Note To Self: Eat Salad Within a Week of Buying It

I bought this salad-in-a-bag deal two weeks ago when I went to the grocery store. It's been sitting in the fridge ever since, and I kind of forgot about it. But I decided to eat it tonight, and it was fine, but I lost quite a few of the leaves to grossness. The rest of it was good, though.

Well, today was the big day - the beginning of my internship!

I woke up at 8 a.m. and got ready for the day. I met Shanley and Mandi (WJCers), whose internship is just a couple of streets away from mine, and we went to catch the bus. First of all, it was snowing. Not intense snow like last week, but snowflakes were definitely falling from the sky. It just didn't stick.

The bus was supposed to come at 9 a.m. It didn't show up until like, 9:07 a.m., and that put me mentally behind schedule. So I was a little freaked out about that. Then, the bus ride took FOREVER. I was literally on the bus for 40 minutes. Maybe more. But I got off the bus around 9:45 a.m., I was in the right place, and Starbucks looked tempting, but I decided I would rather just be a little early on my first day.

I went into the building, went up to the 5th floor and met my editor, Keith. I'm going to be working under whoever needs me for the day, it sounds like, but I think Keith is kind of my main editor. Either way, he was a very friendly and nice man, and he took me around the office, introducing me to whoever was there. Everyone I met was friendly and smiling and asked me about myself a little bit. I liked everyone. I think I'm going to like working in this office.

Then he showed me some things that everyone in the newsroom contributes to everyday - "newsmakers" (three people everyday who did something newsworthy), "heart of the city" (some organization that did/does something charitable), and "3-minute interview" (all the reporters take a different day and find someone to interview who is related to a newsworthy topic). I started looking through some of the links he had sent me, and then Cathy - the Virginia editor, I think - had an assignment for me.

Last week, one of the other reporters had written a piece about these group homes for troubled youth that were possibly going to be closed in Prince William County (VA). The Board that was deciding was voting today, and they needed someone to cover it, because the original writer was doing something else. So it became my story.

They gave me the article he had written about it, and the "motion" they were trying to get passed that had all the info in it. I also had to watch the board meeting at 2 p.m. to see the results of the vote. Sounded easy enough.

Well, it is a hard thing to pick up a story from someone else and go off of their research, because you don't have as good of an understanding of the story as they would. So I swam through the info they gave me, trying to make sense of it and getting the info I had onto a Word doc so I wouldn't have to write the entire thing after the vote had been given. By the time 2 p.m. rolled around, I had a pretty good understanding of the subject.

The meeting started at 2 p.m., and I was watching it via streaming video on their web site. It worked beautifully on my laptop, but there was a LOT of stuff on their agenda before this vote came up. I watched the Board of County Supervisors meeting for two full hours before the thing I was supposed to be reporting on even came up. Not exciting at all.

THEN. Literally as they said they were going to talk about these group homes, the streaming video stopped working. I could have died. I had just watched two hours of this meeting only to have it stop working right when I needed to pay attention the closest.

I finally got it to work again, but by this time, I had missed about 10-15 minutes and was unable to see what I had missed. Fortunately I was able to see them vote and got a little bit of the talking they did about it, but it wasn't enough (in my opinion) to really make me feel confident about the story. So I worked with what I had, put the piece together and sent it in, on time to my deadline, at 4:45 p.m. Cathy edited it and sent it back to me, and she had changed quite a bit of it, but I really appreciated the changes she had made. I knew the piece wasn't very good, and I needed way more attribution, but I just wanted to send her what I had. I couldn't get what I needed at the time.

She was extremely nice about it. She gave some great suggestions, and it's not printing until Thursday, so I had this evening and tomorrow morning to finish it up - hopefully by then the meeting video will be archived and I can go back and see the portion of talking that I missed - that should help it out a whole lot.

I finally left around 6:30 p.m. It was a long day. AND, since I had never actually gone inside before, I had no idea what people did for lunch or how that worked or anything. So I had planned on buying lunch, but didn't know if I could just leave and then was working so hard on everything, that I just never ate. And I hadn't eaten breakfast because I didn't have time. So I hadn't eaten all day. I just sat at my desk and worked.

So I decided to grab a drink before I got on the bus home, figuring that would hold me over until I got home. It worked. I got on the bus and came home, after meeting a kid named Dean who was extremely friendly and talked to me for a portion of my ride home. He was going to see some Chinese dance thing at the Kennedy Center and he was very excited about it.

Arriving back at the building was completely surreal - it felt like days since I had been there. But I came in and Karin made us pasta and I had salad too and now I feel much better. And I'm taking lunch with me tomorrow. For sure. I WILL eat.

I already have a story assignment for tomorrow, too. I get to do my own research this time (yay!) and talk to financial aid people at universities in this area about how the economy may be affecting students' decisions to go to public universities instead of private ones.

So it was a decent first day. Not the most exciting, and I wish I had eaten, but it was good. I'm so happy everyone is so friendly and helpful. It makes a huge difference. I think I'm going to fit in well.

And Keith told me as I was leaving that he hoped I would never again have to watch a 2 hour board meeting twice ever again. He said he hoped this was the most boring assignment I was ever given in their newsroom.

Me too.