You should all check it and let me know what you think.

I’ve been thinking about this for quite a while, but it’s always been in kind of vague terms. You know, I want to  work for some sort of paper or online publication, covering some sort of  government, ideally heading back to D.C. to do so. There’s no real “how” in those plans, just an end goal.

With the recent barrage of caring and curious questioning that left me looking like a deer in the headlights, I decided that I had better start looking for that elusive how. And here are a few of the venues that I think could work for me.

• Obviously, as I have mentioned in the past, I met a lot of really amazing people in Washington. And those people know a lot of people. So I can start sending out feelers with them and hope that they had heard of something. Yay for networking options.
• The Pleiad advisor and my mentor from D.C. both recommended this site called JournalismJobs. The site is GREAT–it allows you to search jobs by description, where they’re located… that will definitely be one of the places I look when it gets a little closer to graduation time.
• My mentor in D.C. also had mentioned that she intitially came to D.C. through a fellowship program, which got me looking into those as well. Atlanic Media just launched the Atlantic Media Fellowship Program this year, and they take between five and ten current students or recent graduates for a nine-month program during which they help “launch, research, write and edit new websites.” With my interest in online publications, this would be an AMAZING opportunity, so it’s definitely something I’m looking into.
• One other option that I’ve kind of toyed around with for a while is applying for the Newsweek summer internship program. Richard M. Smith is Newsweek’s chairman (and he was the editor-in-chief until December 2007) as well as an Albion alumnus, and although it’s unlikely that would give me any kind of an edge, I can dream right? The internship is in NYC, not D.C., but I won’t hold that against it.

So I guess I kind of have a plan now. Or at least several options for feasible plans. OH! And I created a LinkedIn profile at http://www.linkedin.com/in/hollysetter– feel free to check it out, or add me as a contact or whatever.

Not that I am not glad that I am the one that was given the chance to overhaul it. It just is turning out to be a much more convoluted project than I had anticipated.

Years of revolving Web editors who all had their own ideas on how the site should look and be organized has left the design side of the site in total disarray. Formatting isn’t consistent through the site–particularly in the archives. Some years, stories are organized by page, presented in 12 pt. Times New Roman on a stark white background and stacked on top of each other. Others are available only in PDFs of the pages as they appeared in the paper. Still more are displayed in old Web page themes, which are in various states of disrepair due to broken hyperlinks.

Ah, broken hyperlinks. When I ran an initial error report on the site, I was appalled to get the results. There were over 1,400 broken hyperlinks in the site! So… rather than trying to track down the intended destinations of all of those hyperlinks, I opted to simply recreate the archives. Which is more than enough of  a job itself. All of the different formats that I just got done describing makes for slow going through the archives.

But I’m plugging along, and I’m almost halfway through now. And the way that I’m formatting the theme for the Web site, future Web editors who want to redesign the theme can make changes to one or two pages and the rest of the site will automatically be updated to reflect those changes. So hopefully no one else ever has to do this.

One of the pieces of advice that I have repeatedly heard from professional political journalists is to get experience covering politics on a local level. According to them, local politics gives you a chance to see more of the process with less red tape. And as I respect the people I heard that from, I immediately sought out a way to do that when I got home. As a result, I got my position with The Sanilac County News as the Marlette City Council reporter. 

I still believe that advice to be true, however, I think that their idea of local was a bit… less rural than where I am at.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a great experience to be able to cover the Marlette City Council meetings. I do get to see the inner workings of the council, the council members know me by name and are more than willing to cooperate when I have questions.

But there really isn’t a lot of variety in subject matter. Granted, the topic that has dominated the meetings over the last month and a half is important and affects a lot of people. The council seriously considered closing the Marlette community pool–one of the last remaining public pools in the area–due to leakage caused by old age.  A lot of people came together to find a way to make sure the pool opens, and, as of last night, the council believes it will open next Monday.

That one topic, however, has been the only real topic to come before the board. There was no real debate over the city’s budget (at least not while I’ve been covering the meetings) which was passed at the second meeting I covered, and the only citizen’s comment beyond concerns about the pool has been about the number of loud dogs in several Marlette neighborhoods.

Perhaps I’m a bit jaded because I just got off of a semester covering DC politics, and I didn’t have a real beat so I went from covering defense hearings one day to finance hearings the next and then on to food safety. I knew going into this job that it wasn’t going to be nearly as varied. But I guess I still expected there to be two or three issues before the board.

Now, having said that, I am not trying to marginalize the work that the board does. The past month and a half has shown me that local politicians put a LOT more effort and heart into what they do. Being on council is, for most of the board, essentially an extracurricular activity beyond their day-to-day careers, and yet the dedicate a remarkable amount of time to what they do for the city.

I suppose that I am seeing exactly what the more experienced journalists had expected me to… it just hasn’t come in the form that I expected to see it. But then again, that’s probably what they expected.

One of the first grand realizations that I have come to is just how social of a person I am. I distinctly remember longing for alone time not too long ago because I thought that was what I wanted. But I was wrong–so very wrong. Now, during the daily long hours of solitude when I have just my laptop for companionship, I find myself actually turning on daytime television (a.k.a. soap operas as my family doesn’t have cable or satellite) just so that it sounds like there are other people around.

Now, to be fair and reasonable, I am talking about two extremes here. While in D.C. I was pretty much never alone for long and now I’m alone for the majority of my days. But I was far happier (albeit more tired) when constantly surrounded by people than I am when constantly left to my own devices. And this revealation isn’t a bad thing by any means. In fact, I’d say it’s far better for me to know this about myself.

The second major epiphany that has come to me is that life is better with a structured schedule. My first few weeks I just worked as the whim struck me–I got all of my hours in, but they were patchwork and erratic. Nevertheless, that in and of itself wouldn’t have been too horrible, except that it meant that I accomplished next to nothing beyond my work and facebook stalking my friends. Let me tell you, people start to notice and object when you don’t get your laundry done and dirty dishes begin to frame your workspace, even when you work from home.

Finally, it is incredibly hard to justify a “sick day” when you’re just staying home anyway. I’m just now getting over a bout of tonsilitis (in MAY! I mean, who does that?) and for a few days I really didn’t want to get off of the couch. But I sat there feeling mildly guilty that I was not out at my computer puttering around with something, being somewhat productive.

All of these realizations still do not outweigh the fact that my transportation costs are pretty much nil, however, with a fill-up at the gas pump now costing you your first born child. So I’m still getting a great deal.

As I sort of expected coming home, finding a summer job was easier said than done in Michigan’s Thumb. Enough people have been laid-off from their full-time jobs that traditional summer jobs (like fast food places, grocery stores, temporary jobs) are populated with people who need to support their families. As a result, I had to be a little more creative than in years past to find work.

But find work I did, albeit patchworked. First, I was hired as a city council reporter for the Sanilac County News. It’s a great position, more practice with political reporting… there was just one downside. I’m only covering Marlette City Council, and they meet twice a month. Hardly frequently enough to be a “summer job.” So I kept looking.

Media Board had recently hired me to be The Pleiad’s Editor-in-Chief for the fall, and one of my goals for the paper is to improve the Web site. When I mentioned this to Laura Williams, the paper’s advisor, she said that Media Board had considered hiring someone over the summer to overhaul the site. Years of inconsistent Web editors had left the site a tangled mess, and it had reached the point where the site really wasn’t functioning well. With my experience maintaining Web sites and my journalistic experience, I felt I could design a page that would be both functional and aesthetically pleasing, so I volunteered for the job. Media Board hired me a week or so later–20 hours a week for eight weeks. Now that’s more like a summer job!

Finally, when I had stopped by campus to bid farewell to Albion’s Class of 2008, I ran into my supervisor in the Alumni Office, Trajan Dubiel. Trajan mentioned that they might need some help maintaining the website over the summer, and I had told him to just let me know if he needed anything. Well, yesterday I got a phonecall asking me if I’d be willing to work over the summer, no more that 5 hours a week. Obviously I was not going to turn them down, and so I’m now working three jobs.

All three jobs have one thing in common–all three require that I have reliable internet access at home. I have to send my completed stories into my editor at the Sanilac County News via email the morning after the meetings, and the web maintenance jobs require me to be on the web constantly. A few years ago, I wouldn’t have thought that I could work all summer from home but now I find that my computer room is my office.

So now, this blog is taking a turn to cover the ups and downs to summer “Net-working.”

The Newseum had it’s grand opening, and I was there for the dedication. There were a flurry of hearings to cover. I had a briefing at the White House’s Eisenhower executive building, final papers to write, exams to study for, graduation, and packing to do.  It still amazes me how much my little apartment got to feel like home in the three short months I was in D.C. It’s a bit surreal to think that I have left there for the last time.

Even more unbelievable is the fact that I’ve said goodbye to my fellow TFASers. I made so many amazing friends–they’re all truly brilliant and talented people, and I know that they are all going to go far. While it would be possible to fall into what some may call the realistic way of thinking and bemoan the fact that I’ll probably never see most of them again, I prefer to be upbeat about it. So, our paths will cross again. I’m certain of that.

D.C. was another friend that I had to say goodbye to. The city just feels like home, and I know that I will be back on its streets soon enough. My work at GalleryWatch just felt right, like I was doing what I was meant to do. Through this experience, I know I have found my life’s work, and you can’t just walk away from that.

For the moment I’m sitting at my laptop at a hotel in Williamsburg, VA, with my family where we’re taking in some of the great historical sites on this side of the country. After a few days, we’re all piling into our mini-van to head back to Michigan. What I’ll be doing once I get there, I’m not exactly sure… but for now, I’m content with not knowing that and having a few days to reflect on this amazing semester.

However, today I experienced the exact opposite. There was so much interest in the hearing that it had actually filled, to the point that they had stopped letting people in. What made today special? General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker were testifying before the Senate Armed Services committee on the status of Iraq. I didn’t get to cover the hearing, unfortunately,  but I was sent to gather the testimony.  Just being in that room was kind of awe-inspiring.

There were rows upon rows of press tables. Every seat in the audience was filled with an assorted mix of staffers and interested citizens in business attire and demonstrators dressed head to toe in pink or in black burqas with their hands painted red.

Likewise, there wasn’t a single Senator on the committee who wasn’t there. Sen. McCain was there, delivering his opening statement as Ranking Member. Chairman Carl Levin, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton, Joe Liberman, Ed Kennedy, Lindsey Graham– all in their respective seats. It certainly was a sight to see, and something I think I’ll always remember.

You see, there were apparently some computer glitches with my plane. Which translated into me sitting on the plane at the gate in DC until I was already supposed to be in Detroit. Although I did have an hour layover in Detroit, I definitely touched down 20 minutes after my connecting flight to Flint had left. Luckily for me, I wasn’t stranded in Detroit until the next flight took off 3 hours later as my parents just drove to Metro to pick me up instead of Bishop.

Now I’m looking forward to a weekend of relaxing with my family, watching my younger cousins hunt for Easter eggs, and just soaking up a bit of home time. Yay for spring break!