My first byline and 4-H

Sarah Ein­se­len — Staff

By Sarah Einselen

My first byline came when I was nine and a half years old. It was a short arti­cle. The newsprint rec­tan­gle is still glued to an old piece of scrap­book paper at home, yel­lowed but dis­play­ing that “By Sarah Ein­se­len” in bold print at the top. I nearly burst with pride the day it appeared in the Ontario weekly news­pa­per, the Tribune-Courier.

That was the sum­mer of 1999. I had writ­ten a sum­mary of what my 4-H club had done that year, a sim­ple story to go along with our “Fan­tas­tic 4-H’ers” annual group pic­ture. About a year and a half later, I con­vinced my fel­low 4-H club mem­bers to let me write about them all year as the offi­cial club news reporter.

The other 4-H’ers gave me that priv­i­lege again in 2003, in 2004 and in 2007. That last year, I was 17 and I knew what I was going to do in college.

4-H isn’t just about ani­mals and swel­ter­ing days at the county fair. In my ten years as a 4-H mem­ber, I never once raised an ani­mal to show at the fair—you couldn’t have farm ani­mals within city lim­its, and I didn’t want any. What I did, instead, was give a health-and-safety talk and a demon­stra­tion every year and take sewing, cook­ing, writ­ing and pho­tog­ra­phy projects.

That meant my club adviser handed out slim how-to books pub­lished by the Ohio State Uni­ver­sity Exten­sion about what­ever it was I thought I could learn. Then I had to give a short speech about some aspect of health or safety, right up there in front of all my fel­low 4-H’ers. (There were only about fif­teen or twenty all together, but it was still nerve-wracking.) Later each year I’d pre­pare a longer, how-to speech related to one of my projects.

Those projects, plus my mother’s help, taught me to sew, or cook or write or take good pho­tographs. That’s all a project was—following the direc­tions, adding in some of your own cre­ativ­ity and show­ing off for the project judge every summer.

At least, that’s what I thought.

They say hindsight’s 20/20. I wouldn’t know; I’ve worn glasses since I was 15. But now that I’ve “grown up” past the 4-H program’s age limit, I can tell you five ways all those 4-H projects helped me become a bet­ter jour­nal­ist and person.

One, I don’t procrastinate—or not much, any­way. The first cou­ple of years that I was in 4-H, I’d lose at least two hours of sleep the night before project judg­ing because I was wor­ry­ing I wouldn’t get the project done in time. I had put it off and put it off, so it was, oh, maybe two-thirds done, with a few hours left the next morn­ing to fin­ish it. I’d climb out of bed, find my mom and cry at her, wor­ried child that I was. She always told me it would be all right.

It always was. But that night before was never pleas­ant. After a few times I fig­ured out the secret: If you do it early, no stress! That trick served me espe­cially well in college.

Two, I’m not afraid of inter­views. Those 4-H project judges weren’t mean or “out to get you,” so I learned that most other inter­view­ers aren’t, either. I feel more com­fort­able dur­ing inter­views because of that—or maybe because I’ve been through so many. It must have helped. Since start­ing col­lege, I’ve inter­viewed for six jobs and got­ten five of them.

Three, I under­stand par­lia­men­tary procedure—you know, when peo­ple say “I move…” in meet­ings and aren’t phys­i­cally going any­where. It’s stan­dard 4-H prac­tice to run meet­ings “by the book,” com­plete with secretary’s min­utes, treasurer’s reports and old and new business.

4-H taught me years ago what agen­das were and how to make a proper motion. Now that I’m a “grown-up” reporter, it’s helped tremen­dously when I’m cov­er­ing any sort of meet­ing. I sus­pect it will come in handy too, some­day, when I decide to serve on a board or com­mit­tee myself.

Four, I can write a speech and deliver it with con­fi­dence. Don’t get me wrong—I still get jit­tery right before get­ting onstage for any­thing. But it’s eas­ier to do it now, and I’m sure it’s because I’ve had to do it so many times at 4-H meet­ings and in pub­lic speak­ing contests.

Five, I can write about what’s news. 4-H gave me the oppor­tu­nity to test out jour­nal­ism and to learn how it’s done. I had what I termed “real” news to write about and a judge to tell me how I could do it bet­ter. I’ve kept the let­ter one judge wrote prais­ing my clear writ­ing and eye for good news pho­tos. The news report­ing projects are how I real­ized that I loved journalism.

This is only my story. 4-H has changed other grown-up chil­dren in dif­fer­ent ways. But this for­mer nine-year-old has fol­lowed that first byline with pounds more of newsprint.

I love what I do. And 4-H helped me dis­cover it.

Posted by Sarah Einselen on Mar 7 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.