Gideon Yago comes to campus!

Hey!

I’m still SOO ecstatic about meeting with Gideon this morning! He was the lecturer for this year’s fall Robison Lecture last night, Oct. 22 at 8 p.m. He was so intriguing while also being hilarious and able to relate to the students and talk on their level. Gideon talked about how he got started as a journalist, about the youth voters in the past and present, about the media and its effect on the campaigns and on the voting process, and more. The lecture focused more on the presidential election coming up, but he also branched off into talking about the media and their impact on our lives. 

This morning, though, I had the opportunity to go to breakfast with Gideon with a few other students and faculty members. There were six other students and about four faculty members who were at breakfast with us, so it was a nice, small group. He sat in the middle while all of us took turns talking to him about his career and life. He is still so young, I think not even quite 30, but he has more life experience and knowledge about the world than really anyone I’ve ever met. And the cool thing is, it’s real knowledge — he doesn’t just go around preaching about stuff he thinks he knows something about but doesn’t really know or have first hand experience with. He actually lived in Iraq for a while and had travelled around the Middle East even before that. I got to ask him about the difference in what was really going on in Iraq — what he learned and witnessed while living there — versus what the media and U.S. government were telling us at the same time. He had some great insight and obviously a lot of first-hand experience and knowledge about what was and is really happening. I learned a lot of things from him that I had never known about the reality overseas. It was so interesting to hear the perspective of someone who actually lived in Iraq and interacted with Iraqi citizens on an almost daily basis. 

Anyway, I’m so excited that I got to talk to someone who is not only a fantastic journalist and someone with so much world knowledge and experience, but someone who is kind of like me. It’s inspiring to know that a journalist at the age of 20 (which I will be in a couple months) started his amazing life journey and accomplished so much at such a young age. It gives us journalist students here hope and something to strive for!

- Kristin