u/cohoruka

Hi guys. I’m currently a journalism student (first year, I changed majors so I’m kind of restarting), and I’ve been a reporter for my university magazine for 1.5 years now. I thought I had gained a lot of interviewing skills through the magazine, and got great quotes and insights, but most of my interviewees were people in fields similar to mine and my interests, so I had a lot of confidence speaking to them and delving deep.
For one of my classes though, my professor assigned us topics to write about, and I got an ongoing cybersecurity legislation issue going on in my country. I knew nothing about cybersecurity, but I tried to the best of my abilities to get the basics down.
I interviewed a cybersecurity expert who my professor got me in contact with. He’s a big deal and has a huge following online, so I was obviously nervous. During the interview, he sensed that, and he was nice and answered everything, but hinted that some of his answers had gotten repetitive (I’m assuming because my questions were?), and I didn’t have many follow-up questions because I wasn’t confident in my knowledge to begin with.
I’m comparing this experience with my previous interview experiences where I was extremely familiar with the topics discussed, and I’m disappointed in myself.
It was my first assignment and my first time writing an article about something completely out of my zone, so I’m not being TOO harsh on myself, but my question is, how do you get to a point where you’re confident enough interviewing experts on topics you have minimal knowledge on? I feel like these people spend years extensively studying the topic at hand, that a few days of research will not get me to the same level to be able to converse with them meaningfully without embarrassing myself. Any advice is much appreciated, please and thank you.

Hi everyone. I moved countries by myself in 2021 to do my undergrad and have been living alone since. I moved apartments a few times, but I never had roommates. I have a strong community in my country of residence now, and I'm starting grad school here as well, but I noticed that during sleepovers, I get irritated when I wake up the next day and there's people in my space, and I enjoy having my own place. This doesn't apply to my family of course, my best friend of 18 years, and my boyfriend - all of which are unfortunately not with me physically, but they visit from time to time.

What confuses me is that with almost everyone else, even people I love and enjoy spending time with, I eventually feel relieved when they leave. If someone is crashing at my place for a few weeks or visiting for an extended period, I start looking forward to having my space back. I've always assumed this was because I'm independent. But when my boyfriend leaves after visiting, or when my best friend leaves, I usually end up crying for days and wishing they could come back. Recently my family was here visiting as well, and they JUST left. I feel that same grief, except amplified because its applied to the three people at once, rather than just one person.

Now I'm questioning whether I actually like living alone as much as I thought I did, or whether I've just adapted to it because I had to. I genuinely enjoy my independence and having control over my own space, but these visits make me realize how much I miss having the people I love around me. The relief I feel when most people leave and the sadness I feel when certain people leave seem completely at odds with each other, and I'm struggling to understand what that says about me. Has anyone else experienced something similar?

hi guys, please no judgment as i'm already embarrassed to be posting this. i've been dealing with depression for over a year now, and naturally i stopped taking care of my house. i'm a very high-functional person, so no one in my personal life knows about it, and even when i had guests over, i'd hide my trash and dirty laundry out of sight. i'm finally graduating with my bachelors next week and i've been accepted to a grad program with a full-ride scholarship, so life has been looking slightly brighter, and it has given me some motivation to start caring for the environment i'm in.

i spent the past 5 days putting things in bags, scrubbing, cleaning, organizing and doing laundry all over the house by myself, and i'm so proud of my progress. but now i've got around 7 months (i know...) worth of trash to take out. they're all neatly in 30 or so trash bags, and i 'm feeling so overwhelmed. partially because i'm so worried about what what people will think if they see me taking out that much trash at once. i'm not very close to anyone in my neighborhood, but we're on "hi, how are you" basis, and i feel like it's going to raise so many question marks.

my anxiety over this is so bad that i tried taking out two bags this morning around 6am because no one would've been awake at that hour, then when i went for the third, i felt like i'm being watched and judged, even though there was no one. i'm so worried if i keep putting it off, it's going to start piling up again, so i want to get this done by the weekend hopefully. does anyone have any advice or words of encouragement, please?