Over the summer, I had the opportunity to study abroad in Japan through Texas State. I had chosen this program because I have always wanted to visit Japan and I wanted to build my portfolio. Through this trip, I knew I would get more hands-on experience that I had felt like I had been lacking. Our two focuses were writing blog stories and creating content for the shared Instagram. Although I felt nervous for the trip, I am so glad I went because I was able to learn so much like hard skills related to my major and about a new, unknown culture.
The blog stories made me super nervous because even though I had taken writing courses, they were very rigid with their instructions. While in Japan, we had a lot of freedom to write about whatever we were interested in for each city. Over the course of two weeks, everyone had to write a blog story for the three cities we visited, Tokyo, Hiroshima and Kyoto, plus a daily blog and final blog. Before starting, these seemed like such daunting tasks, but once I started writing them, the words flowed easily. This study abroad gave me such a great opportunity to sharpen my writing skills.
The other focus on this trip was creating content for Instagram. I was familiar with Instagram because I post a lot on my personal page, but having to be graded on a post was almost jarring. Normally when I post on Instagram, I post whatever I want however I like, but in Japan, I had to be more aware of what I was posting. All that being said, creating for Instagram was so much fun because I had never truly created content like that. Additoinally, getting to see everyone else's work was interesting to me. I was able to build a good amount of posts for my professional Instagram and this studying abroad made me want to travel more.
