An unoccupied production room at WMUC, the University of Maryland’s student-run radio station.

I’ve been a DJ at WMUC-FM, the student-run radio station on the third floor of the South Campus Dining Hall, for three years. I also served as an assistant music director and programming director for a year each. Three years is a long time, and the experience I got has been very valuable to me. 

If you’re interested in music or anything else about radio, I strongly suggest you make an effort to join. Here are the most important lessons I learned at WMUC.

1. More music. Both old and new.

OK, we’ll file this one under “stating the obvious,” but it’s true! Once you become a DJ, there’s no way of escaping the exposure to all sorts of music that you didn’t know existed. 

Jennifer Waits, who runs the college radio and independent music blog Spinning Indie, visited WMUC last spring. What separates WMUC from other radio stations? A massive, two-story-tall vinyl library. There’s also a room where you can borrow CDs if you’re a DJ. The radio station is a place run by people who love music and, as you might have expected, there’s some everywhere. 

2. How to radio

Here’s a mantra: Everyone messes up on their first show. But that’s how you learn. Not only do you get over the anxiety of speaking on air (you’d be surprised how many new DJs I train DON’T want to speak when I ask them to), but you also learn how to use the soundboard. 

Sounds scary, huh?

It’s actually not. There’s surprisingly not a lot of buttons you need to be familiar with to run a radio show. Doing a show requires attention to details: what you say and play on the air and pressing the right buttons at the right times. 

Also, if you have a show on the FM side, which is an actual licensed radio channel­, you have to follow the FCC rules.

3. You can do more than just DJ

If you really want to, you could show up to the radio station, do your one or two hours worth of your show and not show up until your next one. 

But you can reach out to artists you like and ask them for an interview or to perform at the station! If you want to feature an exclusive interview with Passion Pit on your show, I hope you have connections. But if you have a smaller indie band you really like that you’d like your friends to know about, maybe send them or their management an email. 

In October 2012, a semester after I joined, I got to interview TOPS, a Montreal-based indie pop band. At the time, they were quite obscure — I remember having to Google them to find as much information as I could to have questions for them. 

I interviewed them over the phone on the day they were supposed to play in Washington — not in 9:30 Club or The Black Cat, but in a pizza restaurant venue called Mellow Mushroom in Adam’s Morgan. Granted, there are a lot of music venues in Washington. But at the time, I’d have never guessed that a lot of bands would settle for playing at a pizza place. In fact, the venue didn’t even have a sound system to provide for the band and the show was canceled. Oh well.

Now, they’ve gotten much bigger — they’re at more than 13,000 likes on Facebook, had their own international tour and, most importantly, a lot more people listen to them. It’s a great feeling. I’m going to see them in Brooklyn at the beginning of spring break at a venue I can safely say is much nicer than a pizza place. 

4. You meet a lot of great people. 

When I was the programming director in fall 2014, 153 DJs applied to return to their shows, and we accepted about 45 new DJs. WMUC also has non-DJ members who help out on live sound, engineering, promotions, and more. If you show up to station events such as the weekly live in-studio event Third Rail Radio or the weekly general body meetings, you’ll meet almost everyone. 

When I first joined WMUC, I was still finding my own place in college. I thought being a DJ was going to be a side hobby, but within a week or two I made close friends. I used to go to my friends’ shows late at night just to hang out with them.

If you happen to be a freshman or sophomore joining WMUC or any other college radio station, spend a lot of time there, make a lot of friends and use it for all it’s worth.