You've got mail

Lately, I've run into a problem with email addresses. I have two main email accounts: my personal Gmail and my college account. But since I'll be graduating soon, should I really be dishing out my college email if it's going to be stripped from me come May?

Looks like I'm not the only one with a problem. Boston College has decided to stop giving incoming students email accounts altogether. The basis of their decision? Most students already have an Internet identity established before coming to college. I can attest to that. Even though I have a college account, I forward it to my Gmail account so that I manage two emails from one place. And I'm out of touch with technology compared to my 18-year-old brother, who will be entering college next year and is already embedded within the Internet world through Facebook, MySpace, two email accounts, YouTube and other things that I've never heard of.

I support the decision to do away with college email accounts. It'll be a money-saver for the universities and give students more responsibility without making things more complicated for them.

Epiphanies in Kroger

Today I went to the grocery store to buy flowers, kettle chips and green grapes. When I was in the check-out line, my cashier engaged me in a few minutes of polite conversation - what I was doing for Thanksgiving, where I was from, and so on.

Then, she asked me, "So what do you want to be when you grow up?"

Immediately, I responded, "A journalist."

After I thanked her and started walking to my car, I started thinking about that little snippet of conversation. First of all, I realized I wasn't offended by the fact that she didn't consider me "grown up" yet. In my mind, I'm never going to reach a point in my life where I'm like, "Oh, this is what I wanted to be when I grew up." I think I'm always going to be challenging myself and finding new ways to use my skills to help others. The job that I start out with will be nowhere near the job that I'll end with. And I'm more than okay with that.

Secondly, I thought about my response to her question. The first thing that came to my mind wasn't "reporter" or "copy editor" or "ad salesman." First and foremost in my mind, I am a journalist. So what is a journalist and what does that make me?

Wikipedia says that a journalist (or newspaperman?) is "a person who practices journalism, the gathering and dissemination of information about current events, trends, issues, and people while striving for non-bias viewpoint."

In that sense, yes, I definitely consider myself a journalist. But I feel like being a journalist today is so much more than just gathering and disseminating news.

Being a journalist is giving people the tools they need to live life to the fullest. Being a journalist is being a citizen. It's serving your country. It's doing what you know is right. It's providing information in all forms. It's being a neighbor. It's creating a safe haven for people to share their views and talk with each other. It's truth, and it's justice.

And I'm going to continue being a journalist, whether I'm grown up or not.

My brain's on hiatus

I've been feeling guilty for grumbling about being an intern, but at least I didn't break a window.

Our Thanksgiving break is next week, and unfortunately, my brain is already on vacation. It's hard for me to focus. I can't talk or write without making some sort of mistake. I'm irritable because all I want to do is bake cookies and listen to George Winston.

But I have to keep charging ahead. Now that I've recognized my faults, I actually have to try to prevent them. Sure, the first step is admitting a problem, but the problem won't get any better by simply acknowledging its presence. One of the hardest things to do is to take responsibility for yourself and your actions - to fix something if it's not right. Right now, I want to be lazy, but I know I can't.

My plan of action for the rest of the week:

I'm going to wake up on time.
I'm going to get to work a few minutes early and leave a few minutes late.
I'm going to do my required reading before my classes.
I'm going to take care of business first so I can do whatever I want later.

And I'm going to need someone to hold me to all this.

People vs. prestige

A few weeks ago, I went to my professor for advice on fixing up my resume (which I will be mailing out very, very soon since this whole not-having-a-job-lined-up thing isn't working for me very well). He handed me the resume of one of his former students (who had an internship with the Washington Post) as a guide and then told me that I shouldn't apply for any newspapers over 100,000 circulation.

Whoa. Hold it. First of all, my professor hands me an intimidating resume. Then he places a limit on my abilities. What the heck do I do now?

Needless to say, I was feeling a little lost and incapable when I left his office that day. It was time for me to reevaluate what I wanted to do with the rest of my life and to determine if I had the drive and the skills to follow through with my decisions.

First, the resume. At first glance, the girl's work experience took up the entire first page of her resume with multiple internships. And at the very top - copy editing intern with the Washington Post. I'm thinking, is this what every graduating senior's resume looks like? Because if so, then I'm totally not up to par.

It wasn't until I got home and examined the resume that I realized that she only had experience with a total of two or three newspapers but had held a few positions at each paper. With four newspaper internships already under my belt, that made me feel a whole lot better. But then there was the question of big, prestigious newspapers versus community papers (which is ultimately what this post is about). Which do employers value more?

When I thought about my professor's second comment - don't try for internships at papers with circulation over 100K - I drew the conclusion that the size of the newspaper matters in some aspects, if not all.

That's when I realized that I don't want a big, prestigious newspaper on my resume.

I love community journalism. It's how I started; it's how I'll finish. It's people and it's communication and it's family and it's hands-on. It's what I know. It's what I do.

The experience that I've had at small and metro-sized papers has been so much richer than what I would've gotten at a big newspaper. Yeah, if I'd worked for the NYT, I'd get the prestige of the paper embedded in my title. But I wouldn't be getting anything else, except maybe coffee (ha!).

I wouldn't get to contribute to the lives of citizens through my writing. I wouldn't get to interview a new person every day. I wouldn't get calls from readers who want to talk about what I wrote and share their stories. I wouldn't feel the pressure and responsibility of being residents' only source of local news. I wouldn't experience crunch-time at the end of the day or one-on-one conversations with the editors.

I wouldn't get what I want.

So I'm not taking offense at my professor's advice. I think he knows what I want and where my skills lie. He knows that there's a paper out there somewhere with my name on it and he's going to keep pushing me until I get there.

Fireside videos?

Remember FDR's Fireside Chats on the radio circa the 1940s?

Flash forward more than half a century and you've got Obama's proposed weekly YouTube updates.

President-elect Obama plans to address the nation weekly not just on the radio, but on YouTube, automatically connecting with the youth of our nation. People will be able to comment on the videos and virtually interact with POTUS.

Cool, huh?

The harsh reality of being an intern

I had a reality check yesterday.

I am an intern.

Yes, I know that's probably obvious to all of you and understood among my colleagues. But it's news to me. (ha, get it? news?)

I've been fooling myself into thinking that I'm a "special" intern. I do things no intern has done before. I've been places no intern has ever gone. I casually chat with people no intern has ever attempted to befriend. But the reality is - I'm just an intern.

I do the grunt work - the work no one else wants to do or that no else can do. I contributed more than any other reporter to the Think Pink sections under the impression that I was being given a huge opportunity. The truth? No one else wanted to do it considering they had much more pressing stories to write or breaking news to report.

I covered election night, which I considered an honor, and I couldn't believe they would consider me for such a position. The truth? They couldn't find anyone else to fill that position so I was their last hope.

My editor consistently tells me that I'm overqualified for some of the things I'm doing. The truth? I'm not. So the filing and the Excel spreadsheets and the holiday guides continue because that's what I do. I pick up the slack.

But you know what? That's okay. Because if I didn't do the work, it wouldn't get done. And if it didn't get done, it might mean that people wouldn't have access to certain information they need or someone's voice wouldn't be heard. And that's a heck of a lot worse than filing house ads.

Truth

My roommate asked me a really interesting question today.

How will George W. Bush's presidency be viewed down the road?

Of course, 69 percent of Americans are happy to see him go. He has the lowest approval rating of any president. He's been virtually snuffed out of the news. No one really cares about him anymore. But what will the history books say?

My roommate's hypothetical situation: Say we ultimately "win the war" on terror. Will Bush be better liked? Or will people still see his decisions as wrong?

My response (after clarifying to her that this is a purely hypothetical situation) was yes and no. I think our generation - mine and my roommate's and anyone older than us - will always see Bush's actions in a negative light, no matter what happens. We're old enough to have friends in Iraq or family members in Afghanistan and those are things you just don't forget. Even if there's a positive outcome to this war, people will still say, "Well, it shouldn't have ever happened in the first place" or "Bush started it but he didn't fix it."

But my 18-year-old brother and his friends are a different story. If something good does happen, their education will focus on the end, not on the initial years. Slowly, people's perceptions of the war will become composed of facts, not emotions. My knowledge of Vietnam and the Persian Gulf wars is based on the facts that I learned in high school, and they don't teach you how close my friends' fathers came to being drafted or how many lives of kids our age were lost. We become detached. And then we forget. And then we make the same mistakes years later. I don't know how many more mistakes we can afford to make.

I think it comes down to the media's responsibility. Unbiased reporting is the core of any story. Yes, opinions are essential and they are the foundation of this country. But leave the opinions on the op-ed page. We need to give people the facts so that years from now, they'll be able to form their opinions based off of truth and not the opinions of 69 percent of the population, however true they may be.

Stuff journalists like

Absolutely spot on.

My personal favorite: Interns.

Volunteer

I was writing a paper until 4 a.m., last night. I'm absolutely delirious right now, so I'm going to cut this short.

Yesterday, my bowling instructor asked us to fill out a survey for some research that physical ed professors are doing on campus. The survey basically wanted to know how willing we are to participate in volunteer events, whether they're fundraisers for charities, health expos, etc.

The question that stuck out to me the most was this:

How many hours each month do you you volunteer?

My own answer shocked me. 50 hours. I volunteer over 50 hours of my time each month. Whoa.

I've never considered myself a volunteer. If you had asked me in high school if I volunteered, I would have told you that I didn't, despite the fact that I was in a million different clubs and gave time to my school every day. All throughout college, I've never thought about what I do as volunteer work. I don't work at the soup kitchen on a regular basis or sing songs to nursing home residents. But with the introduction of this question, suddenly I realized that I am a volunteer.

Every week, I volunteer to help the newspaper that I intern with. I volunteer within my church in many different leadership roles. I volunteer my time to my friends when they need a ride home or help studying. I volunteer myself to my family by putting them first, even when I want to put myself first.

I am a volunteer.

While I don't frequent the soup kitchens or give yearly to national charities, I am a volunteer. I don't hesitate to give up my time for a cause that I feel is important, whether it's journalism, unity, friendship or love.

I am a volunteer.

Are you?

Election night adventures

Congrats, Obama!

Yesterday, I got to call in to the paper the precinct numbers of a neighboring county. It was a 30-minute drive to the courthouse where I was reporting from, and I got lost approximately four times on the way there. (Who builds their courthouse out in the middle of nowhere? With no signs?!)

The first precincts had already come in when I got there, so I was busy right from the get-go. Everything went without a hitch until the 18th precinct, which were the absentee ballots. Then all hell broke loose. The ballot machine stopped reading the sheets at the same time that they discovered hundreds of torn ballots that had to be duplicated. Luckily, I had a lot of reading to get done, so the six hours went by fairly quickly.

At 1 a.m., the final numbers came in, and I skeedaddled. Then, I got lost again on the way home.

Election Day!

The mysterious Monitor

This weekend, my dad said to me, "Did you hear the Christian Science Monitor isn't going to be a newspaper anymore?"

Instead of being alarmed, I was thinking, "Who the heck is the Christian Science Monitor?"

I've been heavily involved in newspapers for at least the past two years and no one has ever, ever talked about the Christian Science Monitor. But after some brief research, I found out that it's going to be the first nationally circulated newspaper to forgo its print edition in favor of a completely online publication.

I can tell you that I'm going to be watching its progress verrrry closely. And so are a whole lot of other journalists.


P.S. This blog is beautiful.

Parting is such sweet sorrow

Just got back from an amazing weekend. Vacations are bittersweet for me. On one hand, I really need a break in the middle of a semester so that my brain doesn't explode. On the other hand, a vacation usually stops my momentum, and it takes me a while to get back into the swing of things.

But the mountains were beautiful. And I saw snow. And I slipped on ice and landed flat on my behind. And I saw (what could have been) fairies. And I bought a peck of apples that ended up rolling down a hill. All in all, it was a wonderful weekend.

Now, it's back to reality.