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Exciting news!! I found out last week I get to fly in to Boston for a day and interview with The Boston Globe!!! I applied a couple weeks ago for their summer internship and I received a call about coming up there for a day to see the town and newsroom. They're paying for the trip, expenses and everything!

I don't know of a lot of internships that do this, but I'm not complaining! I'm really excited and honored. Even if I don't get the internship, this will be quite an experience in itself. 

My roommate also applied and is interviewing up there. She will be up Tuesday. I leave Thursday from Indianapolis at 6:20 a.m.!! I'm going to have to be up REALLY early Thursday morning to drive to Indy that early. And then I will leave Boston at 5:30 p.m. and get back to Indy at 9:30 or 10 p.m. It will definitely be a LONG day, but I can't wait!

I have no idea how the day is going to go. I'm nervous and a little scared of traveling on my own. I did it leaving Philadelphia, but this time I'm entering a new city by myself. I'm not sure what to expect. I'm really excited for the plane time though. I love, love, love plane rides! I'll definitely get my fill of it Thursday.

Anyways, I'll write more on how things went when I get back. Hopefully I'll have some pictures too!

So check back!

Stephanie

Hey everyone!

Know how I say in my blog video that I am going to try and not catch senioritis? Too late. I am worn out! I really wish Thanksgiving break were here. Or even next semester. Right now, I'm slightly procrastinating on a media law paper due Wednesday by writing this...but I think it will be ok. ;)

I have tonight to work on this law paper and to work on a small video project also due Wednesday. After this week, I should hopefully be over the biggest hills of this semester. This week I'm really not looking forward to though. I need to finish the paper and project that are due Wednesday tonight so that I can focus on the newspaper the rest of the week. Tonight is usually a night I spend at the paper, but my roommate is filling in for me as editor tonight so that I can catch up because later this week she's leaving me to attend the National Scholastic Press Association conference in D.C. for work. I work with her in the journalism workshops office, so I had the opportunity to go too, which I'm pretty sad and jealous about. I went to the conference to help out last year and had a lot of fun and I really could use a break. Unfortunately, somebody had to stay to take care of the paper. We have a special section coming out again this week. And since I have my projects due this week and some internship applications due this next weekend, I figured I should probably stay.

It's no fun though. :( I was looking forward to the trip. But, sometimes you have to sacrifice a little fun I guess. It's not helping for my motivation very much though...

One thing I'm really excited about though is that I managed to design and build a new portfolio site last week in like three days. Now THAT'S productivity! You can see it at www.stephaniecope.com. It's pretty basic and simple, but the great part is that it's really easy to update. I found a site that makes uploading content easy. Then I just customized the design. I've been learning a lot of CSS in my new media journalism class and with a little messing around, figured out how to customize my site pretty well (kind of like I did for this blog, except this code was a little more complicated).  This is great though. This is one thing that's been really weighing on my mind. Internship applications creep up pretty fast, one after another. So this way, I can provide this link as a way for them to explore more of my work. I just tack it on to my résumé and cover letter and it's as simple as that. And it's so easy to update so it will always be current. It will definitely also help with applying for jobs. Who knows when one will pop up? If I'm really busy, I can just send along a résumé and have them check out my Web site! 

Last week I was also working on an issue of IndyMoms again and getting off an internship application to The Boston Globe. It sounds kind of busy, but in comparison to other weeks, it actually wasn't too bad.

Oh! And I had a fun Halloween! On Friday my boyfriend and I heard about a free Third-Eye Blind concert outside of Conseco Fieldhouse in Indy before the Pacers game. So, we decided to be spontaneous and go see it. It was a lot of fun and a great concert! No pictures though, sorry. :-/ It was POURING that evening and the concert was underneath a tent, which we were not about to die of suffocation in...We just stood underneath an umbrella the whole time. We were pretty close though and could see fairly well between the heads of people!

Then we drove back and my roommate and I had a party at our apartment with some friends from the Daily News. And then on Halloween I kind of relaxed. My boyfriend Derek and I carved a pumpkin! I designed the template, and he carved! Here's a picture:

:) It's Carol from Where the Wild Things Are!

That's pretty much everything I've been up to. Oh! One more thing. I also signed up for classes for next semester. That's always an exciting time. I'm sad it's my last semester though. But BECAUSE it's my last semester, I set up an appointment with my academic adviser to make sure I was on track to graduate. I'd suggest everyone do that. I know too many people who go into their last semester thinking they're going to graduate and they find out they are missing a few elective hours so they have to stick around for a semester and take blow off classes like cooking. :P My mom told me four years and that's it, since I'm out-of-state and my scholarship will end after four years, hence why I met with my adviser. The meeting was great. My adviser told me exactly everything I needed to sign up for next semester. There's not much left. I'm taking some pretty easy classes:

News 485- My capstone course for journalism. This will actually be pretty difficult.

Honors Science 296- Yeah...I pushed off my science class. :-/ I wouldn't recommend doing that... 

Honors 499- My thesis

Finance 101- This is a one credit hour course. I'm not planning on having any homework in it. It's a new one they're making freshman take now as part of their curriculum. It's important stuff, learning about taxes and whatnot. (Clearly I have no clue, but since I'm about to be out my own in a year—yikes!—I should probably learn this stuff...)

Digital Corp classes- Adobe Dreamweaver and Flash courses (Read my previous blog for more information.)

Yoga!- My friend Amanda and I signed up and PAID for a gym pass this semester, and we haven't used it once! :-/ yeaahh...my mom's not happy. But things come up! We're hoping that actually having a class at a set time, we'll HAVE to go. We're trying!

And I think that's it! It seems like a lot typed here, but most of the classes are one credit hour, which generally means little to no homework, so it shouldn't be too difficult. The only classes I NEED to graduate are News 485, Honors 499 and the science class, so if I have to drop something it's not a huge deal. 

The great thing too is that I applied for graduation earlier this semester (just something you have to do so they know you are planning on graduating in May, it's pretty much checking a button—simple stuff) and I've heard that if you've applied for graduation you get all of the classes you request! That way there's not the excuse of not getting in a class that keeps you from graduating. This is great news because the yoga class is hard to get in. It always fills up super fast. I've tried for a few semesters now. :P

Ahhh enough procrastinating. I need to finish this paper. I think that's enough for now.

Later!

Stephanie

It's only been a couple weeks since my last post, but so much has happened. The Daily News redesign is complete and in production, my parents came up for Family Weekend, I went to St. Louis for fall break, and I dropped a class and my minor.

The latter was stressing me out quite a bit last week. I decided to drop my digital media minor. This means I only have one major and no minor. I wasn't sure how I felt about that, but I decided the extra curriculars I was doing were more important than the minor.  I would have liked to keep my minor, but I felt like I didn't have much of a choice in withdrawing from the class I was in and that class was not offered to take again next semester. The class was a group project, and typically that would be fine. I've never had a problem getting along with people. But the professor assigned groups—and there were issues. My groupmates' schedules and mine did not work together, no matter how hard we tried or how many things we rearranged. My group couldn't communicate. Personalities clashed. I felt like things were falling apart and I felt like, in the end, a lot of the work was going to fall on my shoulders. It was more stress than it seemed worth. I had discussed these issues with my professor early on, and decided to stick with the class and try to make things work. As the class progressed, things continued to slip and the weight of other classes and commitments were breaking me down. So, I had to decide. I needed to sit down, value my commitments and drop something. In the end, I decided the class and the minor were not as important to me as my other extra curriculars. Instead of having a digital media minor, I am going to take digital corps classes next semester. These are one credit our 5-week program courses taught by students who are knowledgable in a particular program. I am going to take Adobe Dreamweaver and Adobe Flash and try to get a certification in Flash by taking a test at the end. I feel like this certification will say the same as the digital media minor, if not more.

So that was my big dilemma last week. It worked out. And I knew it was a good decision because I felt the most relieved I had all semester. A lot of stress was taken off my shoulders. It's an important lesson though: sometimes you have to value things in your life and shed the extra stress.

Unfortunately, there's still quite a bit of stress still lingering. The redesign is done thankfully. (You can see it here! —The first page is the old design, the last three are the new. And see the new Web site here!) We managed to get through the last week designing all of the pages between three of us editors while the other designers trained. Becky and I even designed an eight page paper completely by ourselves one of the nights. It was quite a feat. But even in week two, we're working out kinks between our designers and our reporters. Our younger designers are still trying to pick up the new style and our reporters are still getting the hang of a new type of storytelling we've forced upon them, where they break up some of their stories into a more visual presentation.

All in all it's coming together. But in addition to putting out each day's paper I am working on a huge graphic due in two weeks, a 10 page paper for media law, designing IndyMoms magazine, creating a Web site for my new media class, planning Society for News Design meetings, creating a new portfolio Web site and applying for internships. It's madness. I'm not sure how everything's going to get done. I really don't know how it would have all gotten done had I kept that class... :/

I'm going to keep hanging in there.

Until next time,

Stephanie 

It's that time of the year. The semester's flying by, but the workload is at it's peak. I'm stressed to no end, but I have a few things coming up in the week(s) ahead that I'm excited about and that are keeping me going.

The first is that the redesign of the newspaper that I've been working on is nearly complete. We launch it next Monday, Oct. 19!!! I'm really excited to see my and my roommate Becky's hard work pay off. We've been working every week on this to get it ready and we're both pretty excited for it to be finally done. I wish I could show you guys a sneak preview, but we'll all just have to wait until next Monday. It's such a beautiful design. I really can't contain my excitement!! I'm excited to see how students react and I'm also excited because I think this design will be my little mark at Ball State. I think that's kind of cool that the design Becky and I created will live on for a while after we've left this campus.

The only downside to this redesign is that we will have a lot of work to do the first couple weeks of the launch. It's quite a transition and they need to be good first issues. We also have a lot of training to do with our staff. I'm honestly a little worried about the next two weeks. If things weren't already stressful, now I'm going to be spending twice as much time at the newspaper...that's going to be interesting since I already spend nearly every waking hour there. :-/ I'll let you know how that goes...

 The other thing I'm pretty excited about is my family!! It's that time of the year: the time when you start to miss your parents—even if they call nearly every day to play a game of 20 questions at the worst possible moment...

The good thing is they have something called family weekend where all of the parents come to visit for one whole weekend! I know that sounds SUPER exciting, but trust me, when you get here and you've been away from your parents for two months, you'll understand. It really is kind of fun. I get to eat out on my parents dime and they get to watch me accept my dean's list award from the following year. I have no idea how else I will entertain them, but I'm sure we'll find some way to kill time.

The other good thing is that the weekend after this one is Fall Break! I'm going to try and go home to St. Louis for that weekend. (I know, I know, family two weekends in a row? Am I crazy? No. I just miss my dog. :P) My boyfriend Derek will be coming with me that weekend. I've brought him to St. Louis once before, but he was excited to go again for a short vacation.

So if I can hold out just a little bit longer, exciting things are just a few days away...

I think I can do it. 

Find out next time if I did!!

Until then, lata!

Stephanie

P.S. I know I talk a lot about being busy, but I do find time to do some fun things. Last Thursday night Derek and I went to the Taylor Swift concert in Indianapolis! It was really fun and a great concert! And while I'm sure he'd deny any insinuations of him actually enjoying country music, I think Derek had fun too. ;)

This week is one of those stressful weeks for every college student. It's Homecoming week. It's an exciting time, but usually falls during a time when stress is high, tests are often and projects are in full bloom.

It's not easy to concentrate when there are so many fun activities like football games, scavenger hunts, talent shows, bonfires, fireworks, and bed races (famous to Ball State, we're weird; we dress up in costumes and ride beds down a street). 

It's especially not easy when you work for the newspaper every night. This week is also dreaded by many DNers (Daily News-ers) because we put out two extra Homecoming issues. One Friday and one Saturday. So we're in here on our Friday night of Homecoming, putting out a paper. :( 

 But it doesn't all suck. We bring in food and we do a lot of fun content. Like a huge page on how to paint yourself for the game. 

This week though has been crazy. On top of tests and projects and covering all of the Homecoming events, yesterday we had breaking news. It's one of the coolest experiences when news breaks. The day stops for many of the newsroom staff. People skip classes to go cover the news. When Virginia Tech happened, the day stopped. I wasn't there, but when September 11 happened, the day stopped. Yesterday's news wasn't quite as huge, but it made national headlines.

Yesterday's news was that a plane crashed near Muncie. We had a photographer on the scene immediately and a story on the Web almost instantly. My roommate and friend Becky threw together a map for online and plans were being made to make animated graphics. That night we decided to change our page one package from the Homecoming flag football game to the plane crash. Becky and I worked on graphics for the front all night. It was a close call on deadline, but everything turned out pretty cool. Here's a link to the page. And here's a link to the interactive graphic.

It was a good day and I'm really proud of everything everyone was able to accomplish. Now I need to go finish up tonight's paper and get some sleep...

So bye!

Stephanie

Hello everyone!

Welcome to my blog. My name is Stephanie Cope. I'm a senior journalism graphics major and digital media minor. This is my second year blogging for Ball State (you can see last year's blog here), but for those of you who are just tuning in I'll tell you a little bit about myself. 

Short synopsis: I'm 21. I love rap music. My favorite shows are LOST and Greek (although I am also in the process of reliving my childhood by buying and watching all of the seasons of Dawson's Creek) and my favorite movie is Back to the Future. I'm from St. Charles, Mo. which is a suburb of St. Louis. If you've never heard of it, you wouldn't be the first. But we're pretty proud of the fact that we are the official starting point for Lewis and Clark's journey and we were the first capitol of Missouri!

I've really enjoyed my time here at Ball State. I've gotten to work on some awesome projects. Last year I worked on iMedia, which is a class that is building a news application for the iPhone. If you would like to learn more about that, you should check out my blog from last year. 

One of my favorite things about Ball State is it's size. I've gotten a chance to be a big fish in a fairly small pond. I know my professors really well and because of that I've gotten some amazing opportunities like internships working for The Indianapolis Star and The Philadelphia Inquirer, both large metropolitan newspapers.

This semester is a busy one for me. I have 15 hours of classes (total of 5 classes), three jobs and a senior thesis to work on. Some of the things I'm doing this year are:

• Working for student newspaper, The Ball State Daily News. I've worked there since my freshman year design pages and doing graphics. I'm the graphics editor now, which means I work with a staff of graphics designers to make and edit the maps, charts, diagrams and illustrations that run in the paper. I also help out a lot with the design side as well. My friend and roommate this year, Becky, is the design editor so we kind of share our roles and work together a lot. We're also both working on a complete redesign of the paper which is launching in October and we're helping converge the student media on campus. I'll talk more about all of this in another post.
  
• I have an on-campus job at the Journalism Workshops office. I've worked there for about a year. I design a lot of their promotional stuff and I help out at the events they host (Junior High Journalism Day, High School J-Day and Summer Journalism Workshops). So if you're in journalism and your high school comes to J-Day at Ball State this year you may see me!
• I am president of Ball State's Society for News Design chapter.
  
• And I'm freelancing for The Indianapolis Star designing their IndyMoms magazine every month.

I've probably bitten off a little more than I can chew, but I'm confident that everything will turn out fine. I like staying busy and I hate turning down opportunities. College is definitely full of them.

So follow me on my journey through my senior year. On top of this mess of classes and extra curriculars I've managed to get myself in, I'm going to have to find time to go through the stressful job/internship search as well as experience the quarter-life-crisis-what-in-the-world-am-I-going-to-do-with-my-life meltdown.

Gah. Senior year kind of crept up on me. I really have no idea what the official plan after college is... Try asking me in a few months!

For now though, I'm going to cut out. If you guys have any questions or comments through out the year, be sure to post them below and I'll get back to you!

Until next time,

Stephanie