Wrapping up Week 3

Greetings, fellow interns (and professor). I have hit a milestone in my own professional writing and editing career this week, and I am very excited to talk about it. I mean, I know it probably sounds kind of silly (and therefore, is...) but in any event, I felt it worthy to comment on: this week, something I wrote was 'published' on a professional website, in a very important kind of manner. Granted, the majority of the work was spent in accumulating quotations to use, but in any event...a post by 'Vanessa*" was posted to the BI website as its Feature story...so it's the one that you see as you first enter the webpage. Very exciting stuff for me, as this is the first time on the college level that I have been published anywhere that has meant something. And it all came so fast...one day my higher up Matt was like "hey, see this article? do an article like it for the website..no rush" and a couple days later, after I have drafted, edited, and frantically worried about each word choice, he showed me how to publish it to the website. And then bam, not ten minutes later (after he had decided what kind of graphic would best go with the article itself), there it was on the BI website, perfectly able to be emailed to my parents and oogled over. Flaws and all. It's a kind of scary thing...knowing you are THAT responsible for what you've written. I think there is a difference between academic (classroom) writing and this kind of writing in a professional setting. If you plagerize in a paper for class...yes, that is a horrid thing to do and will ruin your academic career and (hopefully) you'll feel bad about it until kingdom come..HOWEVER....for some reason I feel that getting something wrong on this professional kind of level is worse...(although looking back over this statement, I can't exactly see why...) perhaps not so much on the moral level, but on the general "I am a writer and that means that what I write is what I am" level (if that makes any sense). Academic writing is...a personal test of courage, but professional writing is...you putting yourself out there for whoever to read it, make a judgement on, and therefore label you as a writer "good" or "bad" or anything else....I feel like I'm not making any sense.

Moving on.... I would like to talk about the workplace today, as well. Matt is extraordinarily laid back and I've only even seen Dusty (THE boss) like...twice. Other interns feel free to answer their cell phones..AIM is the main source of communication (which could lead to potential other problems if your friend is IMing you jokes while you should be working on a document). I don't know..apparently there was a bowling tournament at the Mt. Lair that BI employees were a part of...they talked about that a lot, and I wasn't invited so I wasn't there..there's just a general feeling of very laid-backness in the whole lot. I find it an easy atmosphere to work in, but then again I am very good at tuning sounds out when I concentrate on writing (well...usually). I hava a cubicle with my own computer, but I can hear every conversation and phone ring on the entire floor. Usually there aren't that many people present and I haven't had any dire deadlines yet, so it hasn't really been a problem (and wouldn't be if it came down to it....I can do what I have to do to get done what needs to be done).

But in any event....I read back over the syllabus this evening and realized my previous blog postings may have been lacking in the "write for 15 minutes" department...so this is me making an effort to go for the entire allotted time.

Until next time,