Journalism Conference

Wow. What a boring yet fanastic day!! Started off with the same disgustingly bland food that everyone gags on as it goes down (awesome) than moves on to being yelled at and herded into buses. Oh, what fun.

We had this really important speaker, Mister Chuck Todd, who is the Chief White House Correspondant (rocking). Unfortunately, my brain was COMPLETELY dead and the only way that I was able to stay awake is to make hilarious doodles in my book; no joke, they are laugh evoking. I like what he had to say though… it was just hard to focus.

Now, when Dean Andrew Flagel spoke, EVERYONE was awake, no question about it. He is an amazing speaker; I can’t believe that he’s not a legit comedian. He really helped with some of the questions I had about college, too. It was nice to hear about another topic other than like politics (ugh).

The mall was pretty schweet. It’s too bad we didn’t have more time, because it was kinda like, “Eat, look, buy like one thing, get back on the bus on time or you die!” It was a really nice mall, though.

Ok, I’m not even sure how I can be nice about the Capitol situation. Everything  appeared like it hadn’t been planned out very well, people (not naming names but would like to say that this said person needs to take a chill pill) were freaking out about the stupidest stuff and yelling at everyone. Not appreciated. The movie that they show before the tour was perhaps the best part of the whole shabang. Tour guide=sucked. Tour=sucked. OhMyGod, our tour guide was in such a bad mood! It was horrible! He was all perschnikity and crap… I really wanted to be like, “Dude, what’s up your butt?” He definitely was not fun.

Than we got to enjoy more disorder. Walk around the Capitol, pose, wait don’t pose, pose individually, pose again. Argh!! It was hot out there and we weren’t allowed to strip to our tank tops!! That’s like torture!

We finally managed to escape the madness and get back on the nice, airconditioned bus. Ahhhhh… This is when the day begins to look amazing. Announcement, “Hour of free time.” Our faces must have been hilarious. Free time? What is this, free time? I’m not sure if I completely understand what you’re talking about. Repeat, please? The Free Time was exactly what we all needed; rejuvinated, we went to dinner and actually were able to talk without forgetting the topic halfway through a sentance due to glue-filled brains. What amazingness.

It turns out that about 45 minutes after we left the Capitol, a 35 year old guy was shot by police for being stupid w/ a gun and a regular traffic stop. Genius. Well, this sent parents into an uproar. Is my child still alive? Why haven’t I heard from you? I don’t know mom, maybe because I just found out about it myself? Obviously I’m ok. Ugh. Ridiculous. Well, I hadn’t called my mom before dinner, and we were joking around about how I should not call and ignore her messages (evil, I know) when the kid across from us at dinner whips out his phone and calls his mom. “Hi Mom. You know how our phones have chips that let us use other phones? Yea, that’s what I’m doing; I’m using a friends phone. The craziest thing happened to me. My cell phone got shot! It was in my breast coat pocket when this guy just started shooting… it saved my life!…. Say something. I love you mom! Yea, they took me to the hospital but I’m ok. Yea. Na, I’m just kidding. *giggle*” Quite hilarious… everyone around us was cracking up.

Never again do I want to start off such a busy day at that ungodly hour. I think that if you make us wake up that early, you cannot complain when we doze off during the speakers. No fair. I mean, leaving at 6:45…that’s ridiculous. Everyone was even more zombie-like than normal.

The speakers where an amazing way to start off the day. They were very personable and funny; they made you feel like anyone could become a reporter and succeed as long as you worked your ass off. They were wonderful at working off what someone else had said; the other panel didn’t really work together very well. It was really annoying when people asked the same question several times; LISTEN to what everyone else is saying and maybe we can get out of here earlier! Argh!

We then got to walk our poor selves all over the DC Mall, going from the Natural History Museum to Air and Space (really all we did was eat and people watch. The group I was in was too tired to do anything else, though we did have fun sticking french fries in sleeping peoples ears… what now) and then to the American History Museum. My favorite was the American History; I really enjoyed the Inaugeration dresses… too bad Michelle Obama’s dress wasn’t in there. That would have been rocking! The stupid thing about the whole deal was that we had to go back to the Air and Space to get picked up; why would they plan that when we obviously ate lunch there because of the vouchers they gave us. Geniuses! Jeez, your so smart you should get your own statue! Not.

Had fun doing the group activity; our group is the bomb!!! We did a group activity where people got hurt on a mountain and for some dumb reason we only send one person down for help. Awesome. What if they get hurt on the way down too?! Who wasn’t thinking? Dinner wasn’t great, but it satisfied your hunger for like 5 seconds. Yay.

Now, the night tour was bunches of fun. Our tour guide knew bunches of information and was able to hold the microphone in one hand and drive this huge freaking bus with only one hand and not crash!! I thought that was pretty impressive. He looked like the doorman in Baby Mama, “If you listen to DMX, the baby is going to come out like RRRR”. We got rocking group photos with Einstein (who wouldn’t?) and went to the Lincoln and Roosevelt memorials.

We’re going back to the capitol tomorrow, Woop Woop! It doesn’t appear to be as rushed as today, but looks can be decieving. We do get to go shopping at a real mall, not the fake grass kind. Yay!! I think tomorrow has potential to be cool; we shall see.

Whoa. Today was the first uber long day, and I’m sooo tired. Breakfast was like zombie world, “Mutter mutter. Coffee. Eggs. Mutter mutter. Ugh.” Than we had a meeting with our group (difficult to do wen everyone’s dead on their feet); we got sidetracked a lot! It definitely didn’t help that the speaker, Mister Wes Pippert, was a major snore. Sorry, but he was; he kept going on these tangents that had nothing to do about what the question was… there were quite a few people who were having a hard time focusing, myself included.

Basically after that it all got better. We got on buses with box lunches (though they were really more like tuperware containers, but who’s complaining?) and had a driver that was like, “Stop! Go! Let’s see how many people I can get to hit their heads on the seat infront of them! Bwahahahah!” Actually, she probably wasn’t that evil, but she was driving really bad.

OhMyGod! The Newseum (which isn’t called that because it’s new, just for your information) was really cool. I want to go back there, because I didn’t get to see all the floors. We did discover that there are Obama Fingerpuppets, Dolls, and Bobbleheads… He’s like a sports star!

They had this really good speaker talk to us about the history of journalism… it was really cool. It was a little bit rushed; I wish I had had more time to appreciate everything. It was kinda a hit and run thing. When we came back it was still pretty rushed… argh. But we went over to the media center and did these interviews (they definitely need more time for that), and that was hilarious!!

And by dinner time I’m pretty sure you could have served us junk and we would have eaten it. Actually, not as hungry as yesterday, but it was close. Yummy food, blah blah blah… More speakers!! This time they have FIVE speakers (trying to keep us interested), and I think my fav was the professor; he was really cool. I would go to this school just for him (not really, but I would love to sit in on his class).

Then briefing, aka Bachelorette, and runs to the convience store. Nasty slushies, melting ice cream, flying munchies. Amazing. Met a kid from South Carolina who is major cool… we were cracking up like the whole time. Fun Fun. Waking up tomorrow is going to be terrible; we leave campus at 6:45… just saying that number is like a horrible thing. It sends shivers down your spine and makes your head ache. You really hope that there’s no morning people who talk a lot and laugh loudly near you; I hate mornings, and it would not go well. :] Am really excited for the museums tomorrow!! Though the schedule looks crazy, it’s gonna be crazy fun! (wow, how cheezy can I get, right?)

Today was pretty nerve wracking, with the whole ‘meet people and become instant friends’ thing, but overall was pretty cool. Everyone is really extroverted and funny, which rocks. It’s been pretty crazy, with the checking in, not having rooms, having rooms, getting keys and meeting your roommate. Everyone is freaking out because no one wants a weird roommate (the horror!), so that was typically the starter of most conversations. Everything started to settle down by dinner, due to the rumbling of our stomachs (the demand for food overrides the strangeness of all situations).

We had a pretty cool speaker to start off this conference; the good thing about this conference is that hopefully everyone is a good speaker/is prepaired, so we shouldn’t have any really boring lectures. He was good at getting the crowd involved (though he didn’t talk about CSPAN, which is what he’s all about… strange?) Lot’s of people had really good points and it was interesting to see why everyone else was here and such. We met with our leaders (Lauren rocks and made us brownies, woop woop!) Met everyone in our groups… seem cool and funny,  major bonuses.

They just put tape on our door so that we don’t escape into the night… awesome. And tomorrow we have to wake up uber early, which is gonna stink… Hope there’s coffee!