Thursday, December 16, 2010

End of the semester

It's amazing how good it felt to become a little bit closer with my fellow newspaper classmates. We all had a lot in common since everyone was pretty much in the same boat. At first, I didn't talk to anyone from class but as weeks passed, I started making conversation with a few people. Many people in the class turned out to be nice and very interesting. In most of my classes from past semesters, I never interacted with classmates unless it was out of obligation due to a group project. For the stater, we all worked together as a team which gave each of us a chance to get to now one another, which I was happy about. I can't wait to enter 427 next semester to see some familiar faces and meet some new ones as well. When Dan sent everyone the mail about the stater doing a double issue, I was a bit nervous but everything fell right into place and I kind of enjoyed working under pressure to meet deadlines. Although, having to leave at 3:30pm for both press days was not what I wanted to do. Out of all weeks, our last press day had to fall on the same day as the Cavs vs. Heat and my job, which is right next to Quicken Loans was expecting me at 3pm. I was able to extend it to 3:30pm but I felt terrible leaving class early. I did as much as I could with the time that I had and i'm hoping my job wont conflict with class as much next semester, but it's still a worry! Overall, I love Lab Newspaper, much more than I thought I would and it just solidifies the fact that I want to be a serious journalist.

Middle of the Semester

At the beginning of the semester, I had only written one article per issue. By the 4th issue, I knew I had to get 12 stories in so I began to panic a bit and decided to step my game up. Doing two or three stories per issue was definitely more time and work but I definitely enjoyed the finished product. I think I would enjoy reporting and writing more if it was the only thing I was doing. Being a full time college student and full time server definitely made it difficult for me to squeeze in interviews but Lab Newspaper was definitely the class I wanted majority of my energy to go towards. However, I still felt that I wasn't able to devote as much time as I would have liked. My job has always made my life a little bit more complicated and exhausting. Unfortunately, I have to work long, crazy hours because I'm paying for part of my tuition as well as all of my own bills, which I'm sure is the case for many college students. By the middle of the semester, several serious personal issues in my life were on the rise. However, I did not want to fall behind in school so I found it very difficult to separate my personal life from my schoolwork. I did what I had to do though and pushed through to make it to the end of the semester.