My First post on Blogger

 About Me

My name is Liana Lahann; I'm pursuing a career in psychological research and will complete my associate's at LBCC by the end of spring term 2025. I enrolled in this course because I need to fulfill the Arts and Letters credit requirements I've been putting off since I started here in 2020. Within these classes, I want to improve my writing as much as possible. I am not a journalism major, but I'm excited to see what I can learn from this class and apply to my future career. I'm most interested in learning how to improve my writing's brevity and making sure it is easily understandable for the reader, considering I tend to include as much detail as possible in overly complicated sentences. 

Outside of college, I am passionate about driving. I will take off and easily drive 500 miles in a day. Although education-related, I also have a strong urge to learn and contribute knowledge in many aspects of life. Fritz Hieder's theory of naive psychology states that people have an innate tendency to create theories of attributions for other's behavior from their individual knowledge and experience.​​ I resonate closely with Hieder's framework, and I experience it taking up a good portion of my thought process daily.

My Goals for the Term

My main goal is to improve my writing. I am pursuing a career in research, so communicating my ideas and clearly and concisely articulating my findings is essential for success. I tend to add a lot of detail into sentences that could have been much shorter while still maintaining efficacy, and I seem to have the ability to turn the shortest of assignments into a well-structured 20-page paper. I have often struggled with personal narrative, reflective, and creative writing styles. While journalistic writing is certainly distinguishable in its own right from these genres, it's a form of prose that I haven't tried before and leans towards my weak spots in style and subject, making this class a suitable choice to help round out my skill set.

I wasn't aware we would be conducting our own research and publishing our work coming into this class, but I now aim to improve my social and networking skills. I'm relatively extroverted despite having AuDHD, so I have managed to get by in my personal life choosing to interact with people who don't mind me avoiding eye contact or flinching at loud noises. Despite the comparative success, conducting fruitful journalistic interviews and research requires that I improve on how I suppress stimming and sensory reactions, learn how to control my facial expressions better, adjust to neurotypical gaze patterns, and consciously suppress innate genuine reactions with scripted social pleasantries, among other things. 

My final goal is to regain the time management skills that have casually faded from what used to be a reliable and productive routine over the last year or two. I can only replicate the motivation I used to have an overstock of by experiencing the urgency of a time crunch, which, predictably, has created issues. I have a 3.92 GPA, and this backslide of control is the only thing that has threatened to lower it, so I need to stop procrastinating before I see enduring consequences beyond the bags under my eyes.  

My First Story

My first news story concerns blood drives at LBCC, why they are here, what they're trying to accomplish, and how we could help results improve. 

My three sources will be:

• Whoever is conducting intake at the Red Cross blood drive at LBCC on January 14th, when I have my appointment to donate. 

• A customer service representative I connect with, for which I will obtain the department's information on the Red Cross's Blood Donor app.

• A participant who is willing to speak with me. 

My five questions for each source will differ:

• Intake person:

• What is the Red Cross's mission here?

• What types of donations are you looking for? 

• How much turnout do you usually see compared to your goals?

• What are some common issues you see when people try to donate?

• What would you say to people thinking about donating but are hesitant?

• Customer service representative:

• Why do you call people to donate?

• What types of donations do you prefer? 

• What information do you provide people with?

• How does your job improve turnout?

• What would you recommend to prospective donors?

• Donor:

• How many times have you donated?

• What made you choose to donate (x loose connective tissue)?

• What was your experience like?

• Did anything previously prevent you from or make you hesitant to donate? How did you overcome this?

• What do you wish you knew about donating before starting?