Live from camp: A productive day

I walked into the ThreeSixty Journalism classroom this morning with little comprehension of where I was or what was going on. I was suffering from something I like to call “Harry-Potter-at-midnight-screwed-up-my-sleep-schedule-so-I-didn’t-get-to-bed-til-three-last-night”. Stumbling in to my seat, I glared fiercely at Annie who was telling us to clean up the trash we didn’t need. Taking longer than any well-bodied teenager should, I finally got up to throw away my newspaper. From there we did check-in on article progress. All things considered, I like to think my check-in answer was incredibly well spoken.

We then moved to the computers to work on writing, contacting sources and the like. After realizing how comfortable the computer chairs were and attempting to nap, Kaia told me to start being productive. It was then that I hit the second phase of tired: slap-happy. After checking Facebook to see if anyone was newly single-err and checking to see if sources had gotten back to me, I turned to Kaia and started making a collection of interesting faces at her. Without giving me much attention, Kaia told me to just write my article already. Surprisingly, it only took me twenty minutes to follow her order. (The twenty minutes were spent looking at the new Project Runway casts’ bios.)

I managed to finish my first draft right before lunch. (I admit, I did take breaks between paragraphs to look at myself in different PhotoBooth effects.) After lunch, I finally hit a level of energy that could be considered normal. I spent my conscious hours lamenting over how boring my stereotypical suburban life has been. Unable to come up with a good personal essay, I came up with ideas I could do on other features. Then, I got my first draft back and started making edits. All and all, today was a relatively productive day, despite the fact that I fell asleep on my keyboard. Twice.

- Laura Shannon, Introduction to Journalism Camp ’11