and now I’m drained….my professor called me tonight and said he’d have to give me another F on my story – because of a factual error. Ah yes, the “Medill F” – dreaded by all aspiring journalism students…..I’m happy he gave me another chance and I’m ticked off he didn’t point this out on my first attempt at the rewrite.
c’est la vie.
only 4 more days until Mark gets here!
i was suppose to defer my loan tonight…..
i was going to skim through my newspapers and clip all the religion articles…..for my beat – lot’s of religious stuff going on…..and only lil’ole me to cover it. i’m not freaked out, don’t you worry.
i was going to get a jump start on my reading for ethics and law….
i was going to update my chicago photoblog
and now I’m pooped – exhausted over worrying about this article….
But I’d rather be here – taking my knocks as a journalism student, then back at home, in a job that wasn’t me…..I told Jennie that this last time last year, I woke every morning – with a knot in stomach, dreading work. I felt trapped in a career that wasn’t me. Northwestern saved me from self-imposed obligation to make a living with a steady job.
I know I’m gambling with my future and with a fortune in tutition. But I’d rather be here – getting my F’s – and learning this craft. It’s a learning experience – no matter how painful it is, I have to learn how to write. I may disagree with the teaching methods and I don’t appreciate playing “where’s Waldo” with my re-writes…..but I am learning.
I feel alive here, in Evanston. I had to struggle to walk through single-digit weather and my writing got bruised in the process of flushing out the lead and the story. I know it’s worth it, probably like robocop getting outfitted with his hardware – after he died. It must have been painful – learning how to move with all those wires, memory chips, and bullets, fused to his flesh and blood…..I suppose learning how to report and write is similar – because our professors jam all these methods, research, details, documents into our short school week and we’re expected to figure out how to apply these tools into a kick-ass story. Ok, it’s not the same as pumping bullets out of my arm – but I am squeezing out facts/details/interviews/color into each paragraph and trying to figure out how to structure the story so that I don’t get another F – oops – I mean so that I can write a good story.