Monday, April 20, 2009

I Looooove New York!

April has been an excited month! The weather warming up made my weeks more enjoyable. The first weekend, I enjoyed the Cherry Blossom festivities. Cherry Blossom is the name for the flower of cherry trees. I never know about cherry blossoms till I came here. The cherry blossoms are so pretty. The arrival of spring begins with the National Cherry Blossom Festival, a tradition that showcases over 3,000 cherry trees that derived from the city of Tokyo. The Festival is an annual two-week city-wide event featuring many cultural performances, special events, and bringing in an abundance amount of tourist.




























The second weekend, I took my first trip to NEW YORK! A couple friends and I took a 4 hour bus ride up. $36 round trip ticket. I was so amazed, the city is big, the buildings are huge and there are so many people! We did a lot of walking around through Times Square. We also visited the Rockefeller Center area and went by the NBC studios. I had my first New York strawberry cheesecake, which was so delicious and also a big slice of New York pizza. Unfortunately the weather wasn’t to kind. It rained for the most part of the day on Saturday, so we went to the Museum of Modern Arts. We went to New York just for a couple of days, because we wanted to be back in DC for Easter Sunday. We went to church that Sunday and went out to eat for dinner. I must say New York is a place that I most definitely have to visit again.



















The third weekend started off great. My advisor bought tickets for our program to attend the Washington DC Nationals baseball game. My first professional baseball game and I had such a great time and the weather was even better. I had so much fun watching the game, eating sunflower seeds and cracker jacks and being apart of the crowd participation, trying to get on the big screenJ. Too bad the Nationals lost, but after the game there was a nice display of fireworks.















































Erica

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Overwhelming Experience

The past couple of weeks have flown by. With little less than a month left, it feels like there are so many important things to get done and accomplish for my internship, class, TWC and for school. Including trying to make my last month in DC an enjoyable and memorable experience with all the friends I’ve made.


Class is still going well. I made an A on my mid-term, so that was great! We have a final project that is due May 7th; those that are graduating are due on an earlier date. For the project we have to research an incident that created ethical issues for the media. Our teacher gave us a list to choose from. I’m doing my project on the Richard Jewell and the Olympic Bombing incident. I plan on getting started on that ASAP.

Things have been going okay at my internship. My supervisor gave me a project to do during down time at work. The project I'm working on helps the Show book and put in interview request. My supervisor said my project is a big help to the show, so I’m glad I can contribute.

What’s pretty cool is that I’m around and working with the news correspondents that are seen on NBC and MSNBC everyday, such as Tom Costello, Savannah Guthrie, Norah O’Donnell and Chuck Todd just to name a few. I recently, helped Costello with a story he covered about bed bugs for the Today Show. The bedbugs have been a growing problem in hotels, college dorms apartments and houses. So be careful.... Take a look!



I recently had my mid-term assessment with my supervisor. She explained the areas that I have been doing good in, and areas where improvements can be made. I think with this new internship, it’s more of a personal challenge to see how much or how far I am willing to go or give to accomplish my goals. I’m glad I had that assessment with my supervisor. It made me really understand the things I need to improve on and only made me want to work harder to reach my goals.

I think last week, was the first time I probably became overwhelmed with everything. As I was preparing summer courses for school with my advisor, I found out that I needed even more time before I could graduate, which really threw me for a loop. I felt so much emotion I didn’t know what to do. On top of the assignments and things I had to do for my internship, class, TWC and personally, made it the toughest week here in DC. I had so much on my mind that I would be physically at work, but mentally not there, worried and focused on other things. I felt I got off track and as a result I turned in assignments late and had to reschedule appointments made. I think I was trying to keep a mental note of everything which is very hard to do, because there’s so much to do.

Fortunately, I’ve bounced back from that stressful week. Each day, I am literally making a “things to do” list. Sticking to that list has made it a lot less frustrating and I am able to use my time more wisely in getting things done. I figure that this last month in the program is crunch time and I need to make sure that I stay on top of everything in getting things done in a timely manner for my internship, class, TWC and school. I see it as an experience I can only learn and grow from

Signing off,

Erica