God Made Live Television to Give Me Ulcers

Okay so last night was the first episode of The Gridiron Report, for 2008.  I don't know how closely it followed the standard set by Aaron Sorkin's Sports Night, but it did have one of those little rooms where Felicity Huffman would stand, panic, and give orders, and it also involved lots of linear editing.  Which I learned how to do.  Which is good.  

I am not going to lie and say that doing the teleprompter is all that challenging.  But I get to do extra stuff too, which usually involves me following people and learning how to do things, or  the other freshman and I stand there in awe and random things we have never heard of happen. Which is why I'm there.  

It's nice not to be the dumbest one of the group, and luckily most of the freshman have no idea (like me) what they're supposed to be doing.  One guy, a Strategic communications major (?) is there because he likes baseball or whatever.  Umm....

We also ate the greasiest pizza ever, and you could pick out the New Yorkers by whether they tried to find like the 9 paper towels it required to soak up the grease.  I felt a bit nauseous after one piece.  Maybe I will pass on having heart attack-inducing food next time.  

I didn't get to watch football yesterday, because I am pretty sure the world wants to fill up all my time.  I did receive Pats updates, and was very happy with the Redskins result.  So far I have resisted all the attempts made to stop me from liking the Patriots.  

In Professor Farrell's management lecture today:

"See, you can't always trust your leaders, your CEOs.  Look at ENRON!  Belichick!  ENRON!"

Bills fan.  

Today I slaved away in the Ithacan office with my editor Cory, tidying up my profile.  Luckily, he really liked it and the changes were minor.  Also, the cross country writer only had one source in his.  So basically, by comparison, I was practically David Halberstam.  

I have a paper due tomorrow for political communication.  Party! Oh and I also had my first quiz in journalism, and I believe I did fine.  I got a little extra credit, because I knew that Lehman Brothers had filed for bankruptcy.  

Go me!

***Edit: Earlier in this post I used the wrong "to" and published it.  Seeing as that is one of my pet peeves, I'm very embarrassed.  It is now fixed.

***There are tons of grammatical errors in this.  Please forgive me.  I fixed a few more, but woah.

Blog Break!

Right now it's a typical shutdown-Sunday in the dorm.  Sundays seem to be designated as study days.  Or nap days.  I've just finished my field hockey profile (yay!), so I thought I'd take a short blog break.  

It was a fun, pretty low-key weekend, and it pretty much flew by.  Yesterday I had journalism boot camp, and got a little advice on writing features.  It helped.  It was a rainy weekend, so there was a lot of movie watching and game playing.  After the first full week of classes, it was just what the doctor ordered.  Today's my roommate's 19th birthday.  I guess I'm kind of the baby of the bunch.  There are a few other kids who've yet to turn 18, but most of them are boys.  That fact interests me.  Are people more likely to start boys earlier in school than girls?  

Who knows.  

Tonight I have a Gridiron taping.  I'm sure I will quickly master the difficult task of teleprompting.  I expect to be an expert very soon.  Anyway, I am really enjoying having a room to myself.  It's very productive.  But at the same time I'm glad I have a roommate.  

I wish I had something more interesting to say, but that's about it.  The upcoming week?  It's technically homecoming week, so there's a pep rally friday (and a 2012 one today, but I've got Griddo) but other than that, not much.  A paper or two due.  

How about Penn State yesterday?  It's great because my sports management teacher just loves to rag on Syracuse ("Akron? REALLY? AKRON?!!")  

PSU Students Know What's Up

  Penn State students added a little Obama support to their white-outs.  Apparently they call it the "O-Zone." 

The coordination there never ceases to amaze me.  Love it!  

Today, I've got journalism boot camp and a lot of work to do.  Some of that work will involve laying on my bed, maybe, or jumping around my room because I've got it to myself.  Then, I'll write up a re-cap of the Skidmore game and try to find somewhere playing the PSU-Syracuse game, because it will be hilarious, if all my expectations are met.  

Yay!

A Short Update

It's now the weekend, and since there is much fun to be had, I'm a bit pressed for time.  But I decided to squeeze in an update.  Here's the main points.

1.  The profile feature is going well.  I met with, well, the subject today and got to do my first real extensive interview.  She was really nice, and talkative, which is helpful.

2. It is raining and will all weekend.  Which is gross.  But it means I have an excuse to wear sweatpants for an extended period of time.

3. My roommate is heading home for the weekend.  I am mainly going to just revel in the amount of space and freedom this gives me.  I am also going to stay up very late doing nothing, being happy I have a room to myself, that is not pitch black.

4.  I plan on watching much football this weekend. 

5.  We are ordering chinese tonight.  Lots and lots of chinese.  

6. I like college.  

That's about it.  

We're getting there!

This was one of those mornings when I smacked the alarm and wondered if it was actually safe to get out of bed.  It just felt like one of those days.  It started off that way, with stubbed toes and the mess up on my field hockey headline on theithacan.org.  We don't write the headlines for our pieces, obviously, and I was very surprised to see that the Bombers had defeated Skidmore yesterday, rather than Brockport.  Luckily, it got fixed pretty fast.  

Dining hall was entertaining, because I was working salad bar and it actually keeps me busy.  You wouldn't believe how many people can stomach salads with ceasar dressing and lots and lots of peppers at 10 a.m.  The point is, the time flew and I could book it to class right when the lunch rush was hitting insanity-level.    

I also found out I have a feature due Sunday, which of course is a blessing and a curse.  It means I get published on paper again (yay!) but practically get an ulcer over the weekend (eep!).  I mean, getting published early is why I signed up for the beat job.  Because it's a lot of time and a lot of words for a freshman.  I just have to remind myself of that when I'd much rather, you know, not work.  

When I feel sorry for myself sometimes it helps to call up Claire and then I feel very very pleased with the six to seven hours of sleep I'm getting.  I love that she is a hard-working, crew-doing bio major, and I am also very glad I'm taking political communication instead of chemistry.  

I'm going to try to get in on club water polo, because I really couldn't do club field hockey because of my beat assignments.  We'll see.  

Tonight I've got a sports section meeting, and, of course, homework.  

Yay. 

I really really really don't feel like working

So it was a really long day, as was expected, and it's not over.  It went really well.  But that doesn't mean I feel like writing up my article. And/or reading about the George McGovern's campaign.  

Things pretty much went my way today!  Let's walk through it.  First was Intro to Journalism, which is the type of class that will give you an upset stomach depending on the day.  Luckily, I had actually skimmed the Washington Post headlines that morning, so Professor Loop's fury that no one else could come up with a current news topic was not directed at me.  I also had quite the IB history-student background on Kim Jung Il to pull out.  Us IB kids?  We can come up with anything on the spot. 

Phew.  I'm learning a bunch in that class.  

Then, I did some reading and had lunch with friend AP, who, I have just realized, has the same initials as me. 

I love, love, LOVE Intro to Sports Management.  There will be some random capitalization in the post, along with some bad grammar.  I am tired.  Anyway, my teacher is hilarious.  Which I have said a million times before.  But still.  She is. 

Then it was off to Cultural Anthropology, which I also enjoy because Professor Turkon likes me.  Why?  Because, again, I can come up with anything on the spot.  Really.  I should be in PR. It's also neat because when in high school would the presentation be about your teacher's hands-on research about the HIV/AIDS crisis and industry of death in Lesotho?  College is awesome. 

Earlier in the day I had stopped by The Ithacan office to do a little chatting with people I didn't know about tape recorders.  There was some debate and a bit of discussion and I was pointed in the right direction.  In the bookstore, they had just about a million different tape recorders.  I got a microcassette recorder, it's supposed to be good.  I used it today, and it picked up sound crazily well, and so I am very pleased with my purchase.  

After buying the recorder I headed back to the dorm for a few minutes, which were entirely spent trying to get the recorder out of the packaging.  I am pretty sure it was packaged in a manner that would allow it to survive a nuclear holocaust.  Just in case the roaches want to maintain their journalistic integrity or something.  I'm not sure.  I resorted to randomly and violently stabbing at the plastic for about 10 minutes, probably scaring my roommate and her parents, because she was on the phone at the time, and I was kind of loud.  

Then, to the field hockey game, and they won again!  Four to one!  Loving it.  They played amazingly well and the other team only scored off a stroke penalty, which is pretty much a gimme anyway.  So I got to interview happy people. The biggest problem was I had to pee like I had been in the car for nine hours or something.  So the game ended and I booked it to the coach, who knows me by now (which does not mean to say she's much nicer, but hey) and she says, "Well, just for future reference, in other games I may not be this happy, and you're gonna have to wait a few minutes for me to...digest."  I hope that never happens.  I used my sweet recorder, got a few quotes, invaded some of the players' privacy a little (they actually like the interviews and are totally sweet about it, so that's good), and booked it to a bathroom. 

Then, dinner with the girls and I have to attend a speaker for my seminar tonight at nine.  Yay. Closer and closer to the weekend.  Closer and closer.  

Football at Ithaca

So I am a little less sad about Tom Brady.  A little.  I mean, there are a lot of very happy Jets fans around here.  Friend A said it best, "Okay, so as a Jets fan, I'm psyched.  As a football fan, I think Brady's one of the best ever, and seeing as he may never be the same, I'm really bummed."  I had a nice talk with Amma yesterday, and I guess Cassel get his first chance to start...since high school.

Classes were good yesterday, and that night I had a Society of Professional Journalists meeting, and I joined.  Then I headed over to the dorm that gets cable, and watched the first Monday Night Football game.  It was a good one.  Aaron Rogers was pretty exciting.  Here's the thing about watching football with guys that play fantasy football religiously: it is scary.  They know just about everything about every player, even the random ones no one ever really talks about.  But it's also fun, because I learn, and I know enough to not look like an idiot.  I also can't really announce that I think Adrian Peterson is attractive, in this setting, which is something I would normally proclaim very loudly while watching at home.  

I am totally rooting for Rogers.  When SI asked about the Lambeau leap he performed after scoring on a sneak, he said, "I've been dreaming about that for four years, to be honest."

That's pretty sweet. 

There's a comic tonight that I'm going to go see, and for once I actually have no meetings to attend today.  Just classes.  Tomorrow will be insanely busy with four classes, a field hockey game, and a speaker I am required to see for my seminar class, all back to back.

Eeep!