Just a note: This was written before Thanksgiving break because I’m a bit of a slacker some weeks, so enjoy the pre-holiday stress 🙂
I failed to write a blog last week (and the week before) for the very same topic I’m writing about this week: being a student AND a Mustang Daily employee is hard to balance sometimes.
All of you reading this (if you still are after that cliché beginning) are probably saying, “Well tough stuff Ms. Editor. I’m an engineering major AND I work two jobs, so come whine to me when you’re actually taking Friday classes.”
And you would be right. I’m the first to admit that I have a cushy schedule this quarter, (Monday/Wednesday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Tuesday/Thursday 10 to 11 a.m. and 3 to 6 p.m.) but even with all the extra time it’s still hard to get stuff done. In between sitting in the newsroom worrying about the next day’s paper and doing each new project for that week, stuff just begins to add up, and before you know it, it’s midnight and you didn’t do anything you were supposed to.
This was exceedingly evident Tuesday (Nov. 15) when I went downtown during my break to pick up Breaking Dawn midnight premiere tickets (an explanation of this would be too long. Suffice it to say, I went and I did not enjoy) and got call after call from the newsroom that Chick-fil-A was on fire and there was a freelancer waiting for an interview with me that I had no clue about. So I rushed back and spent the rest of the day bemoaning the fact that now of course I wanted Chick-fil-A, but it was busy being a portal to hell. Sigh.
That Wednesday, I had an entire list of things I needed to do before/during work (and in between classes). This included picking up the tickets for the Breaking Dawn midnight premiere (again), dealing with a minor parking crisis, writing an essay, meeting with a staff reporter and Stephan Lamb — the Student Life and Leadership director — for information on an article, registering for classes, working on a Final Cut video project for one of my classes and then reading all of that night’s articles so I could come into the newsroom late after working on said project in the journalism lab.
We were also working on our Bucket List edition of the paper that night, and assistant news editor Nicole Marcell came in to the office at 3 p.m. saying there was no room on the pages for all of the special edition Word on the Streets she had done. Some members of the staff had been itching for a while to have an online version of Word on the Street, so I suggested doing a photo slideshow with all of the students’ answers. Unfortunately, Nicole didn’t know how to do a slideshow, so me, being the overachiever/slacker that I am, volunteered to get it done instead of working on all of the other things I needed to do.
I dedicated a half hour to getting it exactly perfect, content to go on my merry way to the journalism lab, but then realized I hadn’t read any of the stories for that night. So then I spend the next half hour reading and copy editing what was in, and hoping that I would be able to finish my project quickly and get back into the newsroom. Normally, I can throw out a 2-3 minute multimedia video in about an hour when using iMovie, but one of the requirements of this project was using Final Cut (another video editing software), which takes FOREVER to render — or save — all of your video as you’re editing, so it adds on at least a half hour of work to the project. Add that to the fact that I was trying to read stories as they were coming in, in between edits, and I was a regular mess.
Finally, I finish the video right as the lab is supposed to close, head back over to the newsroom and immediately start copy editing pages. From there, it seems like the next two hours just flew by, and before I knew it, I was back at my apartment falling asleep. It wasn’t until the next day that I realized I hadn’t uploaded the video project, written the essay or picked up the tickets.
It all eventually got done, but believe me: Thanksgiving break could not be more welcome.