Being smushed in a crowd isn't horrible when you get to see the heiress who shares the same name as your journalism school. Before Wednesday, Wallis Annenberg seemed to be an urban legend. Her family name and influence were everywhere, but I didn’t know what she looked like before the opening ceremony for Wallis Annenberg Hall. 

“I have been closely associated with journalism all my life,” said Annenberg, whose father Walter Annenberg funded the original communications and journalism building at USC. “That is why the new building is so important to me to be built with the students’ needs in mind.”

Thanks to the multi-billion dollar Annenberg foundation, journalism students like me have an amazing media center that makes it easy to use our talents to tell local, national and global stories. Ceremony speeches reiterated that the new building will help us, as journalists, develop the skills we will need in the field. This was encouraging to hear, since my colleagues and I are accumulating student debt to earn degrees in arguably dying fields.

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Between “declining readership” and “eroding T.V. viewership,” Wallis envisions her building as allowing students to collaborate across all mediums. 

“In a world that’s fully wired and interactive, journalists can no longer survive [if they are] unable to spread their stories around every possible platform,” she urged.

Before the media center in Annenberg Hall, USC's radio, television and online news organizations operated in separate spaces on campus. Now, by being in a shared news room, reporters from different media outlets are encouraged to work together on stories. This aligns with where the professional journalism field is headed. Today, publications are incorporating web video with their online articles, and broadcast stations are posting long-form news briefs on their websites. But to be even more competitive in the field, Wallis called on students at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism to make use of what is available to them.

“I'd like to say to the students here today: this is your playground. This is your place to take risks, to try new approaches, to test what works and what doesn't,” she said.

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I stood a little taller when I heard her speak, unconsciously rising to the challenge. At the same time, however, I couldn’t completely share the same enthusiasm. While journalism schools teach basic principles of journalism and newswriting techniques, anyone can look up the AP Stylebook online and buy a newswriting textbook.

Traditional journalistic roles are being taken over by citizen journalists who only need a smart phone and a blog to gain an audience. I will not be so flippant as to say that anyone can be a journalist; you can't just replace T.V. news if you just post video of a fight on Youtube. And yet, based on what I've seen from my time at the Annenberg school, good journalists have a natural inclination to be great storytellers and content producers. 

Right now, I’m still not sure how the new building - even with its fancy technology - can specifically help me as a person who wants to write online news articles. Unlike my broadcast friends, the “special equipment” I'd need for my field is a laptop and a good WiFi connection. I mean, radio news and T.V. news received upgrades in equipment, but online reporters at Annenberg School still complain about issues with posting content online. So unless I decide to switch to broadcast (which would make my mother immensely happy), I am just as good in the old building as I am in the new one.

I will give this to Wallis: being a journalism student forced me to push the boundaries of my comfort zone, whether riding the Metro to go to the Valley or arguing with LAX security that, yes, I’m part of the press. I’m a stronger person - and a better journalist - because of it. Throughout the process of finding interviews, navigating to events and stressing over drafts, my work in journalism school confirmed that I’m going into the right field.

I know what’s coming for me after I graduate: ungodly hours, decimated social life and a high chance of unemployment. For many of us in the journalism program at Annenberg, however, we answer to Wallis’ call:

“Your job is to chronicle [history], make sense of [the world] for the rest of us. We need you, we’re depending on you, and personally I can’t think of a more worthy investment."

Reach Contributor Heidi Carreon here; and follow her on Twitter here.