Congratulations to Green Bay Packers beat reporter Ryan Wood for his award-winning story about the retirement of B.J. Raji. He was honored this week at the Associated Press Sports Editors convention in New Orleans.

Ryan was nice enough to talk about his time as a journalist for one of our “A View From a Pro” segments that is included in the “Dynamics of News Reporting and Writing” textbook. You can find his thoughts on reporting and life as an award-winning journalism in the Basics of Reporting chapter, but here’s his “best bit of advice:”

ONE LAST THING: If you could tell the students reading this book anything you think is important, what would it be?

“The most important thing for anyone entering the field is to horde as much experience as you possibly can. Get involved in student journalism. When I was in college, I lived in the newsroom. Ate there. Slept there. Pulled all-nighters doing homework there. Made my friends there. Met my wife there. The newsroom was my home. I’ve gotten emails from folks with English degrees and zero student journalism experience who wanted to know how to enter the business, just because they wanted to write. I never have anything positive to tell them. They can’t, at least not in a full-time basis. If you want to give yourself the best chance to succeed, learn the tools of the trade. Nothing prepares you for life as a professional journalist like being a student journalist.”

You can follow him at ByRyanWood on Twitter.