Education is a Right!

The week started off with a bang, beginning with a Call to Action event. March 24th was the National Student Lobby Day and Rally. Groups members from the US Student Association and the Student Labor Action Project along with hundreds of students (including myself) marched up to Capitol Hill demanding protections for workers and students and an affordable higher education for all. It felt great to actual advocate on issues that students should be concerned about. Visit http://www.usstudents.org/ and http://www.jwj.org.projects/slap.html for more information.

While March Madness is well underway, I’m sure many people have their picks on their favorite team of winning the championship. For Women’s Basketball, I picked UCONN to win it all (sorry Oklahoma). But one of favorite teams is Maryland. One of the locations for the first round games was in Maryland at the Comcast Center, where the Maryland Terps play their home games. I got a chance to go to, and watch, Villanova vs. Utah and Maryland vs. Dartmouth. Thanks to my RA; she was able to get tickets to the game. Both games were exciting, especially watching the Maryland game. They won by almost 30 points! The University of Maryland campus is huge, with over 34,000 students enrolled. That was the biggest campus I’ve been on.

The museum I had the best time in, was Madame Tussauds Wax Museum. The museum is filled with wax sculptures of politicians and celebrities. The museum wasn’t free but with half-price discounts it was well worth the experience.

My semester in Washington DC has been amazing. There’s never really been a dull moment here. I remember a guest speaker saying to never use the B-word…. Bored, and I have still yet say it. Besides getting used to the cold weather, that still lingers in March and I’m sure into April, I am enjoying my stay in DC. The culture here is rich in diversity. Events, activities and attractions occur around the clock in DC, to serve everyone’s interest. And knowing that I’m in the Nation’s Capitol, a historical place and have a chance to see the President, First Lady, Vice President, congressman and other government political officials is such a great feeling.

TODAY This is Erica

Which is what I say when I pick up the phone at my new
internship with NBC's the TODAY Show. My final day at Tribune was Friday the 13th (yikes) and I started interning with the today show that following Monday. The new job has been a learning experience and so far so good. My responsibilities at the today show are to help with newsgathering, production, logging and dubbing tapes and assist with interviews.

In comparison with Tribune, I would say the one disadvantage at the Today Show is due to a union contract interns can’t touch or operate production equipment. I can still write news stories; it will just be more difficult to put them together to complete my demo reel. I started a demo reel with Tribune that consists of two new stories that I’ve done, with stand-ups in the studios of Tribune and at the White House. But the Today Show will provide a greater chance to go out in the field with the reporters during actual news events. Overall I’m sure interning with the Today Show will be a great experience

I recently went out to Capitol Hill with my supervisor to watch a live hit done by Senator Judd Gregg from New Hampshire. Matt Lauer from the today show in New York held the interview. Senator Gregg basically discussed his view points on how he thinks President Obama’s budget plan would burden the government with greater debt.

Even though the headquarters of the Today Show is located in New York, the show also has a bureau in DC. The Today Show in DC covers more political and congressional news and events; where as the show in New York covers more regional news events. Also some news events that are done in DC by the Today Show are sent to be aired by the NY bureau.

Not So Good News

About over, a week ago I was hit with some not so good news. My internship, Tribune Broadcasting, was closing down there bureau.

That day at work was pretty strange. When I went into work I noticed, everyone was there; which was out of the norm, because everyone works different shifts. I sat at my desk as usual, and noticed that they had an out of the norm, meeting in the conference room. Usually, the meetings are at about 5pm each day, to discuss the rundown of the news events. The other intern and I are allowed to sit in those meetings. But during the meeting, that day, it was a Friday, they didn’t need me to go to the meeting.

Two very professional people, I never seen before, also showed up for the meeting. I continued sitting at my desk, while doing some logging and wondering what was going on. Well after about 20 minutes, the meeting was over. My coworkers came out the room, with a completely different expression on their faces. Some went to their offices, to use the phones and some left the building. The mood felt really weird and it was so quiet, I could hear a pin drop. I noticed everyone was no longer doing any work and I was starting to get concerned. After awhile, my supervisor told me of the situation and that everyone had two weeks before the place would be closed down.

He informed me that for the next two weeks, to get as much done for myself, to put together my demo reel. He and the other coworkers were willing to continue to work with me in finishing my projects and learning as much as I can in the next two weeks. I felt really thankful for that and felt sad too, because I just witnessed them basically losing their jobs and felt helpless.

That also means I’ll be out of an internship and that sucks too. I really liked Tribune, the employees and enjoyed everything I worked on and learned from. For about a month, from beginning to end, it was a learning process, and I was looking forward to doing bigger projects and making more progress with Tribune. I’m very thankful for having the opportunity for interning with Tribune and hope for the best for all the employees.

For me, the hunt has been on, in looking for another internship site. My Advisor has been doing a great job in her searches, and we hope to land an internship soon. The past week has been a bit frustrating, but I’ve been taking these things, good and bad as a learning experience. So I’m sure things will work out, for the best.

Quote of the week: “You must have faith that things will turn out the way they should; not necessarily the way you want them too”

Erica

Wow, How Time Flies!

(I love DC)

Wow, a whole month has gone by since I first arrived in DC. Time fly’s when you’re having fun. A day at the National Geographic Society museum was great. The afternoon was spent looking at the prehistoric artifacts, scientific findings and different cultures. There was so much to see, but didn’t have enough time to view it all.



(inside the mouth a Giant Great White Shark)

Right: (A really huge crystal)

(Pigging out) --->

Every other weekend, the communication interns have what I call, Sunday dinners. We meet up with our advisor at a good but cheap restaurant, eat and discuss how things are going. Our last dinner meeting was at a restaurant called BD’s Mongolian Barbeque. It’s an Asian stir fry restaurant. It’s like a 3 step process: you pick out your food, pile it in a bowl and watch it cook on a huge grill. My first time in a place like that and it was pretty cool too!

The Media & Communications interns had the chance of touring Capitol Hill. The architecture inside the Capitol is amazing. We also visited the Library of Congress. We got a chance to get out Library cards issued to us.

(inside Capitol Hill: "the Whisper Room")

TWC hosted and International Festival. The event feature free food, a DJ, face painting, country
exhibits and performances. It was like a giant cultural diversity celebration. I really enjoyed the festival and the food was delicious. I didn’t realize it was so many international students in the program. I made a lot of friends that day J I enjoyed the performances too and learned a lot of cool facts about the countries and cultures. I think Mexico had the biggest turn out. My roommate from Korea was also on stage representing her country. After the festival, a big group
of us went out for a night of salsa dancing. It was really fun; we danced the night away!

<--- (Korean food)

(We're #1)

(USA & Mexico)

Class is going good. A couple of weeks ago, we had class in the Associated Press building. Our
teacher, Ms. Feldman, works for the AP, so it was a good change of scenery. Ms. Feldman gave us a tour of the building and we met some of the workers there. We’ll start having class there more often so she gave us AP badges. I feel really important now. J

Our first assignment was given back to us, last class. We had to write a 1-2 page paper, on the movie we watched in class called Citizen Kane. In our paper, we had to discuss the ethical issues in the movie, and what we would have done, if given the same situation. I did okay on the paper; I made a B. I’m shooting for an A, on the next assignment.

Quote of the month: “Work hard and Have fun”