Hello, happy new year (lunar year that is).

It’s the year of the MONKEY. How excellent is that? VERY excellent, is how it is… In excellentness.

I’ve been reading people’s journalism homework that we journalism students have to post in a forum… It brings back memories of people who CANNOT and SHOULD NOT write articles/stories. The current article needs us to introduce someone from the class (including yourself) to the rest of the people in the class.

A 31 year old woman wrote the following:

  Her lucky number is 11. A lot of good things happened to her connected to 11 or multiples of 11. She was born June 5, 1972-Sixth month, fifth day. 6+5=11.

  She started kindergarten. She loved books. She loved the pictures, the stories, the words. She loved being read to. She wanted to read all the time and make up stories.

She started to write stories. She read a story out loud, the children in the class applauded. She was a Writer. She was eleven years old. It was 1983. 8+3=11.

  She couldn’t work at a McDonald’s or Target. She wanted to be where the books were. She applied for a job at the library on 11/88. She started on May 22nd.

  She had doubts about her writing. She thought she wasn’t good. She went to an open mike poetry reading on June 22nd. She read a poem. Applause broke out when she was done. She was a writer. She was 22 years old.

  She sent pieces to magazines. She never gave up. An electronic magazine she liked reading published one of her poems in 1999, along with a print piece that came out on 11/2000.

Yes, a 31 year old woman, not a 3 year old girl.

I can understand that this person wants to write stuff, I can understand journalism being smoething she wants to do in particular, but SURELY she should have taken some sort of basic English class that would (hopefully) teach her how to write a better article than that.

It’s set entirely in the past, the reader has no idea who the hell she is introducing, (I know it is her because she posted that on the forum (but it’s not in the article)) there are new paragraphs all over the place, after every couple of sentences in fact. The dates don’t work. You can’t say “on 11/2000” ‘ON November’ just isn’t right.

Yet, somehow, people managed to say good things about her writing. Amazing.

I need to interview someone about their job by the 29th, I also need to “profile” an organizationbefore some time in February AND I need to work for some stupid Media Activist company… At least, I thought they were stupid until I discovered that the EFF were one of the companies I could work for. Now I’m contemplating using the EFF to solve all of these requirements at the same time, if I can.

When I’m at college I’ll email the EFF asking if I can visit their offices one day, interview a few members of staff for my profile of the organization, which requires 3 interviews, interview one person in depth about their job, which fills up my Q&A session, and perform 1 hour of work with that company which completes 1/4 of the work I need to do for Media Activists.

I still don’t want to do the stupid 4 hours of work for Media Activists though, I’m only making an exception for the EFF. I’ll see if I can manage to be let of doin the other 3 hours on account of my lack of transport and the legalities of me working here.

I better get ready for college now.

I’ll undoubtedly write more after English.

Later. Continue reading →