This document summarizes a workshop held for first-year journalism students at Ryerson University to address increasing reports of interview anxiety among students. Instructors noticed more students struggling to complete reporting assignments due to a fear of contacting and interviewing strangers. In response, counselors from the school's student development center developed and presented a mandatory workshop on interview anxiety for the first-year reporting class. The workshop aimed to help students understand they are not alone in experiencing anxiety, teach coping strategies like breathing exercises and meditation, and normalize anxiety as a common feeling. A student participant noted she didn't realize how many thoughts occupied her mind and found focusing difficult, while the article advocates for journalists to be given skills to manage workplace pressures and stresses.

1. Workshop helps
beginner journalists
deal with interview
anxiety (Part I)
In the fall of 2014, instructors teaching first-year
students at the Ryerson University School of
Journalism observed what appeared to be an
increase in the number of students whose fear of
contacting and interviewing strangers was an
obstacle they seemingly couldn’t overcome. After
being contacted by the instructors, Bronwyn Dickson
and Laura Girz from the Centre for Student
Development and Counselling developed a
workshop tailored specifically for journalism students
and the anxieties they face in their reporting
assignments. The workshop was mandatory for all
students in first-year reporting classes. Two students
wrote accounts of their experience. This is the first
article in the series.
By JULIANNA GAROFALO
Special to the RJRC
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2. I remember being 14 years old, sitting in a local Tim
Hortons with a list of questions on my lap, waiting for
my first interviewee—a columnist at a nearby
newspaper—to arrive for an informational
conversation about journalism.
Suddenly, I felt that I was going to faint. My vision
went blurry and I found myself struggling to catch my
breath in a bathroom stall.
I didn’t know then, but later that year, I would be
diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD)
—a mental illness characterized by persistent,
excessive and unrealistic worry about everyday
things. I sought help, but was convinced my career
as a journalist was over before it had even begun.
How was I supposed to be editor in chief of Elle
Canada if I couldn’t ask a stranger questions without
panicking?
When I arrived at Ryerson’s School of Journalism, I
was braced to combat my disadvantage alone.
Surely no one else at the most prestigious J-school
in the country was anxious while practicing
journalism, I thought to myself.
I was proven wrong last month when two
counsellors from the Centre for Student
Development and Counselling led a workshop on
interviewing anxiety in my first-year reporting class.
The slide on the screen at the front of the class read:
“Is it just me? NO!” as counsellors Bronwyn Dickson
and Laura Girz asked students about their top
worries when cold calling and conducting streeter
interviews.
“I will sound stupid,” “I might be rejected,” and “I will
fail”—the same thoughts I battled in that Tim
Hortons—were voiced by my peers.
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with Asmaa Malik
and Gene Allen
In conversation
with Monocle’s
Tyler Brûlé and
Andrew Tuck
May Jeong visits
Ryerson to talk
about reporting in
Afghanistan
practices
Harassment
causes anxiety,
affects work,
women journalists
say
Monocle editors
bullish on
magazine print
editions
Social media shakes things
up in journalism influencing
what gets reported, what
audiences read
ryersonjournalism.ca/2015/1
Ryerson RJRC
@RyersonRJRC
Missed what @asmaam
@ga_adamson my
@RyersonJourn colleagues
are developing?
twitter.com/ryersonrjrc/st…
Retweeted by Ryerson
RJRC
Janice Neil
@JaniceJourno
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Where will journalism
education go from here?
ryersonjournalism.ca/2015/1
Ryerson RJRC
@RyersonRJRC
Ryerson profs developing
app that tracks variety and
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28 No
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3. As the presenters defined anxiety and described its
symptoms, I noticed some of my classmates
exchange glances when they recognized
themselves in the “unhelpful thought patterns”
projected on the screen.
“That is so me,” said the guy I was sitting beside
when Dickson talked about “mental filtering,” an
anxious tendency to emphasize our failures, but not
acknowledge our successes.
“Anxiety is normal,” read another slide. “Everyone
becomes anxious at times and interviewing is
inherently anxiety-provoking.”
Next, Dickson and Girz demonstrated strategies for
reducing anxiety, including positive self-talk,
breathing techniques and meditation exercises.
At one point, Dickson instructed us to sit up and
close our eyes. She then took us through a body
scan, a relaxation method where you focus solely on
the sensations in each part of your body, from the
top of your head to the bottom of your feet.
“I didn’t realize how many thoughts were going
through my mind at a given moment,” said Janine
Maral, a student who participated in the workshop.
“It was almost impossible for me to focus on just one
thing.”
According to the Canadian Mental Health
Association, one in five Canadians will personally
experience a mental illness in their lifetime.
Currently, anxiety disorders affect 12 per cent of the
population.
In a profession characterized by tight deadlines,
multiple platforms to feed and demanding editors,
stress is inevitable. Nerves can be motivational, but
working as a journalist should not mean existing in a
perpetual state of angst.

4. SHARE →
We should be given the skills to handle the
pressures of the newsroom, just as we should be
taught how to write the perfect lede.
I think the interviewing anxiety presentation affirmed
just that, offering the first-year class one of the most
valuable J-school lessons to date. It’s a lesson that
is so often missing in classrooms, the very place it is
needed the most.
Julianna Garofalo is a first-year student at the
Ryerson University School of Journalism.
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