RACHAEL BUKER: ALL ABOUT ME

Hello to all who have stumbled upon my blog! My name is Rachael Buker and I am a twenty year old student attending Linn Benton Community College. Some back story on my life: I am originally from Carlsbad, California and spent my first year of college at Arizona State University. Unfortunately, the pandemic caused college classes to go all online, so I decided to complete my associates degree through LBCC with a Business Administration Major. This being said, I plan on transferring to University Fall 2021 to get my Bachelor’s degree in Business. Until then, I have specific course requirements, which is a partial reason I am taking Journalism 216. But I specifically chose this course because of my passion for social media and storytelling. I feel this class will allow me to expand my knowledge in journalism and allow me to become a better influencer! I have experience in journalism through my high school yearbook, but I am eager to learn more about the specifics in this course. Aside from journalism, I love photography and editing media. I love to travel and take photos and videos of my adventures to share with my friends and family. While college is my priority, travel is my true passion.

Throughout this course, I am excited to expand my understanding of journalism. I would love to master creating titles or headlines. This may seem basic, but I find myself struggling and overthinking this aspect of writing. With a killer headline, people are bound to click and at least give the story a chance. I find this situation almost identical to the classic- “Don’t judge a book by it’s cover”. Naturally, we all judge at first glance. I want others to find my headlines interesting at first sight so I can gain a greater audience on each article!

Another goal I have for this course is to become a more confident writer. I often overthink the words I want to use instead of vomiting words onto a document and editing from there. This causes me to stress for no reason at all. I would like to become more confident in my natural abilities as a writer while having fun with it. The fact that this course demands creativity will help me fall in love with writing again.

Most of all- by the end of this course I hope to learn something new. I find many general education courses in college tend to repeat from high school. Luckily, I took this course knowing it would be a fun challenge. I look forward to learning a new skill, idea, subject, or perspective...etc. I know this course will give me this opportunity time and time again, especially once I begin interviewing subjects

I look forward to writing my first LBCC news story and hope it will be published in The Commuter. I will be discussing the mental health crisis of 2020 and bringing light to the subject with ideas to make the new year more enjoyable. This will help students feel less alone and bring them specific ways to stop spending their days bored in the house. I will be interviewing Lisa Hoogesteger, the wellness counselor on campus. Also, Ellen Carlson, an academic advisor for Education/Child & Family Studies. Last, I will be posting over LBLive for a student volunteer to be interviewed. These three sources will allow for a well-rounded story. I intend on asking a minimum of five interview questions including but not limited to:


1. How is the pandemic affecting your/students mental health?
2. Why do we all feel so alone?
3. What ways can we still be active?
4. What ways can we remain social?
5. How do we move forward in such an uncertain time?



I look forward to interviewing my subjects and finding answers to these questions. This story may help a lot of students!