with Disney's ABC
television in New York, visited with Communications Research students.
 Stephen
Herbster, a 1993 graduate who has worked creating video content
for Jumbotrons, television and in-house promotions for a number
of organizations, including Fox 8 TV, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines,
the Information Television Network, the Atlantic Coast Conference
and the Memphis Grizzlies, and now for the Carolina Panthers, visited
with Corporate Video students.
And Samiha
Khanna, a 2003 graduate who works as the Durham police beat reporter
for the Raleigh News & Observer talked with students enrolled
in Reporting for the Public Good.
Khanna urged
students to take advantage of the on-campus, student-media opportunities
they have to develop their talent. "Being a staff writer and
an editor at The Pendulum was one of the best experiences I had
at Elon," she said. "Elon is your playground. There are
so many resources here. You can try so many things and see what
you like. Take advantage and learn every skill you can. From there
you go step-by-step. After you have that on-campus experience, you
go after a good internship or two. Unpaid internships are worth
your investment because of the experience you get. Even a part-time
internship is better than no experience."
Khanna leveraged
her clips from Elon's student newspaper into an unpaid internship
opportunity at the Greensboro News & Record. After working there
five months, she assembled her clips and took them to the annual
Raleigh News & Observer Job Fair, where she made the contacts
that led to her next internship, a temporary, paid, post-graduate
position with the News & Observer.
"The more
effort you put into your work at an internship, the more they will
give you to do," she said. "You create your own opportunities
by working hard, asking questions, showing off your skills. The
first thing you have to do as an intern is eliminate the word 'no'
and the phrase 'I can't' from your vocabulary. Showing up early
and doing everything you are asked to do will open doors for you."
 Khanna
explained how she turned a summer internship in Raleigh into a full-time
job. "I became the intern who never went away," she said
with a smile. "I paid my dues. I covered the tractor festival,
I did a story on hog-farm manure in July - phew. I networked and
when I found out a reporter was going on family leave, I got a stay
of execution when I requested that they keep me on to fill in temporarily
on her rural beat."
Khanna's hustle
on the Johnston County beat during the fall of 2003 and the impassioned
case she made to N&O editors when she heard about a full-time
job opening covering the Durham police beat led to her hiring as
a full-timer at North Carolina's most distinguished daily newspaper.
"The things
I learned in internships along the way can be boiled down to three
points," she told students. "First, be flexible
- be committed, come early, stay late and be ready for anything
they throw at you. Second, be persistent - stick with things
even when the going gets rough, keep on top of things and show initiative.
Third, develop a thick skin - I'm sensitive, and when I started
out I would cry at the drop of a hat. In this job you take criticism.
You have to remember that it's part of the process. There are going
to be days when you think you don't know anything. But you have
to take it all in stride."
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