Words and Light

It’s finals week at many universities and colleges, including Missouri. Because I’m not entirely engrossed in scouring the on-line Oxford English Dictionary for my History of the English Language take-home exam, I’ve taken inspiration from an old 10,000 Words post and am instead announcing my journalism-minded goals and plans for this winter break.

(For those of you not familiar with the 10,000 Words blog — it’s a great resource for journalists/journalism students where blogger Mark S. Luckie provides tutorials, pontificates on relevant issues/questions in the industry and frequently refers to other examples of good journalism and/or branding.)

Without further ado, here’s what this journalism senior is doing over winter break:

1. Revamping my Web site, especially the setup and some CSS. I’ll be changing some things around in my photo portfolio section and adding my written reporting clips. And nope, I’m not going to link to it now — once it’s more complete, I’ll post the URL and invite everyone and anyone to provide any feedback/criticism/praise.
2. Going through the last two months’ photos. Thanks to projects, I haven’t had time to go over my recent Missourian assignments or my just-for-fun photos (Texas Renaissance Festival?). But starting next week, I’ll have time to do that, as well as post them for you to see here.
3. Continuing/finishing posting New York City summer photos. Okay, so these photos are about four and a half months old now, but I’m still proud of and excited about them. So you can expect to see those soon, too.
4. Tweaking my photo final projects. For one photo class, I produced an audio slideshow about on-site beer brewing at the Texas Renaissance Festival. For another photo class, I created a two-story package about what happens on a dairy farm after the farmer is killed by lightning. Both these projects are complete and on-line, as of yesterday, but I’m going to clean them up a little more before linking them to my Web site and sharing them with the general public.
5. Covering the Texas Bowl game for The Missourian. As far as I know, Ivy and I are the only Missourian photo people credentialed to go — and she’s the designated editor, which means she’ll be in the photo workroom for most of the game. Which means I’m the only actual Missourian photographer for the game. Which is a lot of pressure. But hell if I’m not excited.
6. Start reading The Atlanta Journal-Constitution regularly. If I’m going to be there this summer, I’d best get started on learning about the city and the paper.

Time for me to hit up the Oxford English Dictionary now. But — got any more suggestions for my winter break? I’d love to hear what you think!

(Of course I’ll also be sleeping and eating far more than is healthy for me, but that was already a given.)