radzj's blog

This week was extremely busy and productive. Some of that probably had something to do with not having a meeting for a lot longer than usual because of spring break. There was a short meeting last Thursday where a few articles were handed over for editing; a much longer meeting was planned out for this past Monday to schedule out the rest of the semester.

This week I didn’t get as much done as I would have liked due to some family things which preoccupied most of my time. I did schedule an editing meeting with Kiera on Tuesday where she work shopped my blue print article, and just like I thought it needed some trimming. I also had the rescheduled meeting from last week with my supervisor planned for that day, but I guess she wasn’t made aware of the appointment and I had to leave before she arrived.

This week was busy, but I also found the work I accomplished to be more fulfilling than the stuff I’ve been doing for the last few weeks. I think a lot of that has to do with having to spend much less time scheduling interviews with people and worrying about staying coordinated, and spending much more time just getting down to writing.

This week I have more interviews to do for an article expansion about study areas and about off campus places to eat. This time it shouldn’t be as time consuming as it was last week, as there isn’t anything to do in the way of scheduling, the magazines photographer and I are just going to approach people at random to get their input. The only catch is that there needs to be a sampling from both main campuses.

This week has taught me a lot about what to expect when you’re trying to coordinate a large group of people, and that’s a headache. As I mentioned in my last week’s post, I had to interview a fairly large group of people for an article I’m working on. The problem with that is that not everyone responds to email at the same rate. I’m even today just now receiving replies to stuff I sent out over a week ago.

This week has been an exercise in getting my coordination, email, and organization skills up to snuff. Because I meet with my supervisor every other week, I get a lot of assignments at once and am left to tackle them however I see fit. The assignments I was given at my last meeting include:

• Outlining the DSG with what information to include and suggestions on how to present it.
• Drafting an article about the rapid bus system the university uses.
• Reviewing the new “blueprint for success” article diagram to be used in the next issuing of the magazine.
  

Let me start by first giving a short synopsis of what exactly it is I’m going to be doing for my internship over the next few weeks. I’m interning at the Do Something Guide, a GVSU publication aimed at students new to the university, whether they be freshmen or transfer students. My work is going to be primarily concerned with writing articles that would be of interest to transfer students, and to offer a viewpoint that leans more towards the academic, rather than the extracurricular.