BREAKING: ASU softball upsets No. 3/4 Texas Tech to win first conference title in Big 12 era

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Myah France:

Welcome back to the podcast! On this week's episode,  Ryan Estes sits down with two State Press lead reporters to discuss how they’ve covered ASU this semester.

Jenna Cuff:

Myah France also interviews Daniel Gayton about how asu students can utilize their skills in interviews to maximize their chances of winning a scholarship. 

Myah France:

I’m Myah France.

Jenna Cuff:

I’m Jenna Cuff, and this is State Press Play.

Ryan Estes:

So starting off with Lexi, can you tell me a little bit about your desk and what you typically write? I mean, I think that a lot of people don't know what The Echo is. 

Lexi Janusee: 

I mean, when I was filling out my application, I didn't know what The Echo was either. But it's very much like arts culture that doesn't fall into the culture desk. And we cover a lot of music. I go to a lot of local shows, music festivals. And I try to write about things that are happening but go beneath the surface and kind of talk about why trends are popular right now or why everyone's talking about looksmaxxing or things like that.

Ryan Estes:

And then same question to you, Grace. What do you typically write? What is your desk? 

Grace Lawrence:

Well, I'm on the community and culture desk, so we cover everything community and culture, hence the name. But there's just so many different types of communities and different students of different backgrounds on campus. We try to make sure to cover different cultural events and different like traditional festivals and just elevate those voices on campus. 

Ryan Estes:

And then with you specifically working with community and culture, what is one way that you have been a part of a culture or a community that you weren't expecting that you maybe wouldn't have if you weren't at The State Press? 

To hear more from Lexi and Grace, please tune in to State Press Play. 

Myah France:

Welcome back to State Press Play, my name is Myah France, would you like to introduce yourself a little bit?

Danny Gayton:

Sure. I'm Danny Gayton. I am the Director of Student Engagement at the ASU Alumni Association, and I help oversee student engagement efforts, which includes oversight of a couple of scholarship programs, as well as the Student Alumni Association. 

Myah France:

All right. And I just wanted to know if there's any little bits of advice that you would have for students that are looking into scholarships and maybe a little bit anxious about it and overthinking things. So what's some advice you have for applications? 

Danny Gayton:

Sure. So ASU uses the software, Scholarship Universe, and what's interesting about Scholarship Universe is that it connects you to scholarships in which you're eligible for. So what I always recommend for students is go on to the portal and just start answering all the questions that get asked to you. Some of them are really straightforward, like what year are you in school? What are you studying? Those kinds of things. But there are hundreds of questions on there, and your answers to the questions will match you to scholarships in which you can actually apply for. So the more questions you answer, the more likely you are to be matched with a scholarship. Once you have a list of scholarships, really kind of look into who is administering them because that kind of that's the person that's really going to be the decision maker for it. And so for our scholarships specifically is we always ask like very specific questions for it. And so if you were to reach out to me and say hey, what are you looking for? I can give you that information, right? So contact the administrator for that and then when you're writing scholarship applications. Like we usually give ours about 500 words like 500 words is kind of a lot like and most of our students are writing 45, 50 words. So the more information you can give me, the better I can base the decision off of. 

To hear more from Danny, please tune in to State Press Play. 

Myah France:

And that’s all for this week’s State Press Play. I’m Myah France.

Jenna Cuff:

And I’m Jenna Cuff. State Press Play is produced by our audio podcast editor, Audrey Lippert  and video podcast editor Trent Ashdown. Our original music is by Ellie Willard and Jake LaRoux. 

Myah France:

Special thanks to our Multimedia Editors.

Jenna Cuff:

You can check out all these stories and more on statepress.com. See you next week. 

Podcast edited by Trent Ashdown, Audrey Lippert, Caitlin Hawkinson and Matthew Marengo.