I studied journalism at New York University at the perfect time: during the election. New York is a typical blue state and doesn't usually play a big role in presidential elections, but this time all the main candidates were from New York, so a lot of political reporting was done from here. For over a year, I wrote about New York's special role for my blog, Lady Liberty Votes.
But the most fun I had was was when we left New York. With my classmates from NYU, we took a field trip to New Hampshire to report from the first primary. Every four years, the entire political circus descends upon New Hampshire, and since they don't have that many big hotels, politicians and journalists end up living in close proximity to each other. We shared our hotel with large parts of the Clinton campaign. This meant that we saw former Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, for breakfast each day. Or that New Jersey senator Cory Booker kept crashing our midnight meetings to play truth or dare with us. It was a stunning display of how much access you can get even as a journalism student when you report on the candidates from the roads and not your office.
P.S.: Hillary Clinton did not stay in our hotel, but we did get to take a selfie with her at one of her rallies.
Lilly Maier studied Journalism at NYU in 2015-16 as an Austrian Fulbright student. Photos courtesy of Lilly Maier.