My first few weeks with the Communication's Department have been fun, stressful and challenging. About two and a half weeks ago, Pam e-mailed me that they would like to have me write a couple of stories for the Spring alumni magazine. The articles were to be about 300 words and my two topics were: 1)Mary Howard and her involvement with the screening of "Once in Afghanistan" at The Strand and also her own documentary which recently was screened in Columbus called "Swept Out" 2)The EPA grant that the Ohio Five, including OWU of course, received for 2009-2010 which is allowing the schools to better and further current environmental management systems.
My deadline for both stories was this past Wednesday, February 4th and I am very proud of both of them. Being an English major and never having set foot in a Journalism classroom, I was seriously worried if I would be able to write in the style and rhetoric that Pam and her colleagues were expecting. Pam was very helpful in getting background information for me which helped tremendously in preparing for my interviews with Mary Howard and Jann Ichida. The interviews went better than I ever could've imagined; both women were extremely open, allowed me as much time as I wanted to speak with them (which was about an hour in both cases), and gave me more information than I could fit into three 300 page articles.
Well, the plethora of information I just mentioned that I was given made sitting down and actually writing the articles a rather long and tedious task. I picked out the things I found most important, most relevant to the stories and pieced them together a million different ways before I was able to find something that flowed. In the end, I was over my word count by about 100 on each article, but after much editing decided that the people in the Communications Department were probably much better judges of what was essential and what wasn't for their publication.
A well written progress report, Kate. Keep it up.
ReplyDeleteIn addition, feel free to post any or all of your written work -- with Pam Besel's permission, of course.
This post is useful especially as a formal progress report of your work and work experience thus far. I hope you'll continue to create this kind of formal post every few weeks or so. You can combine them together into the final report you have to write at semester's end.
In addition, please feel free to do journal-style posts daily (or after every work session) about work in progress and the daily joys and challenges of the CD experience.
Spend just a few minutes. Don't worry about the grammar. Get your thoughts, insights, joys, and frustrations down while they are fresh in your head.
You'll be glad you created such a record when you're old and gray like me. I did such an informal journal when I had my first student-teaching experience. I still occasionally reread the entries with a mixture of nostalgia and horror. (Ah, those were the days -- but what was I thinking!)
Cordially,
Tom B.