Opportunity Knocks X2

A couple days ago I was starting to feel a bit discouraged and was fearing it might be almost time to start applying for restaurant jobs again.

In some ways I really enjoyed the years I spent as a line cook, but I never made much money or had any benefits, and my arms were always covered in burns (in a lot of my wedding pictures there's a real beauty that a panini press left on my left upper arm ), I had a lot of lower back pain from all the lifting, and I often didn't get home from work until after Robert had gone to bed. I think the frustration that stemmed from that lifestyle is a big part of what motivated me to finally get really serious about school.

I know that Robert and I can manage on his income if we really have to, but it would mean making a lot of sacrifices. I'm trying to save us money by being really meticulous about keeping track of our spending and by cooking a lot so that we won't have to eat out, but once my graduation money runs out, it will take more than that to keep us afloat.

I also want to gain valuable experience and keep developing my skills. I've enjoyed getting to sleep in these past couple of weeks, and I really needed some time to recover from the residual stress and exhaustion of my last term at UO, but now that I'm finally more-or-less caught up I'm starting to feel anxious. I'm not used to having so much free time, and while I've managed to be pretty productive, I really haven't had to use my brain very much. I keep feeling like I must have forgotten to do a bunch of important stuff.

Fortunately, my persistence in applying for jobs and internships finally yielded some results in the form of two email responses.

About six months ago I was searching for new media internships in the Portland area and came across one at the Oregon Jewish Museum. I was particularly interested in this because over the past couple of years I've done a lot of genealogical research and have gotten in touch with a lot of relatives whom I had never met, and learned a great deal about my Ukrainian Jewish ancestors who fled to Boston in the early 1900s. I'm really interested in continuing my research and in learning more about Jewish history and culture, and I thought it would be very rewarding to get involved with an organization that helps to preserve these things and to educate the public about them.

After not hearing anything for months I assumed that I wasn't going to, but then I got an email from the museum's marketing director informing me that they now had openings. I called back right away and left a message, and then wrote him a detailed email. He wrote me back the next day and we scheduled an interview.

I went in to meet with him yesterday at noon and he said that he thought my skills would be very useful. The museum recently moved to a larger space and has a lot more going on than in the past. They need help with a lot of things that interest me including expanding their social media presence and making a video trailer to show before film screenings. It doesn't pay, but I think it will be very valuable experience for me and it sounds like it will be a lot of fun, too.

I also responded to an ad for someone to help with online marketing for an independent film and got an email back from the executive producer. I spoke with him on the phone and he said that I was the only applicant whom he had responded to because I had mentioned specific things he was looking for in my email. He told me a bit about what they need, which for now will mostly be setting up and maintaining accounts on as many social media sites as possible (something I have a lot of experience with). I'm going to meet with him in person on Tuesday to discuss things in more detail. This will be a part time position, and I'm not sure yet how many hours it will be, but it does pay! I think it will also be a great opportunity for me to get to learn more about the independent film industry.

I'm sure that I will need to keep looking for additional part-time work, but I am feeling much more optimistic now and am really excited to be starting on two different things that both really interest me and will actually make use of my education.

Life as a Recent Grad/Unemployed Person

Having gotten more-or-less settled in my new home, I finally have time to feel like an actual unemployed person. I am now among Oregon's roughly 41,300 unemployed, some of whom are good friends of mine and a great many of whom are talented media professionals. At least I'm in good company.

I've been checking Craig's List multiple times a day and have updated my Linked In account and made multiple versions of my resume in Google Docs. I've applied for about 10 paid positions and 6 unpaid internships. Not a lot of progress. There just don't seem to be a lot of interesting jobs that I'm qualified for and I know there's tons of competition even for those I feel I'm perfectly suited for.

I'm trying not to sweat it too much yet. I've been back in town for less than two weeks. Shortly after moving to Oregon in 2004 I was unemployed for four months and then finally found a job that I stayed at for three and a half years, only leaving when I moved to Eugene to finish school. I know the unemployment rate is higher now, but now I have a degree, more skills, more experience, and more confidence. I am certain that something will come along if I don't give up.

In the mean time I'm trying to be productive and find ways to make my new household more efficient and sustainable. Robert and I spent the weekend unpacking and organizing, and have gotten most of the house in pretty good shape. Since I'm free during the day, I have time to do things like tending the garden, cooking healthy meals from scratch, walking to the store, and coming up with systems for saving money and avoiding waste.

I'm hoping that meeting with a career counselor next week will help me to strategize at the very least. I'm also planning to look into temp agencies. Robert and I will have to take a good look at our finances and figure out how long we can manage on his income alone, which will determine how long I have the luxury of looking for jobs that I actually want. At least summer is the busy season in his industry and the weather is pleasant enough to keep my spirits up for the time being.

Begin Final Term

It's the third week of my last term (if everything goes as planned) at UO.

A video I made last term about park acquisition for my internship with My Eugene is now online with a piece written by another intern, Erik Maurer.

Lately my life seems like an endless string of pre-production meetings, which I am totally loving.

For my Documentary Production class, taught by Jon Palfreman, I'm working with two other students on an 8-10 minute piece about nuclear power in Oregon, which we will attempt to get on OPB. We were having trouble getting in touch with our sources for the first couple weeks, but we finally did our first interview today, have another scheduled for Sunday, and are working on scheduling a third.

In UFO we are starting to plan a short film written by our treasurer, Brian Leonard. I will most likely be DP and Art Director on it, which will be a lot work, but also a lot of fun.

Brian and another UFO member, Jake Schamber, and I have also formed a team to participate in the first annual Adrenaline Film Project at UO. I'm really excited about it. I love working with Brian, and am looking forward to working with Jake for the first time.

Almost Spring

Finals week begins tomorrow. I, fortunately, only have one final left: my History of the Motion Picture Part 2 exam. I'm going to a study group with some other students from the class tomorrow night. The exam is Tuesday afternoon. I have a UFO meeting that night and we have a short shoot on Wednesday. Besides that, all I have to do is finish editing a video for my internship, and then I can head up to Portland for the break!

I'm really looking forward to spending time outside and being active after the ridiculous number of hours I've spent in the computer lab this term. Next term I'm taking a 10k training class. I think I'll feel a lot better with regular exercise scheduled in. I've been feeling really stressed out and lethargic for the last month or so. I'm going to need to run a lot over spring break to prepare!

I'm also taking History of the Motion Picture Part 3, TV Documentary Production, and 2 J408 workshops: Mobile Media Production and Lighting for Video.

In addition to classes, UFO, and WMTM, I'm also planning to participate in the Adrenaline Film Project in May. Brian and I are planning to work together, and are looking for a third person (hopefully someone with good Final Cut Pro skills). Someone is coming to talk to the UFO about it on Tuesday. I'm really excited about it.

I'll be really busy, but I don't think it could possibly be more stressful than this term has been.

Latin American Cinema

I have just begun my Latin American Cinema (J467) take-home final essay exam.

I've really enjoyed the class, but I think the subject is far too broad to adequately cover in a single term. The other two foreign film classes I've taken focused on much more specific topics: a single country (Germany) and a single genre within a continent (Asian Fantasy Cinema).

Gabriela Martinez, who teaches the class, is very knowledgeable and I think she does a great job of leading class discussions. I know far more about Latin American culture and history than I did a couple of months ago, and have been exposed to a lot of films I probably never would have seen otherwise. That said, I am really struggling with trying to keep all the details straight. It's difficult for me to remember what happened in which country. All of Latin America is a lot to cover in such a short time.

I think I have retained the most about Mexico and Argentina, both of which we covered early in the term. I remember a fair amount about Brazil, which we also spent more time on than the subsequent countries. Most of what we covered in the second half of the term (Chile, Bolivia, Cuba) is a blur.

I think we could easily have spent the entire term focusing on Argentina and the Dirty War, or documentaries from the continent, and it still would have been a lot to grapple with.

Writing these essays is going to require a lot of reading and reviewing of my notes. I hope that by the end of the week I will be able to say something intelligent about three of the six topics I have to choose from!

Finals week will seem like nothing after this.

After many consecutive late nights in the editing lab I finally finished my multimedia piece. As it turns out, I need to make a lot of changes to it, but I think it was the best-organized and most consistent solo video project I've done so far.

I only slept about three hours last night and then got back to campus to do add some final touches. I was there from 10am until past 1am.

In class today our instructor informed us about what days we're doing our finals (six minute newscasts). I'm going Tuesday, which is the first day. Our script rough drafts are due tomorrow, and I haven't even started mine yet. Before I can get to that I need to finish a paper for History of the Motion picture.

Despite having virtually no life outside of school, I always feel like I'm behind. No matter how far in advance I start on a project, I always seem to end up pulling an all-nighter (or a few) to get it done. I don't know if I'm exceptionally slow or if I just need that pressure in order to make final decisions. Maybe I just make too much work for myself. I think I tend to get over-ambitious, especially when I'm shooting. I always seem to shoot way more b-roll than I need and it takes me a really long time to capture and sort through it all and then I struggle to keep it organized. I hope it will get easier.

I came home to try to get some rest for a few hours before I get up to do more homework, but I'm not sleepy on account of too much coffee and stress. I don't have time to sleep for long and I'm so exhausted, I wonder if it's even worth taking a nap.

If I can just get through the next five days, the worst will be over. I just have to finish this paper, write my script, put together all the video I need for my newscast, write two more papers, and do my newscast, and then all I have to worry about is final exams for History of the Motion Picture and Latin American Cinema, which by comparison to what I'm going through now, don't sound too bad!

I

I Live at the J School

I feel like I have no life outside of the J school these days. No time for a social life, and often skip other classes to work on Electronic Media projects. Would never get them done otherwise!

This weekend I took one of the J408 workshops. This one, taught by Andre Sirois,who also taught Video Production last term, was on sound recording and editing.

We went over equipment, such as different types of mics (some of this I remembered from previous classes, but the review is always good), cords, headphones and digital recorders.

We also watched some videos about how sound works and went over different ways it can be used.

We took digital recorders and mics on our lunch break and experimented with recording different types of sounds, then returned and uploaded the files. Andre showed us how to do all kinds of stuff in Soundtrack Pro and then gave us some time to experiment with it.

He later emailed us a packet he put together with lots of helpful info, which I'm glad to have, as I was way too tired to retain all the details at 8am Saturday morning after a long, busy week with many late nights.

I fell asleep before 9 (unheard of) Saturday night and slept for more than 13 hours! I felt really rested for the first time in weeks. It seems I'm at the J school past midnight at least three nights a week.

I spent most of Sunday and Monday shooting b-roll at parks for my multimedia package. I've done a lot of editing, but have a long way to go. It seems like I always have a hard time figuring out how to organize my sound bites until the last minute when the pressure's really on. I'm kind of overwhelmed at the moment. I really hope it all comes together. If nothing else, at least I should be able to make my audio sound good this time!

Yesterday I registered for Spring classes. It will be my last term if everything goes according to plan! I'm really excited for Documentary Production with Jon Palfreman. I'm really looking forward to working on a more in-depth project. I also really admire Palfreman's work, and feel very fortunate to have the opportunity to learn from him. I hope that there will be more creative freedom in this class than there is in Reporting for Electronic Media.

It's Going to be a Busy Term!

Week two of winter term has begun. I don't have any Monday classes, but managed to stay busy today.

The weather wasn't bad so I walked to campus. I submitted another application for office space for the University Film Organization. I really hope we get it. We really need a physical space! Also did some online planning for a group assignment and then headed over to Cafe Yumm for the first My Eugene meeting.

I'm really looking forward to getting started with my internship। It sounds like it will be really flexible, so I won't have to worry about time conflicts, which is great for me, because I'm often busy with UFO and We Make the Media activities. There are seven other interns, all of whom are J school students, and we each chose a couple of assignments we're interested in working on. Additionally, we each submit three events to the calendar per week, so if anyone knows of any cool stuff going on around Eugene, please let me know about it!

J331 Shorts Well Underway

On Wednesday my J331 production group conducted three more interviews and shot a lot of B-roll footage for our short documentary.

I watched some footage with Jenica, one of my group members, and discovered that the first few minutes of one of our tapes is useless. Not sure what's wrong with it, but it's really jerky and the sound is distorted. The footage was from our interview with the University president and our establishing shots of Johnson Hall where we met with him. We shot the interview on two cameras, so as long as we got decent sound on the other one, we should be okay. If not, we'll only have half the interview to select sound bytes from. We will definitely have to reshoot the establishing shots, but that shouldn't take long. We are very fortunate that Johnson is right by Allen Hall, so we won't have to haul equipment all the way across campus.

I think we're going to try to get one more interview next week and then we can start editing this project and start shooting our dramatic short, which is due at the same time.

I've asked Rose and Tim from UFO to be our actors, but haven't figured out our shooting schedule. Tim sprained his ankle the other day, so I'll have to find out if he's still going to be able to do it. I also need to finish writing the last scene this weekend and get a storyboard together.

This class really takes up a lot of my time, but I think it's worth it. At this point I'm feeling much more comfortable with the equipment than I did at the beginning of the term. I feel pretty confident about my shooting abilities. I'm still not as comfortable with editing as I'd like to be, but maybe by the end of these projects that will change.

We Make the Media

I dragged myself out of bed early Saturday morning to attend We Make the Media, my second conference at the Turnbull Center. My husband was nice enough to drop me off before he headed over to Blitz Ladd to watch the Ohio State v. Michigan game with some of our other friends from Columbus.

I tweeted from my phone (not one of those new-fangled smart ones) throughout the day, but left my laptop at home. I'm kind of sad that I missed out on reading all the Twitter discussion that went on during the conference (which I did read as soon as I got home), but am also glad that I was able to focus my attention on what was actually being said in the room. I think the tweeters made a lot of good observations, but I also thought some of the comments were rather dismissive and disrespectful of the older attendees, who were less media savvy, but very experienced and knowledgeable in other areas, and certainly every bit as passionate about working for change as the younger crowd.

After checking in, I ran out for some coffee and made it back in plenty of time to get seated and somewhat caffeinated before Joe Smith took the floor and introduced keynote speaker Steven A. Smith, a seasoned newspaper man who grew up in Portland and Eugene, and attended U of O and Ohio State (I'm always intrigued by the number of people who seem to move back and forth between these two O states). Everything he said about the industry was in line with what I've been hearing at school and at other conferences: everything's going electronic, there are serious funding problems that no one's figured out how to handle yet, shrinking newsrooms are leading to a decline in the quality and quantity of news being produced, small local papers are doing the best, etc.

Next a panel of media professionals introduced the topics of the breakout groups and then Joe Smith opened the floor up to the roomful of journalists, who had more to say (much of which they had already been tweeting) than I think he anticipated. One of the proposed breakout groups was replaced by an "Unconference" group that planned to tackle a number of the issues that attendees felt were being overlooked.

I decided to go to the OPB group, which was focused on expanding the organization and possibly forming a new non-profit. There were about 15 people who stayed for the duration of the session, and about 10 more who popped in briefly, often just long enough to share their opinions and avoid hearing those of others. It was kind of strange, I thought. I was also surprised by how much hostility developed during the session.

There was certainly a divide, which was apparent the whole day, between those who were more into new media, and more open to new methods, and the more old-school crowd, who seemed not to take Twitter and blogs very seriously, which I think fueled some productive discussion about the role of citizen journalists and how they can be included without dismissing or hurting "real" journalists (or how we can even make such distinctions), and how to be more inclusive of marginalized groups in the media; but there also seemed to be some tension that I had a hard time placing. I suppose when you put that many smart, vocal people in a room you're bound to have some clashes of personality. I certainly came away with a better understanding of the range of opinions on a number of topics, and hope others did, too.

In the end, I think our group came up with some good ideas about how to improve OPB, but there wasn't much discussion about forming a new non-profit, and after our group representative presented to the room, Joe Smith suggested that OPB move ahead with some of the proposed actions, but that we not continue to discuss it as a group.

After all the groups presented, individuals formed more specific proposals for actions, which all of the attendees voted on by way of a complex hand-rasing system. I think new technology could have saved a lot of time and frustration there. I'd certainly jump at the opportunity to use the iclicker I was required to spend upwards of $30 on for my Grammar for Journalists class last year (and have never used since).

Over the course of the afternoon, there was a noticeable decline in the size of the group. I'm not sure how many people left because of other obligations, and how many just felt that nothing productive was going to come from the conference.

Finally, after about eight hours of trying to figure out how such a large group of people with such disparate ideas could take action together to improve the outlook of journalism in Portland, we broke into smaller groups once more to make concrete plans.

I joined a group that plans to create a new non-profit multi-media entity. Ron Buel, one of the conference organizers and founding editor and publisher of Willamette Week (and another UO alum), was appointed discussion leader. I think we may collaborate with some of the other groups. We're planning to meet again in three weeks. Hope this goes somewhere!

Lots of others are blogging about this event. I'll add to this list as I find more:

Thoughts From the Spiral
Carla Axtman on Blue Oregon
360 Convos
Reporting 1 Blog
Civics 21
Still a Newspaper Man
Joe Wilson
Oregon Media Central
Ran Dum Thots

nozzlmedia
WordCount
T.A. Barnhart

Electronic Media FInal Projects

For my Video Production class I am working with a group on two final projects: an evergreen documentary and a dramatic short. For the documentary we are doing a piece on the new Services for Student Athletes building that is currently under construction on the corner of Agate and 13th.

We've done three interviews this week: one with a cheerleader who uses SSA, one with an SSA tutor, and one with the university's new president Richard Lariviere.

We did the first two on Monday evening at the current SSA building. It was a struggle to lug all our gear(two cameras, two tripods, a light kit, a shotgun mic, a boom pole, some extra cords) all the way from Allen Hall to Mac Court, but we managed. We didn't have much space in the room they let us use, but we made it work. The interviews went smoothly and we finished on schedule.

This afternoon we did our third interview, and that was a little more challenging. We were all a little nervous about interviewing the University President, and we had only a half hour to set up and conduct the interview. The room provided for us was spacious and allowed us more control over our setup than the previous one. We closed all the shades to block out the sunlight and set up three point lighting. We rearranged the furniture a little bit and got our cameras set up. All of this took slightly longer than we anticipated, but we got everything looking really nice.

We informed the receptionist that we were ready and President Lariviere came in and sat down. We got him miked and let him look at our question list, and were just about to start shooting when all of our lights went out. Someone in the office flipped a breaker and they came back on, but we lost some valuable time. We conducted the interview as best we could in the short time we had left, and we all felt that we got some good sound bytes, but it was certainly a nerve-racking experience.

We're planning to do a few more interviews in the next week and then focus our attention on shooting the dramatic short.

'In the Rain' Almost Finished!

We only have one scene left to shoot for "In the Rain" and then we begin the post-production phase. We began this project with no budget, and have all been working for free and paying for things (food, gas, lighting equipment, wardrobe, props, etc.) out-of-pocket as we go. In hopes of being able to refund the cast and crew for some of their expenses and of being able to promote and distribute the film when it's finished, I decided to give the crowdfunding site IndieGoGo a try.

We have all worked very hard to make this film a reality. Most of us are students, and are broke, so we'd be thrilled if we got back some of the money we put into it, and more importantly if we could afford to promote the film and get DVDs made so that people will get to see what we've done! If you can spare even a few dollars and would like to support our efforts, it would be a tremendous help to us!

Busy, Busy, Busy....

@MYMHM on Twitter was nice enough to send me a Google Wave invitation in exchange for retweeting a link to their latest episode, which I was happy to do. It took a few days for the invitation to arrive in my inbox, which gave me a chance to read about it a bit, mostly on Twitter, which did little to clarify for me exactly what it does. I finally got to try it out today, but so few people have access to it yet that it's difficult to tell how functional or cool it is yet. I am intrigued, at the very least.

At tonight's University Film Organization we did a lot of planning, and should be pretty busy for the next few weeks.

Tomorrow we are shooting more of a short written by club member Rose Guess, which we started on a couple of weeks ago.

Thursday night a couple of club members and I are driving up to Portland for the weekend to attend What is Film?, which I am very excited about. If we have time, we may go check out the Northwest Film Center's 36th NW Film and Video Festival, though I fear we have too much else to do.

We have also broken into two small groups to make music videos for folk musician Will Hobbs of Portland and metal band Straitjacket Seduction of Columbus, Ohio. We will start pre-production next week in club.

In addition to all of that, I have plenty of classwork to keep me occupied right now. My third video assignment for J331 is due next Monday. I also have exams on Monday and Tuesday and a project for my Media Aesthetics class due Tuesday.

I really can't afford to slack at all, as I am trying to bring up my GPA in order to increase my chances of getting into a graduate program next year (not that I'm sure yet that that's what I want to do). I will also have to take the GRE very soon.

I hope I can make it through the rest of the term without getting swine flu!

J Skills in the Media Convergence Era

Thanks, WoodysWorldTV, for tweeting this video, in which Alan Murray of the Wall Street Journal discusses finding and building an audience and marketing your work.

These are the same points that many of the panelists made at the Oregon Society of Professional Journalists' Building a Better Journalist conference at U of O last weekend. Many professional journalists today are struggling to make digital media work for them. While tools such as blogs and social media sites can be hugely beneficial to journalists, and are becoming increasingly necessary, they present a substantial challenge.

I feel very fortunate to be starting to get a handle on digital media while I'm in school, rather than trying to learn it all on the job. As an Electronic Media major, I'm learning a lot about broadcast in my classes, but so far, discussion of how to produce media for the web has been peripheral. I spend many hours a week exploring these tools on my own, and while I use many of them regularly, I'm still learning how to use them effectively. It's sometimes difficult to determine what's worth spending time on and what's just a fad or only of real use for socializing with friends.

I first heard about Twitter about a year ago when I attended the OSPJ's 2008 conference here in Eugene. I joined immediately, mostly out of curiosity. It wasn't until recently that I began to use it regularly. When Twitter comes up in conversation, people often scoff, but I'm really impressed with how useful it's becoming for me. In addition to getting news updates from the New York Times, NPR, and various other major outlets, I get a lot of useful information from individuals working in media, which I can't imagine having found elsewhere. It's incredible the breadth of information I can get in a few minutes just by scrolling through recent tweets:links to videos, articles, and blogs; event listings; professional advice; etc.

The downside is that it has taken quite a lot of time for me to get to the point where sites like this are really becoming useful to me, and I still have a lot to learn. Learning to use something like Twitter effectively is akin to learning a new language. In addition to becoming able to communicate very concisely (tweets are limited to 140 characters) there are conventions and tags one must learn to use in order to communicate effectively. For example using "RT" to denote that something is a "retweet" and using "#" to create a "hashtag."

New social media sites crop up all the time, and it can be overwhelming trying to determine in which ones it's worth becoming literate. The newest one I've joined is Cinchcast, which is a lot like Twitter, but allows users to post photos and to record audio directly via their phones. So far users can only post mobile photos using an iPhone application, so people like myself, who don't have iPhones can only upload photos from their computers, but the site's developers are extremely responsive to user feedback, and are working on improving it so that it's more useful. There aren't many people using it yet, and a huge portion of the posts at the moment are "test" posts form new users trying to figure out how the site works. I'm excited about the site's potential, but only time will tell whether it will become as popular and useful as Twitter.

Video Production

Last February, which you may note is when I stopped writing here, the University Film Organization began shooting a feature length film called In the Rain. I am director of photography for the project, and as it turns out, that's a big job.

It's been especially tough because the club has almost no funding, which means we have to use all our own equipment, which is far from professional. It can be really frustrating for me going from working on small class projects with really nice cameras, tripods, lights, etc. to working on a huge long-term project without such things. I often find that I'm unable to do what I would like to because what we have is inadequate. Even doing simple moving shots like tilts and pans is near impossible if your tripod doesn't allow for smooth movement.

We planned to finish production before the end of the school year, but that didn't happen, and then many members of our cast and crew left for the summer. We have just begun shooting again, and only have about 10 scenes left before the film goes into post-production. We've been keeping a production blog, which contains a lot of photos and updates about our progress.

I've been elected president of the club for the 2009/2010 school year, and that has been keeping me pretty busy. We have a lot of new members this year, some of whom bring a lot of skills to the table. I'm really excited about working with them, as well as our returning members from last year.

I have started looking for video production internships, and am not having much luck so far. I hope to start one this winter or spring. Chambers isn't offering any right now, but said they might in the spring, so I guess I'll have to keep checking back with them. I'd really like to get some hands-on experience using professional equipment in a professional environment.

Winter Term Begins

I am halfway into my second week of winter term. I think the combination of classes and extracurricular activities I'm participating in are going to keep me pretty busy, which makes me almost relieved that I am not working right now (the restaurant I was at since I moved here just went under). My hope is that I won't have time to spend money.

I am now taking Writing for the Media, the last of my pre-Journalism classes. I think it's going to be challenging, but I expect to learn a lot. I am glad that I took Intro to Media Writing at PCC before transferring. It is a definite bonus to be somewhat familiar with the basic concepts. I got back my first graded assignment today, which I did not edit it as carefully as I should have. I am relieved that we are given the opportunity to resubmit.

I have joined Duck U, for which I get 1 credit, but more importantly I get hands-on experience working with professional equipment. So far I have gotten to work with a pretty nice digital video camera, and have gotten some practice setting up lights.

I am also going to be shooting video for UFO's major project for the year, a feature-length (or close to it) romantic comedy about FBI agents working in Eugene. The film is untitled as of now, but the script was just finished, and we are planning to hold auditions in a couple of weeks. I think this is going to take up a lot of my time, but I think it will be a valuable experience and am looking forward to it.

I finished finals yesterday. My Grammar exam was about what I expected, and I think I did pretty well. My German Cinema exam was a little more challenging than I anticipated, but I think I did okay, if not as well as I would have liked. Now that Fall term is over I can focus my full attention on freaking out about what I should be doing for the next 6 terms.

I'm still debating a double major/minor. I registered for a third year German class, thinking that I wanted to do a minor in German. This would require 6 more courses including the one I am registered for, and would not postpone my graduation date as long as I don't take off a term from my Journalism major to study abroad. However, the language immersion program in Tuebingen is awfully tempting. It's something that I would really like to do and think would be a valuable experience, but I think it would be wiser to finish my bachelor's degree as quickly as possible and go on with foreign language some time in the future. I also fear 3rd year German grammar would have a detrimental effect on my GPA.

I think I am going to declare an Art minor because I already have a ton of art credits, and I think I would only need to take three more studio classes, which I think I could do pretty easily over the summer. I plan to look into how much more I would need for a major. If it won't interfere with my graduation plan I will probably do it.

I am also looking into the Film Certificate offered by the English department. I think that my Electronic Media and Art courses would fulfill most of the requirements, and I would only need two additional courses, but I need to check with an adviser.

I'm feeling a little overwhelmed by all the possibilities. I have so many options and am not sure how to predict what will be most beneficial to me in the future. What I am feeling is well-expressed in a recent episode of WNYC's Radiolab entitled Choice.

Beginning an Education in Journalism

I am nearing the end of my fourth week at U of O. Halfway through my first term I am struggling to process all of the information I have gleaned, and each tidbit seems to lead to a plethora of new questions.

I am currently taking two pre-journalism courses: Grammar for Journalists and Journalism Transfer Seminar.

Perhaps the most notable thing I have discovered in my grammar class is that there is a great deal that I don't know about grammar. A lot of my fellow students seem to dislike the class, and it certainly has its problems (there are 160 students in the class, which meets for 50 minutes three times a week, which does not leave enough time for discussion or answering questions). I, however, find it fascinating. I've always been interested in language, and am excited to gain a better understanding of it.

The seminar consists largely of visits from staff members who speak about the industry and the school's program. One of the recurring themes is "the future of journalism." The program is in the process of changing in order to try to prepare students for the new and different jobs in the field. There's certainly a lot to keep up with, and it must be a daunting task for the faculty and staff.

Last weekend I attended the Society of Professional Journalists' conference Building a Better Journalist. I went to panels on political reporting (this panel included former senatorial candidate Steve Novick, of whom I am a fan), freelancing,the future of the news business, deadline writing, and blogging. Again the major focus seemed to be the tremendous changes that are occurring in the industry. Something else that came up a number of times was the debate over the significance or usefulness of having a journalism degree. Many of the speakers who are arguably successful in the industry did not have journalism degrees, and a number did not have degrees at all. Hank Stern, the news editor of Portland's Willamette Week, who moderated some of the panels at the conference said that whether or not someone has a journalism degree does not make much difference to him when he's making hiring decisions. When I went to the social hour after the conference I spoke with some working journalists from Portland and was repeatedly given two pieces of advice: "double major" and "get an internship ASAP," the points being that specialization and on-the-job experience are of great significance in the industry. Probably more-so than having a degree in journalism.

That said, I do not think that this program is a waste of my time. Even in the pre-journalism classes that I've taken so far I have learned a great deal, and feel much more prepared for a future in journalism. The degree alone may not make much difference when I am job-hunting, but I suspect that the skills I learn, the advice I get, and the connections I make will be of great value. I hope I am right.