Caxton Local Media holds an annual four month training programme in Muldersdrift where the various Caxton newspapers have a chance to send a ‘cadet’ for the training course.

This year, Letaba and Phalaborwa Herald were able to send two cadets for the course, one being Ntiyiso Koekarie from the Phalaborwa Herald and the other being me, Blake Linder from Letaba Herald.

We arrived back at the branches on Monday, and here is my account of our time over the last four months:

I’ve learned more about efficient conversation and interaction between cultures & races than most people ever do their entire lives.

Most importantly of course, has been the academic learning curve I have undergone these last four months.

All I could do four months ago, was write; plain and simple (well I was and am still proficient in uttering absolute nonsense from time-to-time, but that’s not exactly something you can put on your résumé).

Whether gathered from my fellow cadets or from the veterans themselves, the intellectual property I left with is irreplaceable.

Beyond the academic experience I have gained, are the friends I have made during our tenure at the academy and Cradle Lodge.

During the first month or so, I preferred the comfort of solitude in the confinement of my room as the task of socialising with people up to 12 years older than me, seemed far too daunting for someone straight out of the comfort of high school where I generally only had friends my age or younger.

Then of course, is our self-titled Chief Curator at the academy, Ellen Raubenheimer.

A woman of an ‘uncertain age’, every year Ellen dons an almost mother-type role for the Cadets at the academy, always fighting for whatever we believed in whether she agreed or not.

The journalistic and life knowledge I have gained from Ellen, is knowledge I most certainly would never have been able to gain anywhere else.

I arrived at the academy as an emotional, hyperactive 18 year/old with very little knowledge and background on being a journalist, and now I have left the academy a slightly less emotional, hyperactive 18-and-a-half y/o with a vaster understanding of the world we live in, and most importantly all the dos and don’ts of being a journalist.