When you start university, you definitely expect to be treated more like an adult. For the most part, you are treated as an adult, but often times you’re still treated as a “student”.

What that means is,  you’re still treated as though you are in high school. (especially if you’re in first year). People still don’t take you very seriously, and often treat you like you’re “second rate”.

With this project, we have been contacting people for interviews through email and have been decently successful. However, because we are students, we aren’t the top priority of those we are contacting. Which is perfectly understandable, but the student stereotype is still there.

In regards to professionalism, often times our interviewees are surprised at how prepared we are, the questions that we present, the technology we have, and the ideas of our innovation. For example, like any videographer, with any interview, I provide a photo/video release form. People are both shocked and impressed by this because of how “professional it is”. This isn’t to criticize anyone we have interviewed, because they have all been incredibly helpful. This is just a note about how difficult it is to be taken seriously as a young student, and how irritating it is when people are surprised by hard work.

In a sense, it’s nice that we can prove the stereotype wrong. But it’s still a kick to the ego, when people are amazed at all the boxes we’ve checked in order to keep things efficient and professional.