Not to be a nerd, but I've always been really good at school. Whether it was knowing when to work the system, or when to put my nose to the grinder (is that the right metaphor?), I've always been on top of my game and could succeed with ease. This semester, however, is barely four weeks old and is already kicking my butt. I don't know if it's because we have a new teacher, because I have major senioritis, because I work two part-time jobs on the side, because I'm taking five 400-level classes OR because of all those reasons, but something is seriously throwing my off my stride.
The Journalism department at my school hired a new teacher, Mr. Pablo C., to teach Multimedia Journalism from now on, I'm assuming. He's very educated and experienced, which is great, but also has extremely high expectations of us. I don't think anyone told him how shoddy our department has been in the past three years that I've attended the college. Either way, the majority of the students in my Multimedia Journalism workshop have not had experience with many of the programs and equipment we are supposed to be using for this class, and he doesn't necessarily teach us much about them either. This is a serious problem considering we are to turn in a story (writing/audio/photo/etc.) every Sunday, in a different format each time. We've also never really had this kind of rigorous schedule to abide by. In a way, this is really whipping us into shape as journalists, which is fantastic, but I don't particularly want to be a fully-fledged journalist when I graduate.
On the first day of class, Pablo goes through the roster and asks us to answer the general questions: where are you from? what are you studying? what experience do you have with the programs/equipment/industry? etc. However, he also asked 'Do you want to be a journalist?' to everyone in the class after they finished their spiel...except for me. I don't know if he just forgot, or if it seemed apparent in my spiel that I wanted to be a journalist? I feel that he expects a great deal from me, especially since I have a better mastery of the various programs that most of my classmates.
"Hi, I'm Sabina Cao. I'm a Journalism major with minors in Sociology and Marketing. I'm from Seattle. I have experience working with Adobe Photoshop, Final Cut Pro, Garage Band, iMovie, Soundslides Pro, and a few more I can't think of. I know how to use the GY-100s, DSLR and point-and-shoot cameras, zoom recorders and a few others. I did an internship at a bi-lingual community newspaper in London, while I was there"
I'm kind of a badass, I know. I don't really want to be a journalist. I think my ideal job right now would be a travel photographer for a magazine. Or something with fashion. But definitely not the regular journalist job. Pablo seemed more interested in the fact that I worked at a Spanish-English newspaper, and the fact that I could conversationally speak Spanish (he's Argentinian). And no journalist question. I wonder what I could do to make him think I don't want that life, so that he won't expect as awesome things from me. My audio slide shows are well done, and I think have impressed him so far, which is good. It's not like I can't do this work. I just don't want to haha!
Besides the bane of my existence, aka that class, school hasn't been so bad. I just need to get back into it. And maybe not work so much so I actually have time to study and do homework. But I need to pay for things...like food...and rent...and pretty things...and books. I haven't read anything for fun in a while, and that seriously saddens me. The second day I was back in Ithaca, I began job hunting in Collegetown.
I could have gone back to my old job at Aeropostale, working as a sales associate, but it was too far away and the pay wasn't enough, so I looked for a waitress position that would allow me to get tips. At one point, I was employed at four places: Institutional Advancement Services @ I.C., Aeropostale (I'm with them on-call if they seriously need help - I felt so bad not going back), Hai Hong Chinese Restaurant and Mehak Indian Cuisine. Crazy, right? So I dropped Hai Hong because - and this is the hilarious part - my parents didn't want me working at a Chinese restaurant! I'm completely serious. They were worried that the restaurant was going to gyp me on my pay and whatnot. And my mom was overly-concerned that they would have me doing more than what my job description calls for. I was really puzzled over this - why would my parents not trust in our own people? I guess I've heard enough stories about Chinese people though, that I understand where they are coming from. It doesn't really matter anymore, I guess, since I already quit Hai Hong. Now my parents want me to quit Mehak and just focus on having a nice last semester, which is sweet, and I'm doing just that, but I've also picked up working as the coat check person at Level B. This will give me more time in the evenings to conduct interviews and do my work, so that's good. And I can only be schedule 2 to 3 times a week!
...Why do I do this to myself? Sigh.
I think I'll leave my personal life stuff for another post...
Ta-ta for now!
And ta-tas forever. ;P
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| I couldn't help myself but post this. I will forever be writing my column! |
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