Hey everyone! It feels like so much has happened since my last post!! My family came up at the end of July and I went with them to New York again and then Washington, D.C. It was my first time in D.C. and I loved it! Our capitol is so beautiful! I'll post a few pics below.

I also had my friend and future roommate and co-editor, Becky, come visit last weekend. We had tons of fun and I think I gave her a pretty good tour! :P I feel like I have this city down now! lol I'm sure there are tons though that I have not seen and may not get to see.

This is my last weekend though, so I have an itinerary of things I need to see Saturday before I go. :( Things have been moving pretty quickly these last couple weeks. One of my roommates is completely moved out and the other is home for a week for a wedding so we said our goodbyes earlier this week. And then I leave this Sunday for St. Louis and today was my last day at work. :( I was really sad about this because while there were many times this summer I missed people and just wanted to go home, every day I was at work that went away. I just had so much fun. I'm going to miss the people I worked with, but I'm going to try and keep in touch with them. They all taught me so much — everything from how to analyze data to where the best food in Philadelphia is. :P

No, but really, I got SO much out of this internship. I was surprised at how much I was given. I wasn't given just simple assignments, I had some hard news topics and some really interesting graphics. The moon anniversary page is definitely a great clip. And even this last week, I got to work with another designer on a graphic I'll try and post later when I get the pdf. I even went out today to get photos and talk to people for this assignment. It was cool. More on that later though.

For now though, I need to start packing up some things in my suitcases. I already mailed TWO boxes home filled with stuff earlier this week that I couldn't carry all on the plane by myself.

And then I need to get ready for bed. I have a big day tomorrow! I'm going to fill it seeing a bunch of things (hopefully) I haven't seen yet. Like the Rock Balboa statue at the art museum!! And I'm going to go to Reading Terminal Market for the last time. :( Sad. That was my favorite place. Tons of great food!! AND this Saturday is the Pennsylvania Dutch Festival where the Amish set up a bunch more booths and they make fresh donuts, ice cream, peanut brittle...the list goes on! And then that night the interns are having a last hurrah dinner. And then the next day I move out!

So lots to do!

Until next time,

Stephanie

P.S. Don't forget you can ask me questions! It can be about my internship, but it doesn't have to be. Just post them below and I'll get back to you!

Pics from D.C.!

  Me at the Newseum next to that day's Inquirer with my Inquirer tag!! I felt so cool...

Me in front of the Washington Monument! We actually went up it later, it was a really neat view!

In front of one of my favorite presidents! :)

Hey everyone! I ended up having a really fun 21st birthday! My coworkers and bosses took me out for my first drink at the end of the day and then my boyfriend and I went to New York that Saturday. We just went for the day and took a bus tour, walked around a bit, and took a late bus back to Philly. It was really fun though to see all of the things you've seen in pictures and on tv before. I think my favorite part was seeing Times Square at night (see pic below). 

And I get to do it again!! My parents are coming tomorrow and staying for a week! I managed to get off a couple of days for working some overtime on a project at work (to be explained in a minute) so I am taking off this Thursday to go with them to New York again! I'm also going with them to D.C. this weekend and we're going to meet up with my brother who's also coming to visit. I took Monday off too to do some Philly stuff with them. It should be pretty fun and a nice break from all of the work I put in this past week.

Which brings me to my next point: work. It's been crazy this past week. I was working on a huge full page graphic on the 40th anniversary of the moon landing, which of course was Monday, so that's when my page ran. I spent a couple weeks researching all about what NASA is planning to do with future space exploration and learning about how they plan to get back to the moon. It was all really interesting stuff which made it a pretty fun project. It definitely wasn't easy though. I learned SO much. I have really loved this internship so far. It's been one of the best learning experiences. This project took patience, and a lot of research, writing, illustrating, designing and planning. It was not easy, and thankfully I got some help and guidance from my coworkers and bosses to make things go smoothly. I'm pretty proud of the final product. It's definitely something to put in my portfolio. You can see a pdf at this link:

http://sncope.iweb.bsu.edu/moontrip20Z-z.pdf

I worked some late nights on that, but I didn't stop there. I really wanted to prove myself with this project. This was a chance to finally show what I'm really good at which is illustrating, and I think I did that, but I also wanted to go a step forward and doing something for online. Unfortunately I ran out of time and struggled to come up with something that I could justify even doing when there's no way it can compete with anything NASA has on their site. But since this page was only my research and there was no story, I wanted to make sure the information made it on to the Web site because it was some pretty interesting stuff that I thought people would want to hear about! So I went in on Sunday night and sat down for a few hours and threw together a package in Flash. It was nothing I hadn't done at school before, for the Daily News or Ball Bearings. Just a package with some interaction through rollovers and buttons. It was an easy way to take all of the information from my page and present it in a small space online.

You can see what I did here:

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/gallery/51148697.html

I think my boss was happy with my work and since I had spent so much extra time putting the page and online package together (though I wasn't expecting to receive time off in exchange for my extra work) my boss is letting me take two days off, which as I previously explained, is what I'm using to spend more time with my family when they come up this weekend. So that's really nice.

And even cooler than days off: my online package made the homepage of Philly.com!! It was only up for maybe 30 minutes of fame that day, but long enough for me to grab a screen shot! ;)

 I was pretty excited!! It just proves that sometimes doing a little more than expected can really pay off. That really made the hours I put into it worth it — so that's my lesson for the day. My bosses were trusting enough to give me, an intern, this huge project with a full page of color (often rare in the newspaper business these days) and I wanted to do my best and do it justice and hopefully I achieved that. If anything I have some pretty cool pieces to add to my portfolio!

And now I have less than three more weeks left of my internship. :( But I feel more confident with that project under my belt ——

—— I'm ready to tackle any bar chart or map they throw at me! :P

Until next time,

Stephanie

 Here's some pics from NYC!!

Me in front of the Late Show with David Letterman, who is a renowned BSU alumnus of course! ;)

 Times Square at night! So many lights! It was awesome. This photo doesn't really do it justice.

Hey! Hope everyone had a great fourth of July!! I definitely did, spending mine in America's birthplace!! I definitely forgot to mention in my last post one of the number one reasons for doing internships: it gives you the opportunity to go some place you've never been before and see what it's like living somewhere completely different from what you are used to. I had never been to an east coast city, and now I am getting the experience of living here for a little bit. I'm still determining whether or not I like it compared to the Mid West, but I definitely love the history and culture this city has.

The fourth of July was tons of fun. I had a friend from St. Louis come visit and we went to the parade downtown in front of Independence Hall and then that night we saw Sheryl Crow in concert FOR FREE! And fireworks followed that. It was great! I'll post some pics below.

And I'm excited for this weekend because my boyfriend is coming to visit again and we're going to New York on Saturday! I've always wanted to go. We're just going up for a day and taking a bus tour and walking around some on our own. It should be fun. And all of this is in celebration of my birthday, which is today! Yay I'm 21! :)

Not too much is new at work. I'm not getting a lot of daily work. Instead, I'm working on a huge full page graphic for the anniversary of the moon landing which is July 20. I'm excited, the page is turning out well so far. I still have a lot to do though and I'm hoping to create a web component for it. It should turn out to be a nice clip and I definitely will post it after it runs!

I'll comment more about that project and let you know how it's going in my next blog.

For now, I'll sign off. A little older. A little wiser. ;)

Stephanie

 Drummers in the parade

Crazy Philly Pride Lady!

This is the PECO building. They were showing off their new energy-efficient LED lights by dazzling the crowd with their waving flag.

Fireworks!!!! It was a pretty good show. Expected I guess, since it is Philadelphia...

I apologize for falling a little behind here. Work is much more exhausting than you'd imagine it would be! I'm really enjoying my time at The Inquirer so far though. As promised in my last blog, here is a link to the graphic I talked about:

http://sncope.iweb.bsu.edu/blog/doyelstown_dday.pdf

The graphic was for D-Day. It showed a neighborhood in Doyelstown, a town not far from Philly, which is dedicated to lost veterans of World War II from their town. There were 11 fallen, so the neighborhood is 11 streets, each named after one of those fallen. I really liked how the graphic turned out, especially for being my first week! I got a lot of recognition from people in the newsroom about it. It was definitely a cool experience. 

Anyways, that kind of gives you an idea of what I'm doing for the paper, if you were at all lost before. Lately, I haven't done as many of those kind of graphics that involve a lot of design. I've been doing, just as importantly though, more charts and graphs and data tables. I am working, however, on a huge graphic for the 40th anniversary of the moon landing in July. 

I really think this internship is shaping up to be a great experience for me. I'm not sure I will be getting a lot of design clips like my friends at other internships will be getting, but I'm learning SO much about other things which really will be usefull to know later on, even if I don't work for newspapers. I'm working with a lot of data and figuring out the best way to present it in an easy-to-understand way for readers. And I've done a little of that in school, but not at a great extent. There is an information graphics class I took, but there's only so much we did with bar charts and graphs and maps that could be fit in one class. And at the Daily News, which hopefully will change when I'm graphics editor next year, we don't often graph a lot. Mostly because of time, but also because it doesn't cross our minds usually since we're busy with school and a bunch of other things. It's something that needs to be planned out and thought of ahead of time.

ANYWAYS, point is, I'm learning a lot from this internship that I'm not learning in school. And that's not Ball State's fault at all, it's just that you can't really compare the experiences you get out of a real job to sitting in a classroom. This is why the journalism program makes us have at least one internship before we leave. Other majors don't do that, but I think it's a necessary experience to have before you graduate. So make it happen! Whether you're in a major that requires it or not. 

And try to do more than one if possible. Maybe in different areas of your major. Last summer, I had more of a design internship, where I designed the layout of pages. It was fun and taught me how a real newspaper works and challenged my design skills. Now, this summer I'm challenging my graphics skills. Maybe next summer I'll try and challenge my digital media skills. We'll see!

For now though, it's a beautiful day in Philadelphia so I'm going to go walk around!

I'll post some pictures below of my adventures around Philly from when my boyfriend Derek came up to visit a couple weeks ago!

---Stephanie

Me at the Liberty Bell!

Derek and I at the Love Statue in JFK Plaza!

Let's see, I left off my last blog and I had just arrived in Philly. So much has happened in a week! Since then I've tried a cheese steak, started work and done a little bit of exploring. Oh and my roommates are both moved in! I've been having a lot of fun getting to know them. One is from Alabama and another is from New Jersey. They are both working at the hospital this summer. We all get along really well; I feel like I've known them for a long time already!

And I'm feeling really comfortable at The Inquirer already too. I started work last Monday and I've really enjoyed my time there so far. I've already learned so much in just a few days and I already have a pretty cool published piece (which I will get a screen shot of and post soon)!! The first day was orientation and I got to meet and hang out with the other interns. It was a pretty chill day. We filled out some paper work and got to go to the morning budget meeting (where they discuss what stories will be running on the front page). Then we had about two hours to hang out for lunch. The paper was celebrating it's 180th anniversary which they had done a huge section on and online package for their site and that day were celebrating with free hot dogs and hamburgers outside in the parking lot. It was a nice treat and it was fun hanging out with the other interns. The rest of the day we finished some paper work and then I headed to the graphics department and set up my login and everything and then I just got to go home early.

The rest of the week was fun. For the most part I work each day developing graphics for that week or that day. I've done a few maps and charts and then that other huge graphic which I'll talk more about when I post the picture.

Anyways the work has been fun, but the commute not so much. I definitely tore up my feet this week going to work. I really need to wear comfortable shoes to walk in and change when I get to work which seems like a "duh" kind of thing, but I didn't really think it was that much to walk. And a couple of days it was rainy which REALLY was no fun, and it's supposed to rain more next week...I really miss my car.

I was definitely glad for the weekend. I really hadn't had a chance to explore much of the city yet. I work everyday from noon to 8 p.m. and that doesn't leave a lot of time in the day to explore so I was excited to have a couple of days off to relax and walk around a bit. Saturday I walked around Old City by myself for a few hours. Old City is where all of the historical things are like the Liberty Bell and Independence Mall. I didn't go in anything yet because I wanted to save that for when my boyfriend Derek comes to visit this weekend, but I wanted to walk around and actually get to see some of the buildings. I took some pictures which I'll post below...

I also went to Rittenhouse Square which is more in the center part of town. There's a lot of shopping there and there was an art show going on which was neat. Then that night I went and saw Up with one of my roommates. Tickets were $15 dollars so I'm not sure how often I will be doing that...

Today I went to the Reading Terminal Market which I REALLY enjoyed! It was packed with people and music. It's a market where a bunch of locals sell their produce. It reminded me of San Lorenzo's market in Florence from last summer when I went to Italy. In addition to the market, they also have a food court type thing where I bought a turkey and cheese sandwich, a bag of chips and a drink for only five bucks! It was delicious too. They carved the turkey right there, it felt like Thanksgiving...And they really had every kind of food you could imagine: baked goods, ice cream, Mexican, Chinese, Sushi, American (burgers and such), Philly cheese steaks, etc. Definitely a cool place I would recommend anyone visiting Philly to see.

 Anyways, I need to iron some of my work clothes and get to bed, but below you can see a picture of The Inquirer building and some of my photos from Saturday! Enjoy!

Stephanie

Here's where I work!!

And here's some pictures from Old City:

Betsy Ross House

Some kids playing Yankee Doodle outside Independence Hall.

Ben Franklin's grave is in there! I'm going to actually go in and see it this weekend...

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the eternal flame in Washington Square.

Hey guys!

I was going to close up my blog for the end of the year but I've decided to come back and blog again for the summer! I took a few weeks off getting ready for my internship and now I'm finally here! In the city of brotherly love! I got into Philly Friday and have been trying to get acclimated. I'm staying at the University of Pennsylvania and I'm interning downtown at the Philadelphia Inquirer. I start Monday and I'm super excited. So far I feel a bit lonely. My parents just left a few hours ago to fly back to St. Louis and I haven't really met the other interns yet. Last year was so great because I was interning at The Indianapolis Star and living in Muncie so I already knew the area and had friends and my boyfriend in Muncie to keep me company. I knew this internship would definitely be different though. I have never been to the east coast before so that in itself is a culture shock plus I really don't know anyone.

This weekend has really felt a lot like my first week at Ball State. It's hard getting out there and meeting new people and it's even harder when you don't really know the area. Luckily I had my parents to help me through the first couple days. I flew up here so I won't have a car. I've been using the public transportation here and oh my gosh it's confusing!!! To top it off my feet are killing me from walking around so much. That will probably calm down once I figure out the quickest way to get places. Penn (the university) is actually not right downtown. I have to take an underground trolley and then a subway to get downtown to the Inquirer. We went and found the Inquirer on Friday after we got checked into our hotel. It was the biggest ordeal...lol I think people could tell that we were confused and lost though (what with me arguing with my parents about which direction to go) and we had some pretty nice people help us out. Just about everybody we've asked for directions has been really nice and helpful. I was actually kind of surprised. I thought east coasters were supposed to be kind of stand-offish and mean, but I definitely was proven wrong this weekend. At least in Philly, everyone has been pretty helpful. I'll have to see when I visit New York and Jersey this summer...

On Saturday we moved me into my dorm. It's pretty much a dorm, so nothing spectacular by any means, but it's not bad. I have a kitchen and my own room. My kitchen didn't come with a microwave though so I might be eating out a lot... I'm on the 19th floor though, which I've gotta say is pretty awesome. It's not facing the city, unfortunately, but it's still an AMAZING view and the windows are huge and go all the way to the floor. It was pretty cool sleeping under the city lights last night. :) And the university is not exactly in the city, like I said, but it definitely is like it's own little city. There's lots of shopping and restaurants and even a grocery store really close to my dorm. I described it to someone as like a big mall with a few old buildings mixed in because there's an Auntie Anne's and an Urban Outfitters pretty close to my dorm. I feel pretty safe too, there's campus police everywhere. Last night my parents and I walked around and got ice cream and there was literally a police officer on bike at like every corner. So that will be good if I get home from late work sometime.

Anyways, I'll try and blog more tomorrow after my first day of work. And I'll post some pictures of the Inquirer and everything. There's a barbecue tonight for my dorm so I'm going to go to that and try and meet some people there. Oh! And one of my roommates just came a little bit ago and is moving in right now. She's from New Jersey and is interning at the hospital here so hopefully I will get to hang out with her tonight too. 

 I think come tomorrow I will definitely feel less lonely.  

 Wish me luck for my first day!!

Stephanie

I finally have a break. It's finals week, and probably my easiest yet. I only have two finals on Tuesday and those finals are really just tests, not cumulative for the whole semester.

Things are finally wrapping up. I ended up finding a place to live in Philly. I just got an apartment style dorm at the University of Pennsylvania. I looked it up online and they're really nice dorms. I also got a storage unit to put my desk and stuff in for the summer so I don't have to take that home with me. My parents will be up this weekend to help me move out of my apartment.

Unfortunately, school is not the only thing coming to an end. I found out today that I am laid off of IndyMoms. Two of the zones tabs that The Star produces folded and one of the designers has some extra time on her hands so they're giving IndyMoms to her to design. Understandably, I'm a litle upset, but that's just how things go. They have to use the people who have salaries. I will be ok though. Next year I will be working at the Daily News as a graphics editor and I am going to see if Workshops is hiring again next fall and maybe I can join them again.

In other more uplifting news, Amanda and I finished our magazine!! Here is a link to it: http://sncope.iweb.bsu.edu/indetail_mag.pdf

I would suggest right clicking on that link and downloading the linked file instead of just clicking on it. It's a huge file so it takes a while to load. The first spread is the back/front cover. Our magazine would have a different theme every month. This month's theme is coffee culture so our cover is like a to go cup and we actually screen printed a coffee sleeve to slip over the magazine.

Here are some pics I took actual magazine. We tried a smaller format magazine. It's 4.5 in. by 5.5 in. I put a pen next to the magazine so you can understand the size a little better.

That's all I have to update right now. I need to study for my geography final that's tomorrow. I'll post one last time later this week wrapping up the blog with some of my reflections of this past year so check back then!

Let me know if you guys have any questions for me as this blog will be ending soon. I think it will be up all summer though if you have any questions later.

Stephanie

P.S. Here's a tribute to one of my friends, Shelby who's graduating this weekend. Me, Shelby and my future roommate Becky and I took some end of the year pics this weekend for Shelby to have after she leaves. :)

From left: Shelby, me and Becky.

From left: Me, Becky and Shelby.

Hey everyone! Sorry it's been a while since my last post. Time has kind of escaped me these past two weeks. I'm trying hard to stay on top of things, but there's sooo much to do before the end of the semester, it's freaking me out! Last week I was busy working on a Daily News graphic, an iMedia graphic and an interactive package for the Daily News. I hope you all check out the Daily News package I worked on. It's all about coffee (Amanda and I came up with the idea since we already had all of this coffee information for our magazine). I'm really excited about it. It has a lot of good elements to it. There's a great soundslide story Amanda put together and my friend Shelby and I put some cool interactive graphics together for it.

The week before I had a lot due for my honors class on Laos/Cambodia. Some of our projects were due for that class. I had to make a pinch pot beggar's bowl and some sort of tool for my group. The pinch pot took me three tries to make. It's a lot harder than it looks... For my tool I was having trouble figuring out what I wanted to make. I ended up making a broom. It was kind of fun. My boyfriend helped me out. I went to his family's home and got some straw and a huge stick and some rope to tie the bundles. We named it the Clean Sweep 7, haha. For all you Harry Potter fans out there...

Soon I need to finish up my tire sandals and piece of clothing for that class. That's due at the end of the semester. It's been an interesting class. I answered a question on an earlier post about honors classes and what they're like. Not all honors classes are like this class (with somewhat different projects) but a lot of them are paper/project based. I guess that's not necessarily for everyone, but I definitely prefer it to a lecture class where my grade is only based off of five tests for the whole semester. I like the creative projects and I definitely prefer writing essays and having discussions over readings than taking tests. I'm not a very good test taker. So if you're trying to decide on whether or not you want to join the Honors College, I would say honors courses are probably a bit more work than a lecture class, but I think they are pretty rewarding and never boring. I mean, what other class is going to require you to make a broom? And I learned a lot about what it would be like having to be resourceful and make things myself like they do in Laos.

Anyways, this week is a little bit lighter load now that Monday and Tuesday are through. I had two tests between yesterday and today. Now I have to put together some information for our last week of iMedia testing and then Amanda and I desperately need to work on our magazine some more. We found out the official due date is April 30. That's when we'll present it to faculty, the dean and anyone who walks by our table at the top of the stairs in the Arts and Journalism building. We have to make sure our magazine is done at least a day before that though because we can't afford to have anything go wrong when printing.

We are making another trip to Indy for some more photos on Friday and then I'm really excited because my parents are coming up Friday evening for the weekend. I received a scholarship from the department of journalism (they have tons of scholarships every year that you can apply for) and I'm being presented it at the Kappa Tau Alpha (Journalism Honorary) Induction lunch on Saturday. April is always a fun month because you get awarded for all of your hard work (and many nights with out sleep). The weekend after this weekend is the Louie Awards (named after the late professor Louie Ingelhart), which is just a bunch of awards the journalism department gives out to students on publications and in organizations. It's really fun. You get to dress up and there's food and it's like a last hor-rah for the end of the year.

And after THAT ends that Friday night, the Late Nite carnival begins!!! Only the greatest Late Nite all year long! I wait for this night all year. It gets pretty packed, but if you get there early you can get on a lot of rides. They just have the carnival in the North commuter lot and it's usually for one night. It's soooo much fun! I can't wait!!! That's pretty much what I'm working toward right now. 

 Oh and I'm working on finding housing up in Philly for the summer. I contacted some of the other interns to see what they are doing and one of the girls is graduating Penn and is looking for a place to stay for the rest of the summer too so I think we're going to try and get something together. I'm really excited. I think this is going to be a really fun summer. I'm looking forward to meeting all of the other interns.

 K, that's it for now! Need to get going! Ttyl!

Stephanie

I really can't believe April is finally here—tomorrow. That means there is only one month left and I'm a senior. I'm really excited about it, but pretty nervous at the same time. Last week we had to start signing up for our fall classes again and it was just really weird to be thinking about my schedule for my final fall semester here at Ball State. I am signed up for my last honors class (a science class I pushed off), a couple of classes to finish my digital media minor (including a video class I'm really excited about, except for the fact that it's an 8 a.m.—yikes!), media law and new media (a class on Dreamweaver for my journalism major). Hopefully it won't be too bad of a semester.

Besides thinking about my schedule, other things are kicking up full speed. In iMedia we started pushing content to the iPhone for testing last week and I have some graphics I am working on for that. I'm excited to see what the testers think of the application using it daily. Amanda and I are also knee deep in work for our magazine. It has been a lot of work trying to write all of the content ourselves on top of doing the design (we are technically allowed to pull content from the internet for a lot of the magazine), but I think in the end we will have a great product that is fully ours and something we can really be proud of.

The Daily News and Ball Bearings are going well too. At the Daily News, things with the redesign have surfaced again. We are working to hopefully launch the redesign this summer. Last week we got to sit down with Pegie Stark Adam who is famous for her work on a lot of redesigns of newspapers and work on Eye Track with The Poynter Institute. She came to speak as one of the Professionals in Residence and we got to meet with her on the side. She gave us a lot of good tips. Also, last week Brian Storm of MediaStorm (www.mediastorm.org) came to speak and some of us iMedia kids got to go to a workshop with him. MediaStorm is a site that Ball Bearings strives to be like. I highly encourage everyone to check out his site because it really is good journalism at its best. Their work is really innovative and probably where journalism might be headed. It was really inspiring to hear him speak and meet with him in person. We have a lot of new ideas for Ball Bearings next year after meeting with him.

Also, this past weekend I went down to Bloomington, Ind. to Indiana University for the Indiana Collegiate Press Association with Ball Bearings. It's a conference held every spring where all of the Indiana collegiate press students get to meet up and network. There are workshop sessions followed by an awards ceremony. Ball Bearings and the Daily News both came back with a lot of great awards so it was a pretty exciting weekend.

I think that's everything that's new, and enough procrastinating for me. I need to get to work on the May issue of IndyMoms and then head back to school soon to work for the Daily News tonight!

Stephanie

Last week was so crazy, but I finally know where I'm interning next summer!! The Philadelphia Inquirer!! It was one of my top picks because I'm really interested in graphics reporting and the Inquirer has one of the best graphics staffs in the country. I've actually known for a couple months that it might be Philly, and I've been DYING to blog about it, but I didn't want to until I had an official confirmation. A few months ago my professor mentioned they had called interested in me and they usually choose a Ball State student for their graphics intern. The Philadelphia Inquirer actually declared bankruptcy not too long ago though, so they weren't sure if they would still be able to offer the internship.

The reason last week was so crazy though is because at the beginning of the week I was kind of bummed and thinking I might not have an internship this summer, but then I got an offer from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Their design internship plans had changed, and they were wondering if I was still interested and available. I got an official offer though from Philly just after that and I decided to take the Philadelphia one because it was a position on their graphics desk and the Florida one was for page design. I really want to apply again for the Sun-Sentinel next summer though because I really love their paper and have wanted to intern there for a while. It was a really hard decision to make, but since Philadelphia usually chooses a Ball State intern and they had discussed me with my professor, I felt like there was already sort of a commitment there and I didn't want to break that. Both papers were amazing offers too. I really would have been happy with either, but it's been my goal to get a graphics internship this summer so that I could expand those skills. Last summer I did a lot of page design at The Indy Star and I still design their IndyMoms magazine. I really want some experience in graphics, especially since it's something I've become really interested in.

 So that's really all that's new with me. It's definitely a weight off my shoulders knowing where I'll be this summer. My roommates also found out this week where they are interning this summer. Amanda received a scholarship which pays for her to intern at a small paper in Portland, Ind. Because it's a smaller paper she will get to write, take photos, copy edit and design. She will get a ton of experience! And Andrea got accepted to write for Current in Carmel, a tabloid in Carmel, Ind. So we're a happy apartment right now!! :)

Well, I need to work on some homework now. Two presentations, a graphic for the DN and nearly a quarter of my magazine for my class are due this week. So I've got a lot of work to get to!! :P

Stephanie

Spring Break is next week!! I really can't believe how fast this semester is flying. Not too much is going on with me right now. A lot of people have midterms this week. I fortunately, do not. Most of the classes I'm taking this semester don't have midterms or finals. Either, there is no final or the final is not cumulative, meaning we just take our last regular test, not over the whole semester. I have some tests that will hit me when I come back though unfortunately, but I'm glad this week won't be too bad. And, the beauty of not having Friday classes: I'm leaving to go home Thursday afternoon when my last class ends! I can't wait! I haven't been home since winter break, which is just kind of the norm with spring semesters. There's not a lot of breaks that give the opportunity to go home for those of us who don't live close. Spring semester always seems to fly by though so it's not so bad.

Anyways, this week I will be working on a Flash interactive graphic for the Daily News for this Friday and I'm working on the April issue of IndyMoms. My roommate Amanda and I also have a lot of work to do on our magazine. That class is so fast paced. Our professor wants everyone to have all of their content gathered (for the whole magazine!) by the Tuesday after spring break. Amanda and I got a lot out of our trip to Indy the other weekend, but we still have a lot to get. We're both going to come back a little early from break so that we can work on it. 

Another thing on my mind this week is the Student Goverment Association (SGA) election. I don't think a lot of people vote in these elections, but I think they are really important.  SGA represents the student body and works with administration to get things students want changed. One of the things they did this year was get more fan buses to go to the away football games. The fan buses were in high demand this year because of the team's success and some people were being turned down. Last week I helped Ball Bearings and the Daily News and other news organizations on campus with a collaborative SGA site that we built to give students a one-stop place for information on the elections (http://ballbearingsonline.com/bsusga/). Right now I have no idea who I want to vote for, so that's something I need to figure out soon!

Well, need to get back to homework. Check back in with me next week!

 Stephanie

Today I went with my roommate coffee mug shopping. Yes. Mug shopping. And last weekend I went with her and another friend to downtown Indy talking to people in coffee shops. We felt pretty productive because as crazy as it sounds this was our homework for our magazine design class. I realized I haven't spoken very much about my magazine design class, but that's one of my more interesting classes this semester. I remember hearing about this class when I toured the journalism department in high school. I thought it was so cool you spend the whole semester creating and designing a magazine. It really is turning out to be just as much fun, if not more, than what I first envisioned. My roommate Amanda and I have teamed up to create a magazine we're calling INDETAIL. We're really excited about it.

The magazine is basically a lifestyle type magazine for Indianapolis and we're doing something a little different than some of our other classmates. We're making it pocket size. We're targeting the 21-30ish age range and we felt like our target reader would be someone who's on the go a lot so we felt like a smaller magazine that they could take with them places would be cool. And each month the whole magazine would be themed. We only create one magazine in the class though so for this "month" we are doing Indianapolis coffee culture! That's the in "detail" part of our name. And the IND is like Indy—Indianapolis—IND. And because our magazine is going to be so much smaller than normal magazines we wanted to make sure people could see our photos well so all of our photos will be close up "in detail" shots. We've put A LOT of thought into this...but I'm really excited. I think the end product will be pretty cool. I'll definitely make sure to post that on here when we finish at the end of the semester.

Right now we've been gathering a lot of the content. Today we were shopping around for cool mugs because that's going to be our "style" section. Last weekend we traveled to a bunch of different coffee shops to get pictures and talk to people to do short story/reviews on them for our "where to go" section. Who know's what next weekend will be, but it's been really fun so far and a great bonding experience with my roommate and our friend Cassandra who's not in our class but is helping take photos for the whole magazine. I'll post some photos below from that weekend. Soon we will be figuring out the actual design of the magazine. Amanda and I have a bunch of ideas rolling around in our heads so it will be interesting to see what we come up with in the end.

But, other things going on: iMedia is going to be testing the updated television interface next week. We have new content for that that we've been working on and we made tweaks to the old application. I also developed though a whole new interface to test towards the end of the semester. I wasn't super happy with the first interface and so even though I thought it might be too late to change things, I had some ideas in my head for what we could do differently and mocked up a design. I showed everyone in class and they really liked it so we're going to try and create that and test it at the end of the semester. In the mean time, we are going to be pushing content to the iPhone application weekly and testing it with users.

Oh also, we've been considering changing the name of iMedia. This is still to be determined, but some people felt like the name didn't describe what we're doing very well. A few names have been thrown around, but it's still undetermined. 

And lastly, big changes are happening at The Daily News. This past Friday was our first Friday to NOT publish a print edition. :/ Sad, but we had to cut out our Friday issue, at least temporarily. Because of money I believe...and this way we have more pages to work with for the rest of the week.  We are making more of an effort to develop our Web site now that we have this extra day/night of free time, something though that we should have been doing long ago. Our Web site/multimedia has never been anything really great. We are taking this unfortunate circumstance as an opportunity to move forward with the Web site more. We want to do more interactive graphics, video, photo slideshows, etc. I'm excited to see where we go with this. It's definitely a long time coming...

And that's really it with me. Check in next week!

Stephanie

Here's the photos from the weekend we went to Indianapolis for my magazine project. There's a few of the photos we're going to use for our magazine and a few just of Amanda and I at work interviewing. All of these photos compliments of our amazing photographer Cassandra Adamson:

This photo was taken at The Abbey Coffeehouse downtown.

 This one was taken at Hubbard & Cravens downtown.

Me and my roommate Amanda at Hubbard & Cravens getting ready to talk to someone.

Amanda and I talking to people at Hubbards & Cravens.

 One of our photos from Mo'Joe's Coffeehouse.

Amanda and I talking to people at Mo'Joe's.

And last but not least, our beautiful photographer Cassandra! Thanks Cassie! :)

Sorry. I am way overdue for a blog post. Time sort of escaped me the past two weeks. I've been really nervous about internships and getting the March issue of IndyMoms finished. IndyMoms was a short deadline this month, so I only had a couple weeks to put it together. I will say it's a different experience. It's all on my own time so it gets pretty easy to push off. This month was really my test too because the first issue I did was over winter break and that was pretty easy because there was plenty of time on my hands, but this month was the first time working on it during school when I have a lot of other things going on and there's not a specific set time that I am supposed to work. It's easier when you know you have a set time you have to work. It's hard making scheduling that time yourself because if something else of importance comes up then the work gets pushed off a little bit until it becomes the priority. I did pretty well this month staying on top of it I think, but I've learned that the weekends are really my best opportunity to get work done. Next month will hopefully be a little easier if it's not as quick of a turn-around.

The other thing on my mind lately is internships. A few of my friends have gotten them, but a few of us haven't. Where my friends have gotten internships so far (mostly my graphics friends from the Daily News): The Florida-Times Union, The Indianapolis Star, Boston Globe and the Minneapolis Star Tribune. I'm still waiting along with a few of my other friends. I'm getting a little nervous too because a few of the places I applied have said they aren't sure they will have the money to hire interns this summer. Which of course is just the case when applying for newspaper internships this year. It's not a good economy and not a growing business. Nevertheless, I'm continuing to look for and apply to newspaper internships. A few have posted late or extended deadlines so I'm applying to those. Last weekend I went last minute to an AP Job Fair at Franklin College with my roommates. It's a job fair the Indiana AP organization holds every spring at a university. Last year it was at Ball State and this year it was at Franklin. You sign up for scheduled times to interview with newspapers from all over the state and even the Associated Press. This job fair is often better for more of the writers and photographers than designers, but I thought it was worth going and networking. A lot of these papers said they don't have the money though for internships which was unfortunate. Many were there for the possibility of hiring or hiring in the future.
I know it's not really looking good right now, but I keep applying because I really like newspapers. It's what I know and what I'm interested in and really where I'd like to be after college. I guess I'm just not really ready to give up that dream. Even still, come March if something doesn't show up, I'll start looking into what else I could do this summer. I have a few ideas right now. A professor mentioned a project she might need help on that has to do with creating a Web site which would be fun and I'm interested in learning more web design this summer if an internship isn't available. I think developing my digital media skills would be a good use of my time if it comes down to not getting an internship.

For now though, I just keep applying and wait!

Stephanie

It's finally here! The Ball Bearings Online redesign is finally done. Or mostly. There are still some additions/tweaks that need to be made and should be made within the next few uploads, but for now please do check it out!!

Hi everyone. First week of classes went well. I wanted to comment real quick though on one thing from last week that I didn't get around to blogging about. And that's to enjoy your time living on campus. You will probably complain sometimes about living in residential halls for a while and be itching to get out into your own apartment, but it's times like last week when living on campus would have just been more convenient.

Now I understand why my current roommates wanted to move back closer to campus next year. Driving in the winter weather really stinks. Indiana weather of course is just spectacular. We went last week from temperatures where the high was in the negatives and then to getting nearly a blizzard of snow. Muncie has also been having some trouble clearing the roads especially in some of the neighborhoods. Anyways, I got into a minor accident on my way to class last week in one of those neighborhoods. There wasn't a whole lot I could do to prevent it. I was making a turn as slow as I could but it was sharp and the roads were just too slick and I slid into a car in the other lane. Everyone was fine and the damages were fairly minor, but at that moment I was really wishing I just lived closer to campus. Luckily the class I was going to got canceled because my professor was commuting from Indy and was stuck in traffic because of the weather. Though, I wish I had known that before I left my apartment.

Anyways, moral is think twice before you move off campus. This week is going much better for me and thankfully the weather has been a bit more cooperative. I've also learned my lesson and I'm going to try and commute by bus on the days when weather is really bad.

Stephanie