warriorpen

So school has started. I am up unable to sleep. So much to do and this is only the first week. I have a document to read for a course in Legal/Ethics. I am supposed to be reading Near v. Minnesota and finding something in it that has to do with the 14th Ammendment. It is a struggle. All legal speak. I’ve read pages 1- 4 twice. The document has 43 pages. Thank goodness this assignment won’t be discussed for another week because of the holiday.

And speaking of holidays, an assignment was given in Broadcast News Writing and Production today and is due on Monday. Monday is a holiday for all you 9 to 5′ers unless you are a fireman, doctor, nurse or work for the Parks Department or a journalist. On Monday morning at 10AM a 3 minute newscast script for radio is due by email. I’m proud of myself. I have already created an account for the broadcast lab assignments. I’ve read all 7 of the AP stories. Now it is just a matter of writing and timing myself.

It has been a long first week. I am not used to sitting in a classroom from 9:30 to 1:30 with one break, five minutes.

Yesterday was my first reporting day. It was a getting acquainted assignment. Each student was given a neighborhood beat. My beat includes Crown Heights. We were instructed to find fives sources with names and contact information. Our deadline was 4 o’clock for a debriefing session in our Craft Writing class. This sounds easier than it actually was. But I got it done.

I’ll go back to reading articles assigned on an electronic resevations list with the research library. This is a great new feature about going to back to school. Back in the old days, I would have had to hoof it to the school library to find that someone had the book out at the copy machine. And I can do it from home, at 1:48 in the morning!

The week isn’t over yet. I have a class at 9 AM-Research Tools. It’s really at 9:30, but if I tell myself otherwise, I’ll be late. And there is no being late with this program. I might make it easy on myself. If I shower now, and put my clothes on, I will be ready to leave at by 7 AM assuring myself a seat on the subway and time to read the papers before class.

Monday- I spent the day playing beat the clock against myself. It started early with dropping off my son at day camp and rushing back home to do some serious legwork. I hadn’t received my medical forms from my doctor’s office. I needed proof of that standard measles, mumps & rubella shot. I spent an hour on the phone talking to some outside source that doesn’t know my doctor or her medical assistant, trying to figure out where my paper work was. They promised to call me back. I gave them my cell number and kept it moving.

I was off on the J train off to Tekserve on 23rd and 6th Avenue. I needed a new hard drive for my laptop. I was hoping the new hard drive would give me the space I needed to do the interactive program at school. I was number 72 green ticket. I was serviced by Chad. I once had a crush on a boy is high school named Chad and was hoping that this was a sign of good luck. I was out in an hour. I could pick up my computer on Tuesday evening before closing.

I got on the A train and switched to the C train headed Uptown to deal with the medical assistant who proceeded to insult me on the phone outside of Tekserve, by asking me if I was a male. Clearly the name Anna doesn’t imply male does it? I told her the only thing that changed was my address, not my sex. You don’t have to get smart she told me. I wasn’t being smart. And I don’t sound like a man. And even if I did, what does that have to do with the fact that she was still searching for my form? It was mailed three weeks prior. Classes were beginning the next day. If I didn’t have those forms I wouldn’t be able to register. The forms were found. She had the nerve to ask if I wanted her to drop them off because she lived close to my address. Did she think I was going to accept a favor from her after such a rude conversation? No thank you I said.

When I reached the office, the doctor informed me that my forms had been mailed to me and that I should have gotten them on Saturday or that day in the mail. I was ready to bust. She pointed me in the direction of the medical assistant’s office. There was my medical form in the pile of letters to be mailed. To be mailed! The medical assistant still insisted that she would have brought them to me. I didn’t have time for her nonsense; CUNY had called and I wasn’t about to miss the boat over office shenanigans.

The Wellness Center was located at the Graduate Center on 34th and 5th Avenue. It was 3:30. The voice on the phone told me they were open until 5pm. I could make it. Back on the C train at 155th street, I headed downtown. At 4:30 I rushed through the shopping throngs on 34th street. I showed my state indentification card to the security guard who asked for my CUNY ID. I spent a moment explaining I could get that ID until I had clearance from the Wellness Center. I was let past the Special Forces and up to the 3rd floor. At the clinic, I was given a half clearance. According to the staff, it looked like I only had the most recent shots. She asked about the first one. Now as I understand it, you couldn’t have a record of the second MMR without ever having had the first one, but I wasn’t going to argue. The folks in the medical records office could hold your future at bay with just one missing form, one missing stamp. I was off to go home and call my mother. Perhaps she had something. I also thought about pulling up my left sleeve and showing the Wellness Center clerk the dark circle on my upper arm. I clearly remember getting a shot, that became swollen and itchy and oozed pus for days before crusting over. It was the ugliest thing I have ever witnessed happening to the human body. I took the half clearance and went home. Tuesday was the big day.

I am a week away from becoming the person I am officially. I have been a writer much of my life, but next week I’m becoming a journalist. I try to be cool about it, but I so excited I can hardly contain myself. So if you see me grinning, its love. The kind of love you experience with self-fulfillment.

Next Tuesday I start school. I have spent the last few weeks reading the required text and enjoying them. I’ve read “The Short Sweet Dream of Eduardo Gutierrez” by Jimmy Breslin, “Letters to a Young Journalist” by Sammuel Freedman and I’m almost finished with “Gone to New York:Adventures in the City” by Ian Frazier. The pages of all three are filled with my blue papermate underlines of favorite phrases or items I want to look up. I love Jimmy Breslin’s book because it was so vivid in the telling and heartbreaking. Not the kind of heartbreak where you start to feel that every underdog merits your pity, but deserves acknowlegement none the less. The one thing that I found intriquing about Breslin’s piece is that it does just what Sammuel Freedman suggest on page 102:

A news feature is not merely a snapshot, a slice of life. Ideally, it illuminate some larger issue by means of illustrating and embodying it. It links the micro to the macro, the personal or communal experience to the overarching topic.

While Breslin’s work isn’t a news feature, but a book, I wasn’t expecting to hear the history of
so many of us sprinkled throughout the tale of one undocumented worker. I couldn’t put it down. The book was a great example of how to connect the dots.

I’ll be reading the last two essays in Ian Frazier’s book tonight or sometime before sunrise tomorrow morning. His stories are funny and engaging. In my mind I can see many of the places he writes about because I have lived in New York, in many neighborhoods for over twenty years. I think his story about the crab on the “F” train just about matches the scene a few weeks ago where a guy got on the J train dressed as a horse and rider while dancing to
“La Bamba.”

While these reading suggestions were powerful, I couldn’t help but notice that no women writers were on the list. Perhaps we’ll be getting some women writers when our text are assigned during orientation. Just in case, I’ll be reading “Raising Her Voice:African-American women journalists who changed history” by Rodger Streitmatter. (Lexington, KY : University Press of Kentucky), 1994. It’s on my list.

I start classes at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism on August 21st. The process to get in was not an easy feat. The online application took many evenings and weekends to complete. I took a few months to write the personal essay and then forced myself to sit one Sunday afternoon last winter to complete it. Not to mention taking the GRE.

School hasn’t started yet and I am already behind. I got an email 2 days ago, from the reminding me to check my school email account. I didn’t even know I was assigned one. I logged onto the account tonight. Emails have been sent to me since May, a month after I got my acceptance letter. Included in 10 messages was a book list for summer reading. I wonder how much of it I can I do in three weeks? I sure hope these are page turners. Another was about my registration status. I haven’t turned in my medical form and won’t be allowed to register without it. The only date that hasn’t passed me is the appointment for having my laptop checked and software installed before classes begin. It’s a good thing that doesn’t start until next week. My to-do list has just gotten longer. I suppose the best place to start is by printing out that list of books and visiting the bookstore tomorrow. Did I mention I’ve got three weeks to maintain my job teachng Adult Education Classes? When students in my
Pre-GED classes don’t do their homework, I send them home. Can you see the panic slowly creeping under my skin?