a common misunderstanding

It's getting late on my first sunday off the job. Me weekend has drug heavily along like a sled being pulled up a hill. I'm not saying I didn't enjoy the time off; I did. It just seems a little bit like I have been super unproductive all weekend. I don't like that feeling. Sometime I need my own time, with my own friends, and I don't have either of those right now.

It's like a mosquito bite in summer. I love the season; the hanging out, the relaxation....but it just leaves that stubborn itchy bump that you can barely will yourself from scratching.

And I am scratching. Scratch scratch.

FML.

last weekend on internship number one

Above is a Coloradoan photo archive of me when I played

Sterling Silver in a PB&J Company musical, I was 14.

Well the weekend has finally arrived. My last weekend as a reporting intern with the Fort Collins Coloradoan. It's a bittersweet ending to an invaluable experience.



A few of my thoughts about the process:

• I was given more responsibility than I ever knew an intern could get even from day 1


• I recognize the importance of living and knowing the city that you are reporting on


• I understand different editors value different styles, but that a good story transcends most individual preferences


• A story is only as good as you want it to be. The story is how the reporter says it to a large degree

A couple of negative things

• I wish I had had a reporter-mentor in order to pace my improvement and understand more fully how I was supposed to operate at times.


• -or- another intern. It would have been good, for me, to have had that competitiveness in order to motivate my improvement better


• The industry really is walking on egg shells. Editors are quitting, newsroom chatter about job security and if the newspaper is even going to print tomorrow is common. Journalism is fabulous, but the industry is trapezing over a fault line.

que sara sara.

On to new and more full-time things!

I recently was offered, and accepted, a Scripps Howard Foundation internship and will be working as a full-time news reporter for the Boulder Daily Camera this summer for 10 weeks. I get paid $3,000 up front and am awarded a $1,000 scholarship towards next year's tuition. I am excited because I know there will be at least one other full-time intern working with me and I think that together we can foster some really innovative and investigative stories. Also, according to those who are finishing up their reporting internships with the Daily Camera now (who are in my reporting 3 class), you often get a couple of days to work on a story. Yay. Some real time to work with a good story.

Tweet me

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I twitter.
Jean Spencer is my search name, of course.

My camera bag is red, and missing.

Lately i've taken to losing all the things I really need, which is how it usually is.

Today I couldn't find either of my perferred black zip-ups, and had to go with the homely gray one.

My cell-phone charger is currently plugged in at one of four locations: the last coffee shop I worked at - The Brewers Market on Folsom, Max's outlet near his bed, or in Fort Collins - actually unplugged - near the toaster.

I also can't find my sense of humor - which has been dwarfed by a relative stress level, my muscles - which have been dwarfed by excessive growth probably due to excessive cookies, or my money - on account of being un unpaid employee for the past year.

Some of you may be wondering at this point...

What does this have to do with an internship blog?

Egh....cough. Wehellll.....sirs and madames......

How am I supposed to catch the barefooted students running all around campus without my lovely digital camera? One more thing on the to-buy list, which already has a suit, a briefcase or bag, a wireless card, a new computer, a second cell-phone charger, and a better digital recorder on it.

AND, as I mentioned.....I can't find my money. The experience of being unpaid has a few drawback professional consequences, namely, not being about to affor the things you need to perform your job as best as you can.

Ika (as the Italians do indeed say).

jean

"I've never noticed that being a woman is a handicap or a plus. I am a woman and there are men and we climb together. Sometimes I'm stronger, sometimes they're stronger — we motivated each other." - Robyn Erbesfield

"Rocks make no compromise for sex... rock climbing is not like some sports, where it is made easier for women; or sports like, say, softball, which is only baseball for soft people. On a rock, everything is equal." - Beverly Johnson

Above is a picture of Maxamilian Barlerin and me at Shelf Road, Colorado doin a little climbing in an area known as "The Incredible Hulk." This was my first over-night climbing trip and left my hands raw and fingers bloody at the end of the three fabulous days.


Let it be known climbing is finding inhabitance in the nooks and crannies of my life. It has found its way into that calluses of my hands, into my dreams where I contimplate how I could have reached that last sloper better to rep-point that route, and into where I'd like to intern next. I have applied to Climbing and Women's Adventure magazines, hoping to use a two growing passions to benefit each other.

It's not what you knon, it's who you know

So my blog has taken a backburner recently, as internship, school and climbing have taken over my life.

Let's being with the internship:

Recently I feel stuck between accomplishment and glass ceiling. The stories I have produced and the trust my editors have given me make me feel really good. It takes dedication, a good thesaurus, good motivation, and a lot of coffee to be a journalist -- I have found out -- and I think I have what it takes. I remember sitting in some introductory journalism courses and professors would talk about how fast-paced and intense a career in journalism can be...but that is what fuels me really. I like to work hard. In the daily newspaper business you work hard with a very quick return. The next day your article sits in newsprint next to your bowl of cereal. Pretty quick.

Yet, I feel that glass ceiling of the end of an internship. As my final weeks approach I already wish I had done more. Taken on a bigger chunck. Chewed harder. But I guess that is a good way to feel; it will propel me into my next endeavor - internship/job. I want to keep doing these things I am doing, and will, eventually, work past this glass ceiling feeling.