Patrick Ross
“The girl started talking about how their town mayor was paying for sex shops all around their state, and I laughed and mumbled something under my breath that made the three people in front of me turn around and give me quite a dirty look, so I laughed in their faces as well, it’s not like it will affect anything, I’m never going to see them again.” Wednesday morning was the start of classes. At the time I had really no idea where to go or what to do. So, by instinct, I followed a few other kids from Pembroke and ended up in a class somewhat about Photoshop. There was only about twenty minutes left in the class as we walked in. Instantly I knew I didn’t belong because I was my usual self, making jokes and comments to laugh at. The other kids were actually getting angry at me I think but I don’t care at all. It was boring as all hell, the teacher showed us extremely mediocre work, and the students were a little weird. Luckily it soon ended and we left.
During the next session I was alone and didn’t have any idea what to do so I called Tim up and got lunch at Tom’s Restaurant. It was ridiculously good. The following day I went to an actual class titled Photoshop. Why I went to one like it again I do not know. But anyways, there were many other students in this one and the teacher actually showed us some cool things. She asked us if we ever had certain problems with Photoshop and showed us how to fix them.
On the final day I attended a few different classes. The first one was titled, “Imagine your lede sucks,” and it sounded decent so I attended. The teacher kept my attention by being funny and showing us good ledes and horrible ones. He taught us lots of different ways that we could improve our own ledes; for instance, to not be so direct and straight forward. He said to use an anecdote, which is a quick short story, and to use humor, good vocabulary, and to not say common sense things. Overall the class was actually kind of enjoyable, much better than regular school at least.
The next session, I was in the same room but for a different class. This one was called, “They Won’t Let Me Print This, So Now What Do I Do. The class was all about situations when they don’t allow you to write something for one reason or another. It was cool and interesting because other kids in the class talked about stories they were writing that got halted. Some were really good and weren’t even broken by the local press yet. An extreme plus to the class was that it was filled with a whole row right behind me of about twelve beautiful girls my own age. So that made it way better. Besides the pretty girls, I did actually pay attention to what the teacher was saying. However a few times when people were telling their stories I chuckled a little bit because well, I just thought they were funny. A lot of people were actually getting very agitated with me but it’s not like I’m ever going to have to talk to them. I can’t help it if I find things like their towns mayor paying for sex shops all over the state instead of funding for the fire department, or if I laughed slightly under my breath when people start talking about bringing gays together with regular guys. I’m not trying to be mean but honestly, we all know that’s never going to happen.
After this session a few of us attended a review of the 2008 CSPA Crown Finalists. It was literally one of the most boring things ever. The guy just talked and talked for an hour in a low boring voice that put me to sleep. Plus the room was extremely hot and muggy so I got really tired. After that the classes ended for us, and we packed up and boarded back onto the bus. Overall the trip was fun and I guess educational. In my opinion our paper doesn’t need much to improve. Obviously color is a huge thing that would make it awesome and way better, as well as if we knew some more about in design. But there are a few simple things that we could probably do. For starters we should take a lot more time with pictures and illustrations and things like that. By this I mean that we could do more with them and make them look better by fading them behind or in text. We could fade or sort of connect pictures that are next to each other. Also we could give them more of a glow or some kind of shade around them. All of us could also take much more time on our ledes. Most people think we should just give the straightforward five W’s. But why not use an interesting anecdote for once or something really funny or weird; just something that will draw the reader in more.
The lede is one of the most important parts so we should have fun with it so people can read it and laugh, or become sad or curious. For a final suggestion of improvement is something I noticed when I looked at another schools paper. I am not sure what school it was but they had a way that they did their versions of “Athlete of the Month” that was really cool. They had someone draw a picture of the athlete with a huge head and then instead of writing a whole story on them, which might seem unappealing to people who hate reading, they do sort of a statement and then the opinion of the athlete. For example it says things like name, height, position, team, best memory, favorite show or food, favorite things to do, and stuff like that. However it’s not put into a story, it is in a list. It says like best memory in bold and then their answer next to it, and so on and so forth. I don’t know if we want to change this but it seems way easier and more readable for people who don’t want to read long stories.
Altogether the conference was pretty cool. Seeing other school papers and other kids that were interested in the same thing as I am was nice. Most of the teachers kept my attention and kept me interested. I got an idea of what they do for journalism in college as well and learned a few things I could use. I’ll be honest and say some of the kids were weird and nothing like me, but overall it was a good time, and I would definitely go again next year.
“The girl started talking about how their town mayor was paying for sex shops all around their state, and I laughed and mumbled something under my breath that made the three people in front of me turn around and give me quite a dirty look, so I laughed in their faces as well, it’s not like it will affect anything, I’m never going to see them again.” Wednesday morning was the start of classes. At the time I had really no idea where to go or what to do. So, by instinct, I followed a few other kids from Pembroke and ended up in a class somewhat about Photoshop. There was only about twenty minutes left in the class as we walked in. Instantly I knew I didn’t belong because I was my usual self, making jokes and comments to laugh at. The other kids were actually getting angry at me I think but I don’t care at all. It was boring as all hell, the teacher showed us extremely mediocre work, and the students were a little weird. Luckily it soon ended and we left.
During the next session I was alone and didn’t have any idea what to do so I called Tim up and got lunch at Tom’s Restaurant. It was ridiculously good. The following day I went to an actual class titled Photoshop. Why I went to one like it again I do not know. But anyways, there were many other students in this one and the teacher actually showed us some cool things. She asked us if we ever had certain problems with Photoshop and showed us how to fix them.
On the final day I attended a few different classes. The first one was titled, “Imagine your lede sucks,” and it sounded decent so I attended. The teacher kept my attention by being funny and showing us good ledes and horrible ones. He taught us lots of different ways that we could improve our own ledes; for instance, to not be so direct and straight forward. He said to use an anecdote, which is a quick short story, and to use humor, good vocabulary, and to not say common sense things. Overall the class was actually kind of enjoyable, much better than regular school at least.
The next session, I was in the same room but for a different class. This one was called, “They Won’t Let Me Print This, So Now What Do I Do. The class was all about situations when they don’t allow you to write something for one reason or another. It was cool and interesting because other kids in the class talked about stories they were writing that got halted. Some were really good and weren’t even broken by the local press yet. An extreme plus to the class was that it was filled with a whole row right behind me of about twelve beautiful girls my own age. So that made it way better. Besides the pretty girls, I did actually pay attention to what the teacher was saying. However a few times when people were telling their stories I chuckled a little bit because well, I just thought they were funny. A lot of people were actually getting very agitated with me but it’s not like I’m ever going to have to talk to them. I can’t help it if I find things like their towns mayor paying for sex shops all over the state instead of funding for the fire department, or if I laughed slightly under my breath when people start talking about bringing gays together with regular guys. I’m not trying to be mean but honestly, we all know that’s never going to happen.
After this session a few of us attended a review of the 2008 CSPA Crown Finalists. It was literally one of the most boring things ever. The guy just talked and talked for an hour in a low boring voice that put me to sleep. Plus the room was extremely hot and muggy so I got really tired. After that the classes ended for us, and we packed up and boarded back onto the bus. Overall the trip was fun and I guess educational. In my opinion our paper doesn’t need much to improve. Obviously color is a huge thing that would make it awesome and way better, as well as if we knew some more about in design. But there are a few simple things that we could probably do. For starters we should take a lot more time with pictures and illustrations and things like that. By this I mean that we could do more with them and make them look better by fading them behind or in text. We could fade or sort of connect pictures that are next to each other. Also we could give them more of a glow or some kind of shade around them. All of us could also take much more time on our ledes. Most people think we should just give the straightforward five W’s. But why not use an interesting anecdote for once or something really funny or weird; just something that will draw the reader in more.
The lede is one of the most important parts so we should have fun with it so people can read it and laugh, or become sad or curious. For a final suggestion of improvement is something I noticed when I looked at another schools paper. I am not sure what school it was but they had a way that they did their versions of “Athlete of the Month” that was really cool. They had someone draw a picture of the athlete with a huge head and then instead of writing a whole story on them, which might seem unappealing to people who hate reading, they do sort of a statement and then the opinion of the athlete. For example it says things like name, height, position, team, best memory, favorite show or food, favorite things to do, and stuff like that. However it’s not put into a story, it is in a list. It says like best memory in bold and then their answer next to it, and so on and so forth. I don’t know if we want to change this but it seems way easier and more readable for people who don’t want to read long stories.
Altogether the conference was pretty cool. Seeing other school papers and other kids that were interested in the same thing as I am was nice. Most of the teachers kept my attention and kept me interested. I got an idea of what they do for journalism in college as well and learned a few things I could use. I’ll be honest and say some of the kids were weird and nothing like me, but overall it was a good time, and I would definitely go again next year.
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