Meeting my mentor
I’m so excited because I’ve finally gotten to meet my mentor and SHE’S AMAZING! I say that I’ve finally gotten to meet her because we were supposed to get in touch roughly a week or so after I got to DC. But due to a bunch of unfortunate scheduling conflicts and circumstances beyond our control (like my sudden case of tonsilitis my third week here), we weren’t able to work anything out until now. But it was definitely worth the wait.
My mentor is Diana Marrero, an alumna of the TFAS Institute on Political Journalism program, who is now a correspondent for Gannett News Service. Gannett is the largest newspaper publisher in the nation, owning 85 daily newspapers (including USA TODAY) and over 1,000 non-daily papers. Diana covers Congress and federal agencies for papers in Nevada and California in her role as correspondent, and is actively involved in the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. She seems really friendly and willing to help–she offered to look over my resume and clips to give me some professional feedback. Not only is she a wealth of information herself, but she also has volunteered to put in a good word for me with the recruiter for Gannett!
All in all, Diana is really easy to talk to and I’m definitely looking forward to getting to know her better over the rest of the semester.
We met for breakfast at the National Press Club, which was an experience in and of itself. The NPC was founded in 1908 with the intention of protecting the freedom of the press and to serve as a social spot for newspapermen, and the offices have been located in their current building since 1927. There is sooo much history there! The walls are panelled with historic front page press plates, showing the evolution of newspapers on the walls themselves. Being surrounded by that much history, knowing that almost all of the movers-and-shakers of journalism had been in that building was just amazing.
The experience here in DC just keeps getting better and better. 
**Also, you may notice that I have finally discovered the wonders of hyperlinks out of my blog so that I don’t have to try to explain everything. Expect to see more of this in the future. 