-: I was a political and social science major,
and a huge part of that was just taking
really big amounts of information
or reading a whole book in a couple days
and then getting some themes out of it
and figuring out which questions are most important
and that's been really, really relevant
to the podcasting in particular.
Having a lot of practice in
getting stories and themes and narratives
out of big disparate chunks of information.
I also did sustained dialogue and I was an RA,
and I think those are two things
that train you really, really well
in what a good, strong question is,
and how to get people to answer
with firsthand personal experiences
that sound better on radio or more interesting stories
kind of get to deeper themes.
When I first started working there
I was more afraid to ask questions than I am now
'cause I would just be like
oh I'm just gonna look up YouTube videos and Google it
and figure it out.
I think that's something
that can make you really successful in a job,
but I also think that once you're in a place for a while
it's really important to be honest
about what you want more information on.
And especially when it comes to the sound engineering.
It's really important not just to know like
which dials you turn
and the numbers that are supposed to be put in,
but how the whole system works.
We're constantly trying to get more students to come in
and train to be sound engineers.
It's a real need that we have.
It's a real need in the whole industry.
It's not the kind of thing
that you have to learn in school.
You can learn it just by doing
and working with sound engineers
and helping with live sound and stuff.
So I think that's one thing
specifically UVA students could do
and we'd love to have more people come in
and just send up an email and say hey
I wanna learn how to sound engineer
and we'll put them in the sound tech rotation.