The light at the end of the tunnel.

It seems like just yesterday that I was lugging all my suitcases up 3 flights of stairs to my bedroom, but it turns the semester is already half way over. I can't fathom that I only have a couple more weeks here in this wonderful city. There is so much I still have yet to do.


I'm hoping that our "spring break" will help with this, but as its just one day off from classes I'm not quite sure I'll have time to fully appreciate all the city has to offer. I've been warned by current and former residents of the city alike about waiting too long to go out and explore as the tourist season will soon be upon us. Cherry blossoms attract cheesy people with cameras like flies apparently :-) 


As for today, I'm pretty proud of what I accomplished. I returned to the office pretty unsure that I would even produce anything as I felt no confidence in the information I had gathered. The event was not the most stimulating to say the least, I almost fell asleep at one point. I only jumped back to attention when my phone went off, quite loudly I might add. Oops :) 



As I started the article, I felt like I was making a patchwork quilt, and not a good one either. I randomly threw quotes into a word document, hoping it would make sense at some point and some sort of outline would emerge. And Voila,it did! I managed to write a 500 word article in 2 hours, quite a good speed for me even if its not up to wire service standard. 


When I turned it into my secondary editor (Denny), he was pleasantly surprised at the writing quality of my piece but voiced concerns about the completeness of the article. So, on his suggestion, I headed back to the drawing board and researched the video that I had watched before starting the article for an interesting article hook. All it took was a simple phone call to the media person related with the video to add a another dimension to what would have been a very flat article. 


When I finally turned in a complete draft, Denny was quite pleased. With just a couple minor edits to accommodate for our educated audience, it went out on the wire. And as an extra bonus, because he liked my article so much, he sent it to my main editor (Heather) to see what she thought. 


A few hours later I got an email from Heather complimenting me on not just that article, but the one I wrote yesterday as well. She told me that the work I have been doing recently has been improving. Cue the patting on the back I gave myself, needless to say, I was pleased by this revelation.  


It still worries me that I have not had an article go out that has been edited by Heather, even though she is my internship advisor. Hopefully that will change tomorrow, but only time will tell. 


In case there was anyone wondering, it turned out that there was no "mysterious package" incident at Union Station today for me to investigate-it had happened yesterday and I'm just slow on the uptake. There was extra security all around the metro though, plenty of police and canine units, so cute!