Some Cal Poly Students Are Receiving the COVID-19 Vaccine Ahead of Their Peers

The COVID-19 vaccine is as promising as it is elusive, which is why we decided to interview real people with real experiences receiving their first doses of the shot. The interesting angle we came across when developing our story idea stemmed from our own curiosities. Was anybody our age getting the vaccine? If they were, how? The more we asked around, the more college students we found with jobs in health care that had been given the opportunity to receive the vaccine.

The next step was figuring out what we wanted to know from these students. Why should we care that they got the vaccine? We made a list of questions to ask that would help create narratives for each individual, from their feelings about getting the vaccine to if they had any gnarly side effects. 

We were able to set up interviews with multiple students, one of which was able to be done in person with an iPhone, and the other two were conducted via Zoom. The overarching theme in terms of feelings among our interviewees was that of excitement towards getting the first dose.

“It made me pretty excited to get the opportunity,” Cal Poly psychology senior Alex Holdom said. “To be considered essential was pretty cool.” Holdom works as a behavior technician which has allowed her to receive the vaccine. We snapped a photo of her holding up her work badge for our featured image.

One of the bigger challenges we faced when developing this story was finding ways to incorporate visual aspects. We felt that editing our video in a Q&A format would be the most effective way to tell the story, which meant more interview footage and less B-roll. An additional infographic was made to help the reader visualize parts of the written story.

“The visual process was challenging because the vaccine clinics are only open to those who are getting vaccines, so I had to use more courtesy footage than I would have liked,” said Sierra Hickman, who worked on the video portion for our story. “I think it pulled together nicely though because I really got to highlight the students’ personal experiences with interview coverage.”

We may not have had the most ideal story for creating visual content, but we did have a lot to write about. Ruby Tincup was assigned the “written word” portion of the story and said there was a lot of county information available about the vaccine that she could draw from.

“The goal was to give readers a glimpse into how these students felt about getting the vaccine and what it was like while also tying in general information about the vaccine that people would want to know,” Ruby said. “I think I revised the draft like five times to get it right.” 

Overall, we felt this was a timely story to report on since there are so many questions and curiosities surrounding the COVID-19 vaccine. We thought incorporating that human interest aspect through interviews with real students who went through the vaccine process shows why this is an important story to be telling right now.