Documentary Night

For the first time in a while I feel like I've managed to get caught up with all of my school related reading. It's really nice to feel like you're ahead of the game, instead of continually behind. I have a few more sections of USA Today to read tonight and then I need to review the AP Stylebook and then I'm done for the night. That is a really nice feeling.

It was muggy outside the majority of the day, which made walking to and from class uncomfortable. I'm glad I had long sleeves though because it seemed like every single one of my classes was freezing.

After class I came back to my dorm and did some cleaning. The sink in the bathroom was getting pretty gross honestly.

Tomorrow I'm planning to Volunteer at a sort of local Elementary school. They're having a "Curriculum Carnival", so that should be interesting. Tomorrow afternoon I have to make a call and confirm that I can get a ride there and back.

This evening though was really interesting. I went to the 'premiere' of a documentary that was produced by a couple professor's from MSU. The name of the documentary is "Arabs, Jews, and The News". The website for the film can be found here: http://www.arabsjewsnews.org/ . After they played the documentary they had a panel with several of the 'commentators'. It was really interesting to listen to.

Something that really interested me about what was said, was the commentary on the media and the way that they have looked at issues currently taking place in the middle east. I do think that the media often gets hung up on portraying situations in particular ways and failing in many ways to be truly objective. What I mean when I say that is they fail to take an issue and look at it from new perspectives.

For example one of the men on the panel was Nolan Finley from The Detroit News. He talked about covering the rallies that took place in Dearborn. He felt that it was very important to cover the fact that there were people there who supported Hezbollah and equated Jews with the Nazi's. Now, perhaps it is a fact that that was taking place as the photographs confirm, but if reports from several people who were there are true those who were doing so were the minority. In fact, it has been said that those who were holding these signs were asked to discard them by others at the event. This could easily have been the focus of an article, rather than merely the fact that those individuals were there.

Sometimes it's about looking for the less obvious angle...

Technological Woes

My upper level journalism class is going to be the death of me. It has been decided.

I have so much reading that I need to get done in the next couple days it's not even funny. The bulk of the reading is for my Journalism class, which I have again on Thursday, but tonight I have to focus on tomorrow's classes because over the weekend I focused on the Journalism class. It's a cycle, a hole that I'm not sure how to climb out of.

I was in class until noon today, and after class I made my usual walk to the gas station that carries The Lansing State Journal. I swear, it doesn't matter what time of day I show up there, they only every have a couple copies left. I dread the day that they are sold out, because nowhere else ever seems to have it. Why is this paper so popular? Why don't they print more copies to account for the popularity?

Anyway... after grabbing something to eat I had to head off to work which went as well as it ever seems to lately. I'm considering looking into some of the bookstores. I think that would be a much better fit. After work I made the hike to get my copy of USA Today. I now have all three of my papers for the day, but haven't gotten to read them yet. They will be read before I find sleep however. Wish me luck!

For the moment I'm reading chapter two of my economics book. It's thrilling. My phone has decided to malfunction. It was working fine until I got back here, and now whenever I make a call or someone calls me I can hear them but they can't hear me. It's highly annoying, and to combat that problem I have ordered a new phone into which I can transplant my sim card. Thank God for Ebay!

Alright, now that I've gotten this out of the way I can get back to studying.

Just Another Night

For the moment I have managed to finish one of the six newspapers that I had to read. Only five more to go! I'm going to try and power through them tonight when I start watching the MDA telethon.

Meeting Sarah for ice cream was a lot of fun. I'm really glad I got the chance to do that before going back tomorrow. At some point tomorrow morning I have to go to the store. I need a more efficient way to file away my papers for class than binders. Binders are incredibly heavy when you do nothing but walk distances. I also need to come up with a new way to fasten my full length mirror to the bathroom door.

The hooks over the door work, but it makes opening and closing the door a pain, plus it doesn't seem very stable. We'll get the quirks worked out one way or another. For the moment I'm watching a movie with the family, because obviously I haven't avoided homework enough recently.

All kidding aside though, it is really nice to be back to school even if it is taking some time to adjust on my part.

So Little TIme

To be honest today hasn't been the most productive homework-wise... I finished reading the first of three chapters that I need to have read for Thursday, and have gotten out and situated my six newspapers. I plan to read through them once this is written and posted. It is the plan, or at least the partial plan. This evening I'm having supper with my family (chicken and baked potatoes) before going out for ice cream with Sarah. After ice cream I'll probably mosey on over to my sisters house.

I need to focus as getting as much of my reading done tonight before I go to sleep. I can haz focus? You'll be hearing about my success and or failure later tonight, unless I drop the ball and don't blog. I will do my best not to drop the ball!

I also need to re-program phone numbers into my phone before I go back to school. Ah, there is so much to be done and so little time available! I head back to school tomorrow afternoon, and this will be my last weekend home until my cousin's wedding at the beginning of October. It's time to buckle down and work on establishing a GPA!

Alright, back to work!

Lansing State Journal

Hey, look who remembered to blog!

On the whole it hasn't been too exciting of a day, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. I had two classes this morning, with a rather long break between them. During that break I had lunch and picked up two of the three papers I'm supposed to read everyday. I haven't even read the one's that I picked up yesterday yet... Yes, I have six newspapers to read through this weekend. Awesome!

Once my last class of the day was through I made the trek down to the gas station for my final newspaper. This time they only had two left, and I definitely got there way earlier in the day today than I did yesterday. What is it with the Lansing State Journal?

Aside from the newspapers I have at least one hundred and fifty pages of reading to do for my two Journalism classes between the three textbooks. Maybe I'll try and get some of it done before I leave tomorrow... The first football game is tomorrow, so working the breakfast shift should be interesting, and by interesting I mean crazy. We shall see! I am going home at some point tomorrow afternoon, since Monday it a holiday and therefore there is no class, plus the MDA telethon is on!

I just made my yearly donation a few minutes ago. Has anyone noticed that I'm really good at leaving things 'till the last minute? Yeah, huh. Anyway, I got back to my dorm and worked through a very small portion of my homework before my interview with my RA. It was just a kind of "getting to know you, how are you adjusting" thing. No big deal. We had a floor dinner around six, which only about five of us between the two floors went but that's alright. It was fun, if a little awkward.