April - A Merciful Rest (sort of)

Posted by Krystyna Hunt in

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So, the first year has finally ended.  I admit being  proud of myself for some things.  I attacked each task with vigour, giving more than was expected of me..  I had been told that I take the assignments too seriously, that when I take on a writing assignment I take on topics of great importance, great depth, monumental repurcussions on which the fate of mankind teeters precariously.  Everyone else?  They write about the price of gum going up at the corner convenience store, and such. 

For instance, for my Cybernation course we were given an assignment to write an essay on a technology and how it will affect society.  What did I choose?  Biofuels, and how they will reshape the social, economic and geopolitcal landscape, how they have the potential to launch the next Industrial Revolution.  What did others write?  The Kindle and how it will change people from paper book readers into e-book readers.  Or the GPS, on how it will change from the driver having to fiddle with maps to letting the car fiddle with maps.  I just don't know how to think small.  So I end up doing far more work than I need to.

However, it does mean that so far I am sure I got A's in most of the courses, some with an A+, one I think a B.  That's Photojournalism.  Alas the precision and technical expertise are not as easy to fudge as theoretical expertise.  I can be incredibly accurate theoretically, but not so much in concrete calculations.

The first part of the semester was relatively smooth, writing articles for the college newspaper.  The second part was a little more bumpy.  We got into the hated group work again.  I was hoping for a better experience this time because I was able to know the people more, and what their capabilities were like.  I had grown friendly with J and D and knew they were dependable, hard workers, serious about this course.  Also with Sandra and Nadia, who were good friends.  Sandra had always been friendly with me, she was taking an elective called "Aging Matters" about the problems with aging and geriatrics, which I thought a very mature subject for a 20-year-old.

Joanne,  Sandra, Nadia  and I became partners to create an ezine, and Sandra, Nadia and a guy named Charlie became partners to do an essay on Western Europe, each of us taking one country.  Sandra turned out to be a disaster, dragging along Nadia because although Nadia was willing to do more work, she tended to follow her friend when her friend was avoiding doing hers.  That is such a youthful best friend thing to do.  If you have a choice between responsible action and avoiding it if your best friend doesn't want to do it, you avoid doing the responsible action.  Yup.  I remember that.

Although, Joanne as usual, was dependable, her laptop broke down so the brunt of the work in creating the ezine fell on me.  At least the layout of it.  The last weekend before we had to hand it in, I worked almost 72 hours straight on it, with maybe 5 hours of sleep in between there somewhere.  The final stretch was 23 hours, finishing at 4:30 am.  Since I had to wake up for schoolat 5:45 am I just decided not to go to sleep at all because it would be terrible trying to get up.

For the Western Europe group, Charlie was willing to participate, but he was a part-time student and not easily at hand while Sandra and Nadia just avoided any meeting or work at all.  Even the day before we had to hand the work in, when we had to integrate the research on our four countries and get the work in as one essay.  So I warned Prof J about the whole thing and said I was handing my research - on Greece - separately.  He was cool with that. The circumstances did not surprise him.  But I hated the stress the whole thing caused.

Later I discovered several teachers had similar problems with Sandra.  Her attendance was haphazard, and her remarks as to why she did not participate in this and other groups, "well, nobody else was doing anything, so I thought, why should I?".  Great attitude.  I am sure she has a huge career waiting for her with that.

I joined Joanne and Dana on the group website we had to create.  This was a blessed relief because Dana loves creating websites and she just ran with it.  She is 18 years old, but she took the leadership and assigned Joanne and me our roles and it was wonderful not to carry much of a load.  The teacher loved the website.

 (Joanne and Dana surprised at me taking their photo. People here get surprised a lot because the nature of a photojournalist is to be sneaky. )

I have no idea who will be back next year.  First of all it'll have to be the people who passed, and there were many who were in trouble.  Some dropped out or dropped off.  We shall see.

No one still knows what is the future of journalism, of course?  All the teachers talk about the past because that's what they know.  The future is in turmoil.  Otherwise I think I would have a great in with the teachers, who all seem to like me and are impressed with what I can do.  If this industry was in a normal state, I would have no troulbe getting references, recommendations, advice, support and numbers to call.  But nobody really knows what to tell me now.  Most of the teachers here have worked on large consumer newspapers or magazines that are now in trouble, not the little trade or company publications still being published and so have no advice to give.  Two are retiring shortly, two are going into teaching because they can't get work doing.  Teaching always seems to be the refuge when people can't get jobs doing.

While it's evident that the public wants news and information, and that this is some integral human need and has been since the beginning of time, how to make a living at providing it is more shaky since so much of it is being given away for free.  How ironic, that in a world that has been created for capitalism where everything is potentially up for sale, this part of life has suddenly become free.

The actual campus is lovely and it's too bad that I am leaving it in spring and won't be back until fall, because I think summer will be the most beautiful here.  It has a lovely wooded area out back, and lots of places to stroll and commune with nature.  Being this is a small town, in summer, all the foliage will be out and the lake is not too far away.  The countryniess of the place will be refreshing. That I will miss.

 (A student who passed me on a path, in the woods, behind the college.)

Now, all I have to worry about is finding a job for the summer in an economy where no one is hiring.