Friday (July 16) - Headed up to Maryland and got in pretty late at night because of traffic and leaving after work. Went straight to bed! Nothing too exciting there.
Saturday (July 17) - Ate in for lunch then headed to Columbia Mall to look at the iPhone 4 for Stephen. After that, we drove back and got ready for the Jack Johnson concert! We got to Merriweather Post Pavillion at around 5:30 when the doors opened and walked around looking for food, shirts, etc. We finally settled down on a towel on the lawn at around 6:00 and waited for the first show to come on. The first was Animal Liberation Orchestra, and they sang a couple of songs for 30 minutes. Then, we waited around for some more, and G-Love came on and performed an acoustic set. Here's one of his songs on YouTube! Finally, at around 9:00, Jack Johnson came on! He was just as good live as he is in his recordings. He didn't talk too much to the audience, but he did play for two hours, and I knew the words to every single song, so it was tons of fun. After the concert, we went out for a late dinner at Uno's, which is a Chicago-style restaurant. Then, we finally headed home, exhausted. Pictures now!
Sunday - Stayed around in the house for a while while Stephen did some chores. Then, we headed to a local frozen yogurt place--Yogi Castle--and grabbed froyo with two of his friends from high school. We all talked for a while before going our separate ways. We then hung around the house and watched Despicable Me (which was amazingly funny!) and then got ready for dinner at home. After dinner, we packed up and hit the road again so we could be in time for work the next morning.
Monday - At work, I got back into the jist of things and in the afternoon, I headed out to interview Mike Costanzo for a story I wrote on him. It was ridiculously hot as usual, but I think I'm getting used to it. In the evening, I headed to Durham to grab dinner at TGIF with my friend Aditya and watched Inception after with Stephen and his friends. If you haven't seen it yet, I'd highly recommend it. It was mind-blowing. In a good awy.
Tuesday - I headed out early from my apartment to Lake Crabtree to interview Ashley Thomas, a woman who was picked to be on the U.S. Paracanoe team. She founded her own non-profit organization, Bridge II Sports, which helps create sports opportunities for those with physical and mental disabilities. She was a great person to talk to. Be on the look-out for a story to be published about her later this week! Here are some pictures from the lake.
Wednesday - I went to work and worked on a couple of stories and drafted a few briefs. After work, I headed to the North Regional library near my apartment and got a library card that can be used at any Wake County Library. I ended up staying there for 2-3 hours just reading and came home with three books--two by John Grisham and one by Kurt Vonnegut. After I grabbed dinner at Moe's for the first time, and they were giving out free queso! After, I met up with Stephen and we went to Starbucks and chatted for a bit before walking around in the plaza near Brier Creek Parkway. There are a million things to do there, with four shopping centers right near the Glenwood & Brier Creek intersection. It was epic!
Thursday - Tons of fun! Worked on a couple stories for the week, and before I knew it, it was lunch time! I headed to our weekly Intern Luncheon with Pam Nelson, who is a copy editor at The N&O. It was great because we got the chance to play grammar jeopardy, and I got to review some things I already knew and learn some new things! Turns out that it's "had proved" not "had proven." Strange, no? Pam's going to be on Jeopardy tomorrow, so definitely look for her there! It was exciting getting to talk to her, because I love Jeopardy! After the luncheon, I interviewed two people for the Chronicle Sports Blog (post coming out next Friday!) for a football season preview. Later, I met up with Stephen and we tried out a new Chinese/Japanese place called Hibachi Grill, which was all right. We headed out to Crabtree Valley Mall after and wandered around to escape from the heat. There are a bunch of stores there, and it has some stories outside of the mall itself, like restaurants (PF Chang's, Cheesecake Factory, etc.) and Barnes & Noble's, Best Buy, etc. After, we each headed back to our apartments and slept.
Friday - In the morning, I headed out to the Carolina RailHawks' practice in Cary to write a feature on them. They're the triangle's major soccer team, and they were finally coming home after being away for most of the first half of their season. A story's coming out again later this week, so be sure to check that out! After, I worked on a story that I had just gotten about Tucker Dupree, who is a 21-year-old paralympic swimmer who was diagnosed with a genetic disease that causes rapid vision lost when he was 17. Now, he only has 20% of his vision left, but he's still swimming and earning gold medals all over the place. I had the honor and pleasure of interviewing him and a couple of people who knew him, and the story is here. It isn't as long as I hoped it would be since we wrote about him before, but he definitely inspired me, even though we only talked for half an hour. At night, Stephen and I headed back to the Crabtree Valley Mall since we only got to walk around for 15 minutes the night before.
Saturday - We met up again and went to Sonic's for lunch--my favorite! Then we went to FedEx so I could mail out a package. We headed back to my apartment and played Guitar Hero for a while, which was super fun! Then, we went to North Hills Shopping Center and checked out the AT&T stores. We found The Lollipop Shop in the plaza and spent the longest time there. They have bulk candy, m&ms, candy bars, jelly beans, sweet tarts, taffy, etc. It was so much fun choosing what candy to get and making recipes out of the Jelly Bellys. We came back and played Guitar Hero for a while and went to the pool to go swimming. It was over 100 degrees, so the water felt nice, but kind of hot at the same time, too. After, we grabbed dinner at the Brier Creek Parkway area again and tried Baba Grill, a Mediterranean place that had really good reviews on Yelp. The place seemed very authentic and had good portions. After, we saw a Dairy Queen (my favorite ice cream place EVER!) and got chocolate-dipped ice cream cones. We came back and watched Meet the Fockers, which I'd never seen, and that was a funny movie, but I kept not wanting to watch because I was afraid of what would happen. Jack scares me!
Sunday - Went to Chipotle for lunch and went to Best Buy to buy a case for my phone (I got a new Eris since my old one was malfunctioning). Hung around for a while and am currently updating my blog. I'm going to head out for dinner soon, though, and meet up with Steph (I talked about her last week) for Japanese food at Sushi Love. More next week! Two and a half more weeks until I'm home.. Excited but sad the summer/my internship is ending..
Now, here comes segment two of my post.. Just my thoughts. I wrote this last Friday for my Tumblr but didn't want to post it alone on this blog without the standard what-I-did-last-week routine, so here are my thoughts now!
What exactly is a journalist’s purpose? Well, that depends on what kind of a journalist you are. An investigative journalist digs up information and shares that with you. They find the good, the bad, and the ugly, and deliver it in a way that is easy-to-read and expresses the emotion. Other types of journalism aim to correct the wrongs in society, to bring light to something that is wrong, to report on something and let the reader decide what’s right. And my favorite? The type of journalism that combines two aspects of the art—telling an event to someone who wasn’t there and relaying someone’s story to others who never had the chance to meet that person. Sports journalism.
I’ve always liked covering game stories, even if the sport is something I didn’t know anything about. Throughout my journalism career (if it can even be called a career), I’ve covered men’s and women’s basketball, men’s and women’s soccer, men’s and women’s lacrosse, men’s and women’s golf, wrestling, softball, baseball, swimming, track and field, cross-country, women’s volleyball, football, men’s and women’s tennis, heck, I’ve even covered a triathlon event. I’ve always loved going to games and writing them, for the simple reason that I’m watching news unfold—and documenting it for others. I’m the one who has the responsibility of watching every detail while not losing sight of the big picture. I’m conveying an event to my reader, and it’s my job for that person to feel as if he or she were there. It’s my goal to make that person knowledgeable enough after reading my story that he/she can talk about it as if the event happened right in front of them (him/her, but that got too wordy). It doesn’t matter that the story is slotted to the bottom of a page in the middle of the sports section. It doesn’t matter that the story is only five paragraphs. What matters is how I told the story.
I was never really one to care about where my story went in the newspaper. Sure, being the display story (aka biggest story on the front page with a huge picture) was always nice, but that was never my goal. I don’t think that’s really any journalist’s goal. The goal is always to find the truth, the deeper meaning of something, and to share that with the world.
And that’s where another side of sports journalism comes in—feature stories, human interest stories. It’s those stories that warm your heart, those stories that make driving over an hour to interview someone worth it. Those stories you keep in queue for a month before running because they don’t have a tight deadline. I’ve been writing features all summer, all interesting people, of course. But the two most recent ones I’ve written have inspired me the most and taught me not to take everyday things for granted, like walking, driving, even typing this blog post. Since the stories haven’t run yet, I’ll abstain from using their names.
The first is a woman with minimal use of her legs. She was born with spina bifida, which means that she’s confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life, but she’s done so much for the community around her. She founded a non-profit organization that creates sports opportunities for people with disabilities. The group has its own sports leagues, like basketball, rugby, boccia ball, etc. Recently, she went up to a conference on adaptive athletics—how to make sports available for people with disabilities—and went kayaking for the first time. She had surprising balance for someone who was unable to use her legs because she couldn’t use the rudder. After going out on a kayaking adventure on the river the next day, she was approached by two coaches who invited her to join the U.S. Paralympic Team in kayaking. She practices two hours every couple of days—even in 90+ degree heat—while still managing her non-profit organization. She has enthusiasm, motivation, and is wonderfully nice. Though she’s only been kayaking for a few weeks compared to others kayaking their whole lives, she never gives up and has made tremendous progress. She spoke humbly about her opportunity and about her organization, never taking credit for it, but rather focusing on those who take part in her sports leagues, allowing them to feel what athletes like most—that they have people behind them supporting them.
The second person I didn’t have the honor of meeting but spoke to him on the phone. Just two years older than me, he makes me feel infinitely less mature and inspires me to never stop reaching my goals. Appropriate for an Olympic (paralympic?) swimmer who gives inspirational talks on the side. He woke up one morning and put on his contacts, only to realize that his vision was blurred, and it wouldn’t clear up. Two months later, he found out that he had a rare genetic disease that caused rapid vision loss. That was all when he was a senior in high school. Now, he only has 20% vision, and that’s all peripheral. But that doesn’t stop him from setting world records, winning gold medals in all sorts of international competitions, and even going to Beijing to compete and earning a fourth-place finish. That wasn’t enough for him, though. After competing some more and winning six more gold medals, he’s now heading to the Olympic Training Center—one of 16 athletes competing for the U.S. paralympic swim team—to train for the 2012 Olympics in London. He was just amazing to talk to, and after hearing about his personality from those who had heard him speak, it was great. He spoke at a local Boys & Girls Club, where he gave the usual inspirational speech but mixed in small challenges we wouldn’t think of, like going on dates but not being able to drive. In fact, he told me the hardest part of all this was having to give up his driver’s license. For the past two years, I’ve taken that small piece of plastic for granted. The ability to go out late at night and just drive around, that sense of peace and tranquility that comes with being alone in a car. He made me think a lot about my life, how I take a lot of things for granted. Never once did he talk about how bad the change has been, but I can only begin to imagine what it would be like to lose sight after seeing all the lovely things in the world.
Those two people are why I love journalism. They’re the reason I’m willing to write stories I have minimal interest in. I may have not been able to tell their stories as well as I’d like with space constraints in the paper, but I’ve done the best I can, and I hope my stories of these amazing people have as much—or even just a bit—of an impact as they’ve had on me.
“I became a journalist to come as close as possible to the heart of the world.” - Henry R. Luce
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