Where it started

I chose Media Studies for my bachelor’s degree because I wanted to understand how information moves and how the stories we hear shape what we believe. The coursework covered a lot of ground. We read Marshall McLuhan and argued over what “the medium is the message” actually means. We studied semiotics. We also tried to keep up with social media, which was changing faster than the textbooks could.

The theory started to make sense once I put it into practice. I interned with Reuters in the Philippines and with the Philippine Information Agency, and that was my first real taste of journalism. I learned to chase down details, check facts and write about my own country clearly and fairly, which turned out to be harder than it sounds.

Later, I worked as a PR and marketing writer for a range of brands. It was a different kind of writing. I had to balance what a client wanted to say with what readers would actually pay attention to. Between the newsroom and the brand work, my love of reading and writing finally met the practical side of media.

Why International Development

For grad school, I switched to International Development. On paper it looks like a big change, but to me it made sense. I grew up in a developing country, so the problems this field studies, like economic hardship and inequality, were never abstract to me. I’d seen them up close.

Travel pushed me further in the same direction. Walking around Singapore, learning the history of Japanese cities and spending time in other parts of Southeast Asia showed me how differently countries develop, and how much their stories overlap.

In the end, what drew me to the field was the people more than the numbers. Development indicators matter, but behind every one of them are people’s lives. Journalism taught me to look for those stories close to home. Now I want to do the same thing on a bigger scale.

How the two fit together

I don’t see my media background as something I left behind. Development work runs on communication. A well-designed program can still fail if the people it’s meant to help don’t understand it or don’t trust it. Knowing how to tell a clear story, use visuals well and read public opinion are skills I already have, and they turn out to be useful here.

I also take seriously the responsibility that comes with telling other people’s stories. You can help people be heard, or you can flatten them into a statistic or a stereotype. I want to be the kind of storyteller who does the first.

So that’s where I am now: someone trained in media, learning how development works, and hoping to use both to do some good.