A Day In the Life of a Journalism Student

Family is and will always be very important to me.  I love the holidays because my cousins come in and bring their kids, and I get to spend time with them.  This trip is extra special, because, with my mom being out of town *again* I have the house to myself.  This gets kind of lonely, and since my aunt has a packed house, I decided to take a couple of the kids off of her hands.  So, tonight, I am having a sleepover with the two older kids, and right now we are in the living room watching Holes.

I asked the older boy, Raphael, if he was scared.  This is the conversation that followed:

Me:  Are you scared or excited to be staying all night with me?

Raphael:  Are we in Japan?

Me:  Japan, what?!  What does that have to do with anything?

Raphael:  In Japan they have the ‘Grudge’

Me:  What?  No, we live in Kentucky.  We are still in Kentucky.

Raphael:  Well, then I’m not scared.

Kids say the darndest things.

I am going to work on some homework while the kids are here.  Also, the niece should be here any day.  She is making me very very angry.

I received a phone call just a moment ago from a number I didn’t recognize.  It was a local number so I picked up.  “Hello,” I said.

“Is this Jim’s phone?” a male voice said.

“No, not Jim’s phone sorry.”  I said.

“Yea, I didn’t think he would have that song playing.” the male voice said laughing.

I began to laugh, and said, “Sorry about that, bye.”

Not three seconds later I get a phone call from the same number.

“Hello.” I said.

“I just wanted to hear your voice again, you sounded like fun.”  The male voice said.

“Uh, uhm, okay.  I’m doing homework, I have to go.”

Alright, apparently I have a fun voice…and that guy is creepy.

**Please read this post  remembering that I am on a lot of medication at the moment.**

Day three and I am already having issues.  Not with school really, but the last couple of days I have been having issues with swallowing and a sore throat.  This morning I woke up with difficulty breathing, so I woke my mom up.  I couldn’t stop crying, and when I get like that, I don’t take questions very easily.  I’m sure I was rude to her on more than one occasion.  Neither of us knew what to do, and we finally decided I should go to the hospital.  I put on some comfy clothes and off we went.  Luckily, the Emergency Room wasn’t too full and I was helped immediately.  I was supposed to get a shot of cortizone, but luckily right before the nurse stuck me, the doctor came in, and said “Hey, just feed it through the IV.”  I only got stuck once, but the nurse had difficulty getting the vein.  She dug around until she FINALLY got it.  Then the doctor wanted to do a cat scan.  So, off I went.  They put me in a wheelchair, which really bothered me because I could walk, I was fine to walk.  But, no.  My head went into the cat scan and they pulled me out.  Then they put this dye in me.  The dye made me warm all over, and they took another one.  The cat scan technician noticed that one side was worse than the other.  But, the doctor said he didn’t see anything on the cat scan.  Weird.  I ran into a woman from work, and she said that I looked awful, which made me feel GREAT.  I ended up having an inflamed roof of my mouth, and a uvula that was filling with fluid.  The uvula filling with fluid is what was causing me to have issues breathing and swallowing.  The doctor told me to take antibiotics, pain pills, and benadry.  I went home and went back to bed.  I was determined not to miss school, so I woke up and got a shower, and off I went.  I made it through my first class, and there is about an hour and a half between my first and second class.  I sat in a building lounging on the bench, and playing on my computer.  I began getting dizzy and lightheaded.  I immediately called my mom, and bless her heart, she came and got me.  I went home, seriously regretting my decision to go to school.  I took another pain pill, and fell asleep.  I don’t know what I am going to do about school tomorrow.  I have an 8 o’clock class, and it’s math…I guess we will see how it goes and what I decide.  I will keep you posted.

I have been to ALL of my classes.  Well, you know except for that one that is on the internet.  I am really going to enjoy this semester.  I am taking a VERY wide variety of classes.  If you care here are my classes:

• Art Appreciation
• Newswriting I
• Intro to Mass Communication
• Intro to Criminal Justice
• Math

The one I will struggle with is math.  I am horrible at math.  I don’t understand it, and probably never will.  I am trying to get my life in a bit of an organized manner also.  I am going to enjoy this week, study, get everything finished that I need to, and then, this weekend…I am putting myself on a schedule.  EVERY SINGLE DAY.  I am aware that things will come up, especially me being on the paper, and being very interested in learning how it runs and operates.  As a part of my schedule it will include time for studying, catching up on the blogs and blogging, and also reading.  One of my goals this semester is to have time to read three books.  Not long books, but just some books for fun.  I don’t want to read them all on the weekends, I want to have a few minutes here and there to actually be able to enjoy them.

Anyway onto the classes.  I was definitely right when I said newswriting will be my favorite class.  And, I am not just saying that because I think my teacher will read this.  He’s VERY cool.  He is into social media, and believes that it is the way to go.  In class today he even brought up Gary Vaynerchuk, which totally won me over because I adore that man.  Anyway, I am going to try to head to bed.  But, I hope to blog daily, on my endeavors and what is going on in each of my classes.  Honestly, nothing is going on just yet…but things WILL pick up.

My first day of classes are  over.  Actually, they were over yesterday, but whatever.  I had a pretty good first day of classes.  I really liked my Intro to Mass Media class, and the group that I was in was spectacular.  I am currently waiting outside of my first class of the day, anxious to get started.

The class I am most looking forward to this semester is my Newswriting class.  From what I hear my  teacher is pretty awesome, and if it is who I am thinking it is, he is writing a book on social media.  But, I guess I will find that out this afternoon.  I will try to keep this updated as I battle through another semester as a journalism student.

I have had a HUGE week, and some things I can talk about, and other things I can’t talk about.  But, suffice to say, it has been probably the best week of my life.  On Tuesday I received an anonymous e-mail with a bit of scoop on the Blue Jackets.  I sent a portion of it to my friend at the Dispatch, Aaron Portzline.  Portzline picked up the story, and found out it was true.  He even gave me credit on the blog for the story.

That’s not where my story ends.

The story has been picked up by just about every media outlet.  I haven’t been given credit on breaking the story on every single one, but on some I have.  Like The Hockey News, and The New York Times.

This week also means that I have  started working on the school paper.  I’m covering sports, obviously.  There is some more HUGE news that will be coming out in the next couple of weeks but, until then, I will keep it on the down low.