Doom and Gloom

Last week one of my journalism professors brought in a guest speaker to tell us all about the awesome life of a journalist. He opened with telling us all about his awesome friends who had awesome jobs in awesome publishing houses... who are now not-so-awesomely working as carpenters and secretaries. He ended by telling us "I didn't tell you that to scare you..."

I don't care if he didn't want to scare us - he did. At least he scared me. It was all I could do to not curl up in bed and cry and then drop out of school. He literally told us that at the end of the day things like our GPA and our degree are ultimately useless.

I did NOT want to hear that. I've had my heart set on writing since probably the third grade, so I'm not going to like it when someone comes and tells me I won't be able to.

I know a lot of these people just want us to have realistic expectations with the economy the way it is and what not, but for the most part we know how it is. We're journalists; it's not like we haven't been exposed to any sort of news outlet in the last eight months. We know it's bad.

But as discouraging as it is, deep down I refused to believe that print journalism will ever truly die. There will always - ALWAYS - be people who heartily appreciate holding a newspaper or magazine in their hands. Maybe that pool will shrink, but it'll never disappear.

The industry is changing and it's our job to adapt. I was talking to a friend of mine online last night and she brought up a good point - back in the day everybody thought print journalism was going to die with television, but it didn't. It adapted and moved on. And now that the internet is threatening us in the same way, it's just time to adapt again.

Blood drive!

A couple Fridays ago, the Residence Hall Association put on a blood drive on campus. Drake usually gets 2-3 blood drives each year, giving students plenty of chances to donate.

Personally, I'm completely phobic when it comes to needles. It's ridiculous, actually. I have to really, REALLY motivate myself just to get my flu shot. It's awful. As such, I had never donated blood before. I felt badly about it, too. It's such a good thing to do, but I could never bring myself to get over the needle phobia and do it. That's not to mention that fact that I've heard horror stories from people who have donated - stories about people not being able to find their veins and having to dig around and look for it and all sorts of hair-raising things like that.

This time I signed up to volunteer to help at the blood drive and then decided that this would finally be the year I would donate blood. I didn't know what all was involved, and to be honest I had a pretty gruesome idea of what it would be. I thought there would be bags full of blood laying around for one thing.

The night before a friend of mine told me exactly what would happen. I was still nervous, but he made me feel loads better about it. I knew I could suck it up and donate.

The next day I was working my volunteer shift, watching a bunch of people come and go and donate blood. It didn't look so bad. At the end of my shift I checked in at the donor table and started to fill out all my paperwork. I was still super nervous, but I was proud of myself for not chickening out yet.

I got called into a little private booth where a nurse type of person could ask me more personal questions about my paperwork. She was reviewing my history (on one of the forms) and she stopped, looked at me funny, and left for a good ten minutes.

I knew what she saw - she saw that I marked I had lived in the UK for three years (1995-1998). After coming back to the states, doctors told us we had to wait ten years until we were eligible to give blood again since we lived in England during the Mad Cow Disease scare - we also ate a lot of beef, I'm told. But this was year 11 so I should be in the clear.

Should was the operative word there.

The nurse came back and I told her about the 10-year ban and she smiled sadly at me and told me that is not the case. In fact, because there's no way to really test for Mad Cow Disease (other than an autopsy), I've been deferred indefinitely. Translation: I can't donate blood - ever. At least until there's a test for Mad Cow Disease and the ban is lifted.

I was really disappointed. It was a big deal for me to give blood and I was excited to do it. It got me out of two needle pricks (one for a finger prick to test my iron, and one for the actual blood donation), but I was still let down.

I guess the important part is that I tried. And I'm still proud of myself for that.

But, if YOU can donate blood, you definitely should. One donation can save up to three lives. Think about it.

Apartment hunt!

I diagnosed myself with DBS quite some time ago. The symptoms were too marked to be mistaken.

DBS - Drake Bubble Syndrome. Symptoms include feeling trapped on campus, cooped up, and suffocation from being in the bubble.

It's pretty serious. And because it's so serious, I've started the apartment hunt for next year. I plan to stay in Des Moines this summer so I need a place to live - preferably one to keep for the whole school year. And as appealing as it would be to move literally around the corner from here, I'm branching out to the surrounding areas. I need a change and I need it soon.

I'm not saying Drake isn't a fine place to live. It is, but after being here for a while you start to feel, like I said, trapped. I leave campus sometimes just to remind myself that there's a world beyond our tiny little campus.

I need to find a place that's not too close to Drake, but not too far since I don't want a huge commute. This will allow me to appreciate Drake more and not feel so sick of it, and it'll allow me to experience a world outside of school.

Thus begins the apartment hunt.

David Peterson

A couple of weeks ago I went to see a speaker at the library. His name is David Peterson and he is a Pulitzer-Prize winning photojournalist who shot the Iowa Farm Crisis in the 1980s. Frankly, I didn't know anything about a farm crisis, but apparently land prices plummeted and a lot of small family farms were forced to foreclose.

Anyway, David Peterson took three months off of work to go to rural Iowa and shoot the story which ran in a 30-something page special section in the Des Moines Register.

His pictures were on display in the library and they were absolutely amazing. They were so heart-wrenching and so emotional. It reminded me that a photojournalist's job isn't an easy one. Sure some of the job is showing up to events and concerts and church socials and taking pictures, but then there are times where you have to throw yourself into a really rough situation.

David Peterson had to witness people losing their homes and livelihoods. He took a picture of one woman whose husband had actually committed suicide because he was that depressed. How do you intrude on their lives? How do you be delicate? How do you be sensitive while ultimately broadcasting the pain of the citizens to the whole state?

He brought a bunch of copies of the special section his photos ran in 20 years ago and let us take them (mostly because his wife wanted them out of the basement) and I had mine signed. It was really cool and super interesting and definitely gave me a lot of perspective about photojournalists.

Same seats!

Remember when you were little and went on field trips? And everybody sat on the bus and then had to sit in the same seats on the way back? Remember that kid who would always shout "same seats!!!"?

I miss that kid. I want that kid back. I want him to walk into all my classrooms and shout that for me.

For the first half of high school everybody pretty much had assigned seats in alphabetical order. This was no doubt in order to help teachers learn the names of their students.

Something strange happened toward the end of high school, though. Most of the teachers knew us already and we could, get this, SIT WHERE WE WANTED. It was glorious. The R's and the S's and the T's who had typically stuck to only one another were hobnobbing with the C's and the K's and even the occasional M. It was amazing.

Even though we didn't technically have assigned seats, it became pretty clear after the first couple weeks that we DID still have assigned seats - we just got to pick them. Everybody had their standard seat every day in every class. It was a good system. I liked it. I could sit with whomever I wanted to sit with, but I still had the stability and consistency of an assigned seat.

It was the exact same situation in college. Everybody just sits where they want but after a couple of weeks, we all settle into "our" seat.

LATELY, though... the whole system has been thrown off! I arrived in class a couple of weeks ago to discover that my seat was TAKEN! It was awful. You know what that means? It means I had to take someone ELSE'S seat. And THEY had to take someone else's seat. And it just kept going and going and going and going... Everybody was so discombobulated.

This has happened THREE times so far out of my five classes. I've been completely uprooted. And it should bother me, but it does. And it bothers other people, too. I promise. We're territorial creatures of habit and we can't help it.

And then there are those people who INTENTIONALLY take other people's seats just to screw up the rest of the class. Oooh, those people make me mad...

Please, for the good of the whole, stick to your seat.