THE MEANDERWALKER

If you keep up with me in real life in any capacity, then you already know that I’m leaving my job at the end of this month to begin the masters program in the School of Journalism at UNC. They are giving me a fellowship, which is why I’m able to just up and quit my job (hey, I gave them 4 months notice okayy); and, I’m going to study multimedia with the intention of hopefully building a career out of it, all while having the opportunity to do some awesome stuff over the next two years (like traveling) — and (maybe most of all) to not have a real job for a while!

So, I’d like to attribute my lack of blogging for the past 6 or 7 months to the whole grad school process, like, studying for and taking the GRE (twice), waiting in anticipation, and interviewing. And, if I could, I’d also attribute it to not being able to “announce” anything officially because of my job and the clients we serve (did you know that just about anyone can read the internet??). Since it’s really all I’ve wanted to talk about for almost 4 months now, it was that or nothing. But I can’t really blame anything but my own lack of interest and inspiration; although, I’m hoping that this post will open the flood gates a little (especially now that I have 4 weeks left in my job). And I’m sure this blog will become largely about my grad school experiences and the things I’ll be working on in the near future (sorry).

Anyway, here’s a sampling of the types of projects I will be helping/learning to create within my program:

• http://www.atacamastories.org/enter_eng.html
• http://www.rcrusoe.org/
• http://www.whitecitystories.org/
• http://carolinadelnorte.jomc.unc.edu/

Obviously, since I love storytelling and multimedia, I’m pretty excited about all of this.

Also, as part of my scholarship, I have to work for a professor or a program within the school — so I guess I will have a “job,” but it will be contributing to my education and it’s something I really enjoy, so I will not designate it as a “job” — I just didn’t know what it would be and I didn’t know when I would find out. Well, I got a packet last week full of information about my orientations and seminars and all the logistical things about school beginning. And I also found out what my job will be for the school year.

It felt a lot like that part in the beginning of any season of MTV’s “The Real World” — you know, the part where they find out what their “jobs” are going to be while they’re living the in the house — except, you know, actually real. I opened the packet, read the letter, and then exclaimed to Mike: “I’m going to be working on Carolina Week’s website this year!! Woohoo!“

Carolina Week is the School of Journalism’s broadcast news show that airs twice weekly during the school year. It has all the aspects of a real news show and you can watch it on the UNC’s basic cable channel, or you can watch past episodes on their website. I’m not exactly sure what I’ll be doing specifically, though, and the professor in charge will be in Beijing until late August, so I guess I’ll just have to wait in anticipation again.

It’s okay, though, because I like the uncertainty. I feel like this whole change is full of what I’m going to call “postive uncertainty,” by which I mean that I know it will be awesome and I know what to expect to a certain extent, but I have no idea what my day-to-day schedule will be like, who I’m going to meet, where I’ll be going, what classes I’ll be taking, etc etc etc. It’s such a refreshing departure from my everyday routine for the past two years: go to work, write lots of press releases, look forward to lunch, get through the afternoon, go home, try to figure out something for dinner, go to sleep early, and then do it all again. Ideally, I’d like my overall routine to be somewhat the same, but all the details inside it to change regularly.

That, and I love school and homework and papers and projects.

I can’t wait.