My Day at Orientation (incredibly original title thought up by Journalism hopeful: me)

  I am now officially behind (by 1 day, nothing too serious) and it because yesterday I had orientation for school. It was both somniferous and exhilarating at different times. The first part was more of a general "Oh hey, here is a bunch of information that everyone could easily access on our website but we'll make you sit on uncomfortable bleachers for roughly an hour and a half while we waste precious time of your life that you will never get back" kind of information.
 
  The second part however was Journalism-specific and was pretty cool. There was actually plenty more people than I expected following around the yellow shirted individual carrying the "Journalism-Print" sign. We eventually reached the Newsroom (I'm basically Clark Kent now), where we sat down, received a copy of the Sheridan sun and were welcomed by our course coordinator and course instructors. The instructors seem (upon the shallowest of judgments) to know what they are doing, and the course load seems challenging but manageable. I'm mostly excited about actually working (albeit salary-free) for the newspaper at the beginning of next year; the experience is the sort of invaluable bonuses of college vs. university--at least for me. The only course I'm dreading at the moment is (and I am aware of the ridiculous contradiction) "Writing for Newspapers 1". It promises to be the most difficult--while at the same time probably the one I will be most helped by so its not all bad.

  At some point, after the instructors had introduced themselves and their courses, a second year student--invited by the course coordinator-- gave us a bit of a heads up as to what to expect and what sort of things to do to help ourselves move forward career-wise. Most of it was probably common sense, but she did mention that in journalism portfolios are very important. She suggested we contact websites that we like to visit and ask them if we can write for them--most of them will probably say yes. The idea of doing this sort of activity is something that never even crossed my mind and the mere mention of it was a bit nerve-wracking. Suddenly my brain began to scramble through my internet history trying to come up with a site that I could possibly write for-- I have yet to figure it out. I don't think adult oriented site cam4 needs any writers (although some more accurate descriptions would be appreciated, I bet) and I can't really think of any particular subject I would feel comfortable writing about. Perhaps music--although I must admit that I would probably have to read more about it. In any case, after the initial shock and general feeling of unpreparedness, I decided that I'm not going to allow myself to predict failure so fast. I'm going to read more websites, write fake articles in my spare time (what spare time) and eventually contact websites hoping they'll have me. Take that, general pessimism and tendency to self sabotage!

  Regarding the movie project, I'll probably watch 2 movies between today and tomorrow to get back on track. No big deal. Problem solving magic.