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