“WHEN I WAS STUDENT” WITH ANA JOVKOVSKA: I WAS RACING WITH MYSELF, NEVER WITH OTHERS
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Анета Перевска
I wish there was more diversity, external lecturers and practice at the faculty and to teach us more about solidarity and criticality.
The media, especially the television, are the seas in which she swims for more than 20 years. At the age of 12, she began with “Pulsi Quiz” and never stopped to address the audience, always moderately provocative, dreaming for better and much beautiful, wishing the same for the viewers. “Pulse”, “Fix Idea” is her trademarks, last year she published the book “Pulse and Time”, inspired by the guests in the show. She is a journalist, presenter, activist.
In the rubric “When I was a student”, which is developed by Fakulteti.mk in cooperation with “Pivara Skopje”, we returned her to the faculty lectures, hangouts, and challenges.
We asked her if another faculty, except the Interdisciplinary Journalism Studies at the Law School, was ever an option, given the fact that she is standing in front of the TV cameras since her youngest age:
-Television crawls under your skin. It’s contagious, and I had the opportunity to taste its adrenaline at the age of 12, so until I had to make the decision about what to study, i had enough time, but the journalism completely won me. Not that I did not have other sympathies, on the contrary, the medicine was my big love (with the idea that I want to specialise in psychiatry). So, lead by the human moment, I changed my mind, switching from psychology to philosophy, literature or dramaturgy, until I decided that Journalism is a field that can open wide horizons. I enrolled at the Faculty of Journalism, and with that I got on a train n which you should continually learn and upgrade yourself. Our profession requires continuous reading, research, thinking and re-thinking – says Jovkovska.
She admits she was very interested in learning. She was also named the best student of the generation.
– All my subjects were interesting, although during that period, journalism studies had a wide thematic range, from cultural anthropology and social psychology, for example to modern economic science and political systems. Today the title of “Best student” of my generation stands in a drawer and does not mean anything else but personal satisfaction. I wanted to understand things in their essence and learned with a critical dioptre, and not in a repetitive nerd style. I was curious about new books – admits Ana.
Her grades were important, but she says: “I was racing with myself, never with the others.”
– Thanks to my parents, I was hungry and motivated for more knowledge, but they never brought me up as an aggressively competitive spirit towards the others.
The creator of the show “Pulse” distinguishes several professors saying that their lessons still ring in their heads today. These are: Antoanela Petkovska, Gordana Siljanovska, Vele Smilevski, Tome Gruevski, and at the postgraduate studies – Ivan Dzeparovski and Goran Janev.
Jovkovska wish to have more “diversity, external lecturers and more practice at the university and students to be lectured more on solidarity and criticality”. She admits that although she was a friend with several colleagues from the faculty, however, most of the friends are from the primary and secondary school.
– I went out a lot and I wanted to keep up to date with all cultural and art events. Days spent on film festivals, concerts, exhibitions … a lot of beautiful memories.
In the last few years, Jovkovska is less on TV, and it is reoriented to the printed media. On our conclusion that the impression is that she might have saturated herself with television, she says:
– It is logical to think about that after 20 years without a break spent on different televisions, but the answer is not that. Television never got tired me, although there were times when I felt tired of all the production work I had on my back. In Macedonia, you work on ten positions for one salary. If it was not the break from the television, I would not have had time to refresh myself in other ways – in journalism. The release of my book “Pulse and Time” came as a logical after about 500 interviews made. When I finished those 500 pages of monographic work, I joked that I felt as I had given a birth. After a year I really gave a birth, so at that moment with a little baby, the TV did not come to mind, although I worked on other projects all the time – says Jovkovska.
Classic journalistic work or work in written media today is just a tiny bite of total professional engagement.
– I work on various projects from the socio-cultural context, from communication strategies, PR, debates, workshops to forums with a broader thematic profile (social topics such as media, freedom of speech, human rights, social inclusion, violence, gender politics, art …). In fact, I also had a wide thematic approach in the Pulse show, which I hope will one day come to life in a slightly shifted and mature TV-format. In the meantime, I am writing my second book – Jovkovska
