What am I doing here?

I set down here to right something meaningful and perhaps inspirational this late, humid night in South Carolina as I procrastinate my homework. I have Shattered Glass playing in the background. It is the ultimate journalism junkie movie. After an hour of Religious Studies reading and questioning what I am doing here, I begin to apply every facet of my life to this thought, including the background noise.
Now follow me because this is obscure thoughts. After delving deeply into my classes and their content I have begun to question those Hindu religious questions of self. Why am I here? I'm not going off on a personal tangent, at this point in my life I do not feel the need to question my natural existence. However, being in college the constant thoughts of career have embedded themselves in my brain. And now that I sit here half listening to Shattered Glass half talking politics with my roommate I have come upon inevitable question again. What am I doing here?
I am a student of journalism which is rightful, if that makes sense. In other words, all signs point to 'good decision.' But where in that vast field do I belong? Watching Chuck battle through a crisis of fabrication, I come to question these goals I have laid out for myself. Do I really want to be a journalist? Yes. Do I want to be a reporter? I don't know. Do I want to be an editor? I don't know.
I know these are the same questions every college student asks. Some of them wait until senior year and others wait until after graduation- in the case of my brothers. But now that I am here- my future that is- I have begun to question more and more my "dreams." Meeting new people on campus they constantly ask "what do you want to do when you graduate?" It seems the "When I grow up" is no longer applicable. I am grown up. So what am I; where am I?
Maybe I just do not have enough experience in any field to really know where I am headed or why I am having these thoughts. Just call me impatient. I know in time and with new encounters and information I will naturally discover where I want to be, who I want to become, but for now, I guess I can only know what I know, not to sound too fortune cookie. At some point I will reach the same fork in the woods that Chuck passed which led him to "editor" or Carl Berstein to "reporter." Maybe mine will say "writer" or "designer." All I can say is I don't know why I am here or even where I am and why I am writing this mindless thought process. So much for writing something meaningful.

"Parking" is a Four-Letter Word

Unlike most of my fellow bloggers, my primary concern for this year has absolutely nothing to do with class. As I see it, my insane class schedule pales in comparison to the anxiety caused by the parking situation here at the glorious University of South Carolina (Though a sentence that lengthy can make one a bit anxious as well!). I have been blessed with the much-coveted Bull Street garage decal for almost four years now, but it will all be in vain as I enter my senior year. Though previous years have been spent in Gambrell and Williams Brice (A mere 25 feet from the garage), this year's classes are to be found in the Coliseum and the Swearingen Engineering Complex (Practically a different zip code). To make things even more interesting, I have 15-minute slots between each class in which to travel from one side of campus to the other. For your average one shower-a-week student, this would pose no dilemma. I, on the other hand, am a firm believer in the power of priss. Needless to say, you will not see me sprinting from point A to point B in 96 degree weather, only to arrive to class looking as if I had just stepped in from a torrential downpour. Instead, I leave my apartment 35 minutes before class starts, then circle one of the aforementioned buildings, praying to see the beautiful gleam of white reverse lights. This intense praying combined with the thought of missing a pop quiz leaves me sweating almost as much as if I had actually tried to walk! Fie freshmen and all of their stupid cars!

It's a little larger here

So... the school year has officially begun, and summer, as we know it, is once again, 9 months away (*sigh*). You know school is in session when a college student, such as myself, is awake, typing a journal entry at, oh, 7:30 a.m. while running on a mere 3 hours of sleep. (apologies if this blog... well... doesn't run smoothly due to my lack of sleep)

It's week #2 of classes at USC, and let me tell you, it feels like week #493 for me. I transferred from a school of, give or take, around 600 people to this wonderfully populated school of almost 25,000 students. So obviously, I didn't have a hard time at all making a transition....

Yes I did.

It was interesting not being able to leave only 5 minutes before a class and still being able to possibly be the first person sitting down in a class of about 15 students. Here, well, because of East Quad in relation to ALL of my classes, I need a head start of about 25 minutes. Pickens Street is the best getter-upper in the morning. Trekking up that massive hill every morning is... uplifting. Literally. I feel like all the drivers passing me by are in a fit of laughter as they watch me crawl my way up the hill. On the positive side? I hear it gets easier as the year progresses.

I hope so.

So, first journal down, many more to come. Maybe in the next journal, my trek to class will decrease from leaving 25 minutes in advance, to 24 minutes.

--Laura Carver

Fifth year

I have been a journalism student at the University of South Carolina for the past four years even though I am just a freshman. I have attended CJI-the famed summer camp for rowdy young journalists- SCSPA and SIPA. I know the programs and I know USC- at least I thought I did. But now that I am here, living on campus, taking real college classes and trying my hardest to maintain my dreams, I realize I really am that lost freshman. This isn't at all what I thought it would be.
I became accustomed to my journalism programs in high school-eating lunch in the j-room, designing pages, writing copy, editing headlines and cutlines, being the journalism guru. But j-school at USC is not like that. I have yet to see anything journalism related and my first real journalism class is not until next semester. Yes, I have applied for The Gamecock. Yes, I have applied for Garnet and Black. Yet, for some reason I feel that hole I felt every summer. No journalism.
I love journalism. I love writing. I love editing. I love designing layouts and brainstorming story ideas. Just call me impatient, but I have yet to find that here at USC. Don't get me wrong, I love my classes-Religious Studies, Anthropology, English and Environmental Biology- but I just miss my daily dose of Pagemaker, even if it is outdated.
So when I was asked to write for this blog, although it doesn't require much and I am probably not doing it correctly, excitement was my main reaction. I hope I can help with this experiment in any way possible.
Last March when I attended Al Neuharth's Conference in D.C. all the journalists urged us to major in something other than journalism, anything other than journalism. They said we should have another background in order to be flexible journalists. This thought never crossed my mind because to me journalism is what I am-all the cutlines, bylines and style rules. After one week devoid of journalism I am fairly sure a major in journalism at USC is just what I need simply because it has become obvious that students here do receive a "quality" education in many topics other than journalism.
So, here's to my fifth and first year at USC's journalism school.

I looked up the word "at"

I had heard copy editing could do some pretty extreme things to a person, but if obsession was an Olympic sport, I blew away the old world record.
Yesterday was the first day of copy editing. And usually my experience around the journalism school consists of my day with work and battling it out with the copy machine, but yesterday my every thought was consumed with this class. Of course yesterday would be the one day I was late for class. I knew everyone would either sit up front and hang onto Mr. Fisher's every word, or they would all cower in the back. Everyone was upfront, so I had to walk past the entire class....late. Lecture actually went really well and my fears about the class started to ease. Lab was also great, I saw the mistakes in sentences before he pointed them out. (I also realized that when my previous editors and advisers just put a line through a word for it to be removed, they were using the wrong symbol.)
But I got home and started working on the lab homework. I have officially become obsessed with wanting everything in this class to be perfect. I can't find a symbol to delete multiple words, but also delete spaces. There is a symbol to delete multiple letters with no space, delete a word and leave space and delete a character and leave space on both sides. Short of just crossing out the two words, I don't know what to do, and I don't want to be wrong. I was also working on a sentence where I know at least one mistake existed, and I sensed there might be more, but I just could not figure it out. So I started looking up meanings of words, including "at." I thought maybe "on" should be used instead of "at." I learned that "at" gives a specific location, where "on" is more vague. I still can't find another problem, so I just gave up.
I know this assignment isn't even being graded, but the thought of failing this class is just annoying. I stressed over more issues on these sentneces, but I know that my mistakes will be pointed out and I will learn how to correct them in the future. I still can't believe I looked up the work "at" though. Oh yeah, Mr. Fisher's class isn't that intimidating yet, maybe it is just the work.

The toughest class at USC

After working at the journalism school, I haven't been too excited about starting class and coming to the basement of the Coliseum where I have been five days a week for about six hours a day pretty much for the past year and a half. Nor was I excited about having to fight for parking after having a summer with an empty parking lot where I could come and go as I pleased. But I am really excited, and somewhat terrified of, Mr. Doug Fisher's Jour. 333 copy editing course.
I went through a terrible fiasco of having the class acidentally dropped from my schedule, but the ordeal of trying to outsmarting VIP and other journalism students to get back on the roster made me appreciate the class and the career I am getting into a lot more.
I know his class is definitely going to give my mind a work out this sememster, but isn't that what I paid for? Mr. Fisher's class is just step three in a long process where I have been disassembled from the the journalist I thought I was in high school while working on my school newspaper and will eventually be reassembled into the professional I could become. (Part one of the process was Prof. Wiggins' 202 writing course. Part 2 was Dr. Collins' Media Law course. Watch out for them.)
These professors, though intimidating, are some of the best around. And while you have to work really hard for A's and even B's for that matter, you will go into the journalism field being more prepared than if someone had just handed you a degree and said "Here, go write or look cute on TV"
I'll give updates throughout the semester about what this course really entails. I know copy editing will probably be the hardest course I have had at college thus far, but I also know surviving it is not impossible. But waking up for the 8 o'clock class might not be so possible.

Can I make it to class on time?

Heading into my sophomore year at USC, I have a lot of things on my mind. I would have to say that my biggest worry will be making it from the basement of the Coliseum to the BA building in less than 15 minutes! Not to say this is my biggest worry but it is definitely going to be a task. My biggest hope is that I learn a lot from the classes I am taking and meet a lot of new people. That is the best thing about USC, there is always the chance to meet new friends. Hopefully, my sophomore year will live up to my expectations!

Crystal Metts

Let's pose a question

I'd like to start things off with a question for our bloggers: What is the biggest worry and the biggest hope you have entering this year? (And tell us whether you are a freshman, sophomore, etc.)

Welcome

Welcome to A J-School Year.

We hope that during the next year (nine months really), you'll stop in from time to time to get an idea of what goes on in a modern American journalism school from the students' perspective. Ideally, students at other schools, professionals and students in high school considering a career in journalism will all learn something. In the process, our students will also learn a bit about "blogging."

The idea for this blog started with a call from a major newspaper's recruiter wondering why more minorities did not go into copy editing. I could speculate, but realized that the best people to tell us were students themselves. Ernie Wiggins, a fellow former professional who also teaches at the University of South Carolina j-school, and I got to talking, and what emerged was the idea of using this blog to provide a broader insight on a lot of other things, too: How do you handle the demands of juggling reporting classes that require lots of time with other classes, working, and - yeah - a life? What do you do when you begin to have doubts that this is the career (with its long hours and low pay) that you want to pursue? Oh, and how do you get through Fisher's editing class?

We're recruiting about two-dozen students, from all our majors, to tell you. And no, these are not just A students. You need to hear from everyone, if you're going to get an honest picture.

I have another Web log, Common Sense Journalism, from which I spout. So I and professor Wiggins will largely stay out of the way and let the students speak.

School starts in less than a week, and we'll start posting before that, so stop by regularly to see what we're up to.

And have a great j-school year!

Doug Fisher