The University of Blog

Wakarusa last year with my friend Kristin
For the next four days, I will be at the Wakarusa Music and Camping Festival in Lawrence, Kans. There are a lot of smaller bands and then the Flaming Lips, Cake, Ben Folds and the Old 97s. I went last year and it was a lot of fun, but I commuted from my house 15 minutes away. This year will be the first year that I am camping. I haven’t camped since a family trip more than three years ago. We used to take camping family vacations all the time. Needless to say, I miss it. The music will be really good this year. I’ll let you know how it goes.

When I returned from my wonderful vacation, I came home to an empty foyer – which meant that my bikes were gone. I had two bikes – one was a mountain bike and my road bike. The mountain bike was strewn in the middle of our lawn (which was only a cheap Target bike), but my road bike that I ride everywhere was missing. I asked my roommates when it happened and then filed a police report. Apparently, it happened three days before I returned. This was really awful. I don’t know if it would have made a difference if my roommates noticed earlier, but alas, it was a sad day of return for me.
So, the lesson that I learned is to ALWAYS lock up the bike, even if it is to itself. A thief that cannot immediately ride away on a bike will be deterred. This means even locking it up INSIDE the foyer of our apartment. I will apply this to my NEW bike that I got off of craigslist.com yesterday. Once I learned my bike was gone and sulked for a few hours, I got online to find something that would work. I paid $70 for a used road bike. It was more than the road bike that I got for $25 at a garage sale, but it just got new rims, tires and cables. The price was for the work done on it. The best part is that it fits me, rides well and is blue – bright blue. A very sad return turned into a very sweet ride.

I was sorry to say goodbye to Mexico and my family. This will be the first summer that I won’t be in Lawrence. This is weird for both my mom and I because we have spent every summer together since forever. I was once told that Lawrence stops being my hometown when I stop coming home for the summers. When I originally decided to stay, I hadn’t even considered that I probably won’t spend another summer in Lawrence. However, I refuse to close that chapter of my life. Not yet.
This summer I have decided to stay in Columbia. Since I already have the apartment and a good job here, it was the most logical option. I will start serving several lunches in addition to my bussing shifts at Sycamore. In addition, to expand my summer experience, I decided to work at KBIA as an afternoon anchor a couple of days a week. This will hopefully give me some good experience. I trained today (at 6 a.m.- ugh) to learn what stories to chose, how to organize them and voice them. Then, after the life newscasts, the stories are uploaded to the website and the newscasts are podcasts. It will be a completely different type of experience, but I am ready for that.

To make my summer even more worthwhile, my hope is to do something that I am really passionate about. Reading, Netflix and pooltime are essential, but I would like to do something more than that. I always talk about writing screenplays or books. Why not start? What is the point in waiting to start until I take a creative writing class? The time is now. And for the first time, I may have some time to do this.

I went to Mazatlan, Mexico, which is considered the “Pearl of the Pacific.” After trekking 3,000 miles across Mexico two years ago, my brother said that we should visit Mazatlan. To fill my dad’s desire to visit Portugal, we chose Mazatlan as a cheaper option—maybe Portugal will happen later down the line.

We arrived at Pueblo Bonito, Emerald Bay. It was beautiful and the staff was so friendly- gave me an opportunity to practice the Spanish that I had been studying forever. However, while I had plenty of opportunities to speak Spanish, traveling with my brother gave me less of an opportunity to speak – especially with the drivers of the open-air taxis called “la Pulmononia” (which means pneumonia—a joke started by the competing cab companies). He took every opportunity to speak Spanish—a quality of which I am jealous.

It was great to be with the fam–he first family trip that we had taken in quite awhile. Even my brother came—which made it exponentially more fun. We went to a little tequila factory and saw how it was made. It was next to a small village of Quelite with a bakery and some delicious homemade ice-cream. They also had a place to train roosters for cock fighting. It was nice to get out of the touristy part of Mexico and into the villages. Another of my favorite part of Mazatlan was the Machado Square in the historic district. It had a European feel (or what I would imagine feels European since I’ve never actually been there).
In the historic district we met up with Antonio Lopez Saenz- who happens to be one of the most famous artists of Mazatlan. His art is hanging in the Museum of Art there. We met him because a painting was hanging up at the hotel and my dad asked about it. The concierge set up a meeting for us at his house. I translated and it was a wonderful visit- the man was so generous and open. He signed three posters for us to bring back.

My brother and I went out for a couple of nights. The first night we went to Mambo Café, with plenty of live music and salsa dancing. The next couple of nights we went to Bora Bora “a discoteca,” to dance to disco music. I learned some moves and had a great time dancing with some locals. My brother was so tall I never lost him. And he definitely danced with some locals. Seems like everyone wants to dance with a gringo.

(a gazebo in the middle of the market)

I am completing my last week at KBIA, NPR affiliate, this week. I have really enjoyed my time there. I am thinking that I would like to work there as part of my editing class next semester. Just the atmosphere is greatly different from KOMU (the NBC affiliate). It has a laid-back nature, but everyone is working on what they need to. It is a smaller newsroom with more opportunities to work on stories. In the coming months, I would like to work on longer-form stories with tons of natural sound.
Yesterday I worked on a story out of Boonville about a development issue. It was more complicated than most stories that I work on just because I have no background knowledge of development issues. I read a previous article 3 times to try to comprehend the issues. A reporter needs to know about a lot, or at least learn how to understand… I LEARNED how to understand more about development. Listen to it here

Our convergence class hooked us up with some freebies—including a free ticket to Ira Glass, host of This American Life. My friend from Lawrence was in town and we ventured to Jesse Hall together. It was great because he opened with his voice among the darkness. He said that he tried to persuade the producers of the show to have the entire show in darkness. They told him that maybe that would fly in Lawrence, Kans., but not here.

It was one of the most inspiring performances/ speakers that I have ever witnessed. We are just about halfway through the semester, which means that I am incredibly burned out with pretty much everything. Thus, to hear from someone who has the same perspective on journalism and his own formula for making it work, I was enthralled. Journalism can be about people and life, not just hard news.

Glass talked about how he got into radio. And what was really amusing about it was he played one of his radio stories eight years in that was self-admittedly really awful. It is okay to suck, at least initially. And it may take awhile to find that voice. He then shared his formula for a great story, which includes motion. There is always a bigger “thing” in his stories. Everything moves in that story to a greater thing—clues or information or something that is essential to the story. He also mentioned that there can be a little something in a story that is just there purely for the enjoyment of the journalist or highlighting the humor lightheadedness of life.

Among his advice to aspiring journalists, he played some interesting and FUNNY stories. One of his stories that I really enjoyed was when he went to the Oreo cookie factory, he was actually surprised that it smelled, well, like cookies since he was so used to Oreos being a processed food. Who knew that Oreos smelled like cookies. Only Ira Glass.

I love public radio. I have always loved public radio from listening to Morning Edition before school to Car Talk on Saturday Mornings. The dial was always tuned into NPR, and I continue to love it and wake up to it. That is why I was super excited for my shift at KBIA as part of the convergence reporting class.

The first shift, I worked on a day turn story. The most challenging part was figuring out how to record a phone conversation on the phones. It is fairly simple if you push record. I didn’t. Needless to say, I had to do the interview again. Not the most pleasant experience, but good for me to learn. I feel like I learn by mistakes more than anything else.

Also, I pitched another idea about the volunteers for True/False Film Festival and was able to work on it. The most important thing about this class is coming up with solid story ideas (and a lot of them). I really enjoyed working on this story and talking to the volunteers. I got some killer natural sound (nat sound as they say in the radio world) and some interesting characters to highlight. The piece turned out well. Give it a listen.

I had a simply fabulous birthday. Much better than the previous year where I had to wait two hours for dinner. First off, we had a dance party at our house and we had a great time. I danced. A lot. Any party with dancing is a good party. Mission successful.

The rents came Saturday and we ate breakfast at Café Berlin. It serves ethnic breakfast like eggs with tomatoes, feta cheese, olives and deliciousness. We ate there and then I was off to work on my birthday eve. No worries, my parents were able to see where I work when they came into Sycamore.

My parents then took me to the Le Bourgeois Winery in Rocheport. Last year we did the same thing and it was quite delightful. My parents asked them to bring out a CostCo cake (this serves 50 and contains 2 lbs of chocolate mouse frosting.) Needless to say, it took up half the table and the server had to put it on a platter.

Then we went to Macaroni Grill with the roomies and had a delightful evening. They brought out a cake- another chocolate cake (with candles). Then back to eat some more cake and open gifts. I am proponent of birthdays- especially birthdays filled with attention. Thus, birthday wish fulfilled.

I completed my last KOMU shift. It was so much better than spending ten hours on a flash graphic. I went out with a reporter for what was originally going to be a salt truck ride-along. It turned out that on route WW, a salt truck actually turned over and we went to cover that—in the ice storm. It was very cold to say the least. My photos suffered because of it. I learned first hand that I do not want to be a spot-news reporter. I would love to work in the television medium, just not with regards to broadcast news.

Once I could feel my fingers again, I wrote a story for KOMU.com and edited the photos.
And I am very glad that I am done with my news shift this week. Free time for me at last.