Journalism Association of Community Colleges hosted its 62nd annual State Convention at the Double Tree Hotel in Sacramento from Thursday March 30 through Saturday, April 1.

JACC is a nonprofit that serves students interested in a journalism career with journalism education.

Students get to interact with other students from other colleges, professional reporters, photographers, editors and other journalists.

It’s an event with real life experiences in the journalism industry with on the spot contests and awards.

Many students, faculty, speakers and judges assisted this year and within students from Cerritos College that got to experience their last conference.

Briana Hicks, journalism and psychology major shared her experience, “It was really good, I got a chance to do a different contest this year, so I was able to do news photo and sports photo. The rest of the time I did workshops, one of the workshops that I went to was how to get your first magazine job which is one of the fields that I want to get into.

“I learned how to be a better journalist, I learned what it would take for me to get started with magazine and being a journalist and how to report on certain topics.”

She encourages students to participate, “even if you’re not a journalism major, you get to see what it’s like for actual people in the field, you get to be around other people which brings out creativity and ideas you want to bring back to your own school.”

Ethan Ortiz, journalism major, shares, “it was a fun experience, I got the opportunity to learn more about journalism and experience of working in the field, there were some fun workshops and exciting contest, it was a good way to network with other journalist.”

Something Ortiz took from this experience was, “being prepared as a journalist, in one of the contest you needed your own flash drive and that’s something I wasn’t prepared for so as a journalist you have to be prepared for everything and anything.”

Terrel Emerson, journalism major, brought awards with him, “I won an honorable mention for sports writing and social media and an on the spot contest, that’s the ultimate test […] to be in a room full of journalists and feel inspired and know everyone is competing [for] the top four spots and everybody is so great at what they do but when you get recognize it is a good moment.”

Emerson was inspired by Cerritos College Journalism Professor/Advisor, Richard Cameron’s speech during the banquet night.

“That was his opportunity to talk about what he did for the brand and something that he still didn’t do […] seeing he’s been able to accomplish all that he has and be humble about it is inspiring.”

Briana Velarde, journalism major, said, “It feels good to be in a room full of journalist and learn from other schools.”

Karla Enriquez, journalism major, said, “It was a lot of fun, definitely a very quick paced conference, I got to network with people […] it’s kind of like summer camp where you go and see your journalism friends from other schools and meet other people that you’re most likely going to be working with down the line.”

Cerritos College Talon Marks brought back an award for Online General Excellence, which the students were very proud and happy about.