There’s no place like home

Around 5.000 miles away from his home, Fuoad Saliou-Sulley was studying for his exam in a cozy little coffee house in Fogler library at University of Maine. Already experienced life in America 2 years ago, he knew this was the place he wanted to come back for college.

“I miss my family the most. At the beginning it was really hard, but you have to consider what is best for your child. Apparently, this was the best for me; they just had to let go.”

As a pre-medicine student, Fuoad is an undergraduate at UMaine, but is planning on going to graduate school here, also. “School is structured differently back home; you study a lot of everything. Here, it’s more narrowed down, more specific.”

He was talking about two major things which took the most getting used to: climate and food. Weather here is much colder than weather in Ghana, “I just wasn’t used to it.” For someone who hasn’t seen much of snow in his life, Fuoad loved every activity that included snow: “We don’t have snow in Ghana. My favorite activities while being here are almost all related to snow, like snowmobiling, for example.” He pointed out the difference in food, and how food from back home was much spicier than American food. “At first, Mac and Cheese was my favorite American meal, but I think now I’d rather settle for lasagna; it’s basically the same thing, just with more stuff in it.” His favorite food from Ghana is a rice and beans meal called “waakye.”

For Fuoad, while being home, it wasn’t hard to imagine life in America considering the fact that media is pretty much ruling the world nowadays. The first time he came to Maine he was expecting big cities and bright lights everywhere. “And then I got here- no bright lights, no skyscrapers…” Fuoad laughs and adds “I was thinking…Am I in the right place?”

As an exchange student he did a lot of presentations to American students about his home country. Fuoad is also going to show up as a participant in Culture Fest, going on at the University of Maine on November 6th this year. “If I were to cook something, I’d have to practice first, and I’m not sure I would have time. But I will definitely be a part of the style show; I will model in my traditional clothing from Ghana, background music included. ”

The longest pause followed the question “If you could live here, would you?” It was raining outside and Moon lighted up the big green Mall towards which Fuoad’s eyes wondered, while he was playing with beads on his handmade African bracelet. Finally, he sighted and said “I might have considered it a couple of times...But, you know…There’s no place like home.”

“Your job, as the feature writer, is to make editor’s job easier.”

These are the words of Henry Garfield, a novelist and contributing editor for Bangor Metro and Maine Ahead magazines. He said these words while speaking to a class of 20 University of Maine students on one of the topics he is most familiar with‒ feature stories and how to write them.

Garfield talked for forty minutes; he spoke about his early days in journalism and the basic structure of magazines, but he spent the majority of his time talking about tips for writing a good feature story. There are four significant elements of writing a feature story: choosing a topic, focusing and narrowing it, and paying special attention to the lead.

When choosing a topic for a feature story, one must consider only topics of general interest that have a long shelf-life. The first question the writer has to ask before even beginning to write the story is: How do you want to approach the feature story? In order to respond to this question, Garfield said that a writer must organize their topic and see the ways in which he or she can make the story most appealing to a potential reader. Also, the writer must consider the audience they are writing for.

The writer of the feature story needs to be specific; “Narrow it down. By limiting the story, I also focused the story”, said Garfield. He added that he never really liked outlines, but every feature story needs to have some kind of information skeleton.

One of the most important parts of the feature story is the lead. “I spend as much time on my lead as I spend on the rest of the article. Once I have the lead that I like, it is much easier to write the rest of the story, “Garfield said.

He also added that when you are done with your story, it is best not to send it to the editor right away. He advised the students to leave it for the night, then wake up, read it over, correct it and then send it in.

What Garfield likes best about writing feature stories is the fact that every story is like a mini-education. A writer needs to do a lot of research to be familiar with the subject they are writing about; in Garfield's opinion, this is the best way of broadening writer's knowledge.

Garfield finished his speech with an advice for all the future journalists sitting in the room: “Never be afraid of asking a stupid question. When it's still during the interview, it's OK. What you don't want is to misunderstand what the person you are interviewing meant and print it wrong. So, I repeat, never ever be afraid of asking a stupid question.”

(why) do I want to be a journalist?

I am not sure.
Undecided, you could say.
2 years ago when it was time to choose major (in Serbia you can't switch majors), I chose journalism. And I loved it since. But is it something I want to do for the rest of my life?
I don't know.
What I do know is that journalism is something it that allows me to express myself in ways I can best, writing and photographing. I actually do believe that photography is the best form of journalism. See, one photo is worth a thousand words. And if you know how to speak photography language, your photo could be worth a whole novel.