I Learned A Lot?

What have I learned? That's a tougher question than it seems.
I guess that i will start out with the obvious things. I have learned different formats for writing stories. Chronological, day-in-the-life, problem and solution, catalog, repetitive are all examples of formats. As much as I would like to dismiss these as being boring stuff I cannot tell you how important they are. But what I learned most about formats is that I definitely have my favorites and least favorite styles. I like the ones where you start the story off with an anecdote in the lead then go on with the story and finish up the anecdote in the ending. It's kind of like "The Rest of the Story," with Paul Harvey. But if I am going to be totally honest, I don't know which format that is called. Maybe I didn't learn those things.
Leads, nut graphs, endings and theme statements are another bunch of terms that I should have learned. All kidding aside, I did learn them! The leads and endings are my favorite part of writing a story. To see if you can get a reader hooked by the first couple of sentences is pretty fun. If you can give the reader a good ending, most likely, they will walk away with the thought that it was a good story. It's like a movie. You could watch a great movie with a terrible ending and end up hating it. But if the final scene is good, you're going to remember it.
But the most important thing that I have learned from UNC is that news writing is not just jotting down what happened, the who, what, when, and where. It's telling a story and making your readers care about what happens to the characters in your story.
And now the sappy stuff. I learned that I can actually write. Granted it's just sports writing but I know that I can do it.