75 Days To Go

I should be finishing my English paper right now, but it's almost half done, so I thought I'd take some me-time, just for a minute.

Man, what a depressing day. Yesterday I was utterly overwhelmed at the amount of stuff I have to get done this week. You think the other weeks have been bad; wait til you see this one. Council meeting story for journalism, three articles due by Sunday/Monday, English paper due Friday, government reading due Thursday, AND to top it all of, an entire newspaper to get through production. Yeah, I know, it's a ridiculous week.

So I went to the council meeting this morning, hoping to get another slam dunk akin to last week's court story. No such luck. I will say it was absolutely great seeing everyone in Councilman's office again (I interned there in high school.) But, I wasn't there to chit-chat, I was there for a story. Turns out, the topic they were discussing, development stuff in C-burg, is one completely over my head. Joyce, the resident expert on C-burg, was out this morning, so I was sitting in this meeting trying to decipher planning language into English. Yeah, didn't happen. But, I saw Joyce on my way out and she said she'd be happy to talk to me and explain me everything, which means I still have a chance at knocking this story out of the park. Random thought - I emailed my jour prof to ask him what I should do at 9:31 tonight, check my inbox 6 minutes later and bam, I've got a response. I love efficient professors. I mean, isn't everyone addicted to their email nowadays? His response - this is a tough one, let's talk about it in class tomorrow.

Anyways, so I had to get back to school earlier than expected because Sam and I have to start production on the newspaper. She had to show me and our production editor how to actually use the software. So we practiced a bit until it was time for me to go to my research meeting.

Now, I haven't really explained my undergraduate research project, so here it is in a nutshell. There's a relatively low-income community nearby that comprises mostly Spanish-speaking immigrants. My team and I are going to conduct a needs assessment to determine what community services they want. But, no one on the team speaks Spanish, and while I've got some proficiency, it's not nearly enough to get us accurate data. I found a possible translator for our team, a grad assistant with experience working in our target community. She spoke to us today and basically pointed out just how difficult it will be for us to collect data for this project. I've been having doubts about the feasibility of this project for almost a year now, and this did nothing to ease those doubts. I know, usually I'm not the pessimistic one, but really, there's only so much an undergraduate team can accomplish. Anyways, I'm really glad she came because she gave us valuable (honest) insight and seemed genuinely interested in our project.

After the meeting Sam and I met for two more hours to work on stuff for the paper, which we didn't even begin laying out because the software we need is only on the computers in the lab. Which only means this paper business is going to get even more stressful as the week goes on. The good news is I was back in my room by 9, meaning I actually had a chance to get work done tonight, namely the English paper. The bad news, I'm only halfway through the English paper and my eyes are getting pretty heavy...

P.S. The day wasn't totally bad - I scheduled three interviews for the stories I have write this week.