Geary: interned at TVW, onto Foreign Intrigue in Cambodia
Geary while studying abroad in Peru.
Undergraduate journalism student Devon Geary has dreams of becoming a travel or international correspondent reporter, and she is well on her way.
Geary interned at TVW last quarter in partnership with the Olympia Legislative Reporting program, where she worked full-time delivering stories with a political focus to people’s television sets. But she found that political reporting is much more than talking about bills and laws – it affects people’s lives.
“I didn’t know that politics could be that interesting and it really can be,” Geary said, “because you’re hearing about House Bill 1254 and it’s about scrap metal or incarcerated parents and you go to this lady’s house and she’s crying on camera. You realize what the passing of House Bill 1254 would have done for her. And it hits home that it’s essential that we know about it, so that we can help pass bills like that.”
Geary has been hooked on journalism since she was a freshman in high school. She joined the newspaper committee at Shorewood High and wrote a dramatic story that also happened to involve someone crying during the interview.
“I didn’t realize the impact that journalism could have,” Geary said. “So yeah, I got hooked. It’s a drug.”
Not anticipating going to the UW because that’s where her older brother went, she was suddenly impressed by The Daily, which a student had brought in to her newspaper class, and she decided to go to Greek Preview. Although not part of a sorority anymore, it’s for a good reason.
“I was abroad for two quarters, so it was too long to jump back into it,” Geary said. “I studied abroad in Granada, Spain and Cusco, Peru. I’m obsessed with it, I want to go back.”
Geary is getting that chance again this summer as she was accepted to be a Foreign Intrigue student in Cambodia. While her first two study abroad experiences were more to work on her Spanish, this trip will solely be for journalistic purposes as she writes for The Cambodia Daily in Phnom Penh.
“I’m just ecstatic,” Geary said, “just edge-of-my-seat excited.”
While not speaking a word of Khmer, the capital cities own dialect, she will have a translator conduct interviews for her and write from their notes. She hopes to do some language prep work before she leaves and be able to speak enough to get around town by the end of the trip.
Geary conducting an interview
