Ball St. students plan for assignment of a lifetime - 13 WTHR Indianapolis

Forty Ball State University students are packing for London.

The students will be joining 20,000 journalists providing Olympic coverage for a global audience estimated at four billion people. The university prides itself on its immersion programs, where students get real life experiences. But the job in London this summer is an exceptional assignment most professionals never get.

"Usually when I tell people about going on this trip, there is kind of a pause, a moment of, 'What? Can you say that again?' kind of thing," said junior Emily Theis.

They leave for England next week. Covering the game was instructor Ryan Sparrow's idea.

"I want to give them kind of an overview of how to report on such a huge thing, but I also want to expose them to how journalism is a really neat profession. You hear so many bad things about it anymore, but just about the media or how it's a dying...dying off," Sparrow said. "And I want to show them the excitement of it all. And I think that this is, there's really nothing better to show them the excitement of journalism than really compelling stories like this and really awesome video, awesome photography, just awesome stories."

Eyewitness News caught student Brandon Pope already on assignment in May at the Olympic Summit in Dallas. The summit is where the U.S. Olympic Committee invited Olympic hopefuls to share their stories.

(Watch the video of this story here.)

The students there got to see First Lady Michelle Obama, conduct interviews and update social media.

"We've got things covered on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, doing a search for 'BSU at the Games,' you can usually find us. And then there's our website, which is BSUatthegames.com that kind of collects it all," Sparrow said.

If you go to the site, you will see the students are already churning out stories. Sports administration major Michael Nauman did a preview piece with the women's synchronized swimming duet team.

"Something that really surprised me was that Olympians are just like us. They like to have fun, they like to goof off and they are literally just like us," Nauman said.

While overseas, the students will have days built in to be tourists.

"I am actually a huge soccer fan and I know in every other country other than the United States soccer is a major sport, so I am looking forward to going to the pubs and places like that and getting to experience what it is like to be with all the soccer fans during the Olympics," Nauman said. "They are called hooligans, you know, they are dangerous. I'm not wearing my United States jersey down there."

Eyewitness News will monitor their work and share it with you, on the air and online.

"I would hope the major news and broadcasting companies take us as serious journalists and not just college students," Nauman said.

Several of the students will be blogging for WTHR.com.

Another interesting note, the program's director is already starting to look for a place for students to stay during the Winter Games in Russia in 2014.