Published!

My mechanobiology feature finally got published. Six beautiful pages of my writing, in full color, and with gorgeous pictures of the professors. I've promised copies of the magazine to several family and friends. Some of them asked for autographs (heehee).

It really does look nice. I've gotten complimented on it by a lot of people in the department, some of whom I don't even know. A professor walked into the office the other day to compliment Bill on it, saying, "I really loved your biology articles, those were really something." And Bill just pointed to me and said, "Talk to the girl over there, she did all the work." Then the professor shook my hand graciously, introduced himself, and said he was incredibly impressed with the project, and that it was a fascinating read. I was so flabbergasted I could barely thank him.

Bill and I met with the head of the department to discuss my upcoming feature next semester, but before we even started talking about it he had to talk at length of how wonderful my articles were, how they really showed the depth and breadth of this department, and how we should possibly make a small brochure or pamphlet highlighting these articles on their own. (After I left the meeting, Bill said he apparently had asked, "Do you think she knew I was impressed? I really hope she did." Bill said, "I think she got the message.")

I'm really very proud. It took a lot of hard work, and I feel like I'm growing into my own space as a writer. It was a project that was entirely mine to shape and form as I pleased, and it turned out well. They've given me a similar project for next semester on professors who work with commercial or alternative energy. I'll start it when I come back to school, but I may do some preliminary research over break.

My one slip-up was revealed a few days ago when one of the professors emailed me. Apparently I hadn't incorporated the edits he sent me into the final article, which means it went to publishing without his input, and he wanted to know if I could incorporate them for the online version. With so many professor edits coming back at the same time, his must have slipped through the cracks. Embarrassed, I sent back my sincerest apologies, promising to fix the website version.

I'm just lucky none of the edits were dramatic. It was mostly fixing a few quotes, clarifying a few statements about his research, yadda yadda. Nothing was explicitly wrong, which was all that mattered. I assume we would have had to have posted an official correction if that were the case, and I don't even know how that works. I'm very lucky.

But now I have this collection of articles, this project, that I can use as part of a portfolio that I would present when applying for a job or somesuch. This is good to have for the future, a gallery of my work, an example of my skill. Bill recommended keeping some of my more involved works to use as examples of my writing, and to note when and where they were published. I think I might start doing that.

After all, doing this for a career still sounds as tempting as it always did.

Crunch Week Conquered

Everything is DONE (except for this horse show, of course). And this hotel wifi is really terrible. So I don't get to watch Fringe and I'm a little bit upset.

The exams went all right. For physics, I got pretty much the same score for this midterm as I did for the last one. For math, I think I actually did better (at least, it felt better). The magazine got finished and wrapped up. It looks super nice. And my name is in it! Six whole pages aaaahhhhhhh

And then after this show, I get to go on break for a week. That'll be reeeaally nice.

I hope this show goes well. My lesson this week was really nice, on a horse I've never ridden before. So even though I haven't been doing well at the recent horse shows, I felt like that was a little bit redeeming. And I don't have to jump the first day, which I think has been throwing me off a little bit (especially since it would always be after waking up at 3 am to drive to Indiana). And my mom and Steven will be coming down on Sunday, which is super exciting. :)

Down to the Wire

Things are really heating up around here. Bill wants to send the magazine to print by next week, and we're not sure if it's going to happen. Poor Bill is really stressed. I spent Thursday giving him opinions on the setup of the spreads, editing pages, looking at the new website (whose launch date had to be pushed back a week because of this magazine), trying to wrangle a professor to give us pictures. Bill eventually called one.

"Where are you?"

"About to leave the lab. Why?"

"Stay there. We'll be over in ten minutes with a camera."

And we got some pretty good pictures, too. It was kinda neat. He has an imaging lab, and to get into it, you need to step into this rotating dark chamber (so that he can use his lab as a darkroom if he needs to). It was so exciting. Bill said it felt like going into the Batcave or something.

But anyway. My biology articles will now take up six pages. It just happened that way. Bill said he didn't mind. We decided on a format, and he was putting things together as I left. I asked if he wanted me to come in Friday too, but he said no, that he'd just be working on things I couldn't help him with. So I didn't have to go in to work on Friday.

This week is crunch week. The magazine has to go to publishing, I have two midterms, then a horse show. But then thanksgiving break! I'm really looking forward to going home, since it'll be the first time I've been home all semester. I miss my family a lot.

I'll let you know how crunch week turns out.

The Key of Destiny

I'm so cheesy, I don't know why anyone listens to me.

We moved offices today! It was NOT what I was expecting, good lord. In the other office, we had cubicles and such, and the office was sort of divided between me, Bill, Betsy, and the receptionist (with the research office just to the side, behind a door). Now it's a small room that looks like an office for one person. Bill has a large, chest-height desk and I have a nice wide table, but it's still about the size of a professor's office. It was a little strange. And I liked listening to Bill and Betsy's conversations, but now it's just me and him. Pretty silent.

A good motivation to work, though. I felt much more focused today. I've started on the EBICS article, I'm about two paragraphs into it. I hope to finish it tomorrow, which is my three-hour day.

There's also a new student worker coming in. She was recommended by the same professor who recommended me, but I'm not sure if she was in my class or not. I don't recognize her name, if she was. Apparently our schedules intersect on Thursdays.

BUT WAIT I almost forgot the most important part of the story: I get a key to the office! It's so exciting! I really missed having one when they took mine away last semester (apparently I wasn't supposed to have one because it was an office for more than just Bill).

Today I also got a key for the SWIP (Society for Women in Physics) office (because I'm the treasurer this year), so now my keys are much heavier. I've been trying to organize them a bit, but I think i need another key chain to organize them because they all look like exactly the same key. I think Illinois manufactures them all the exact same way.

So I need some way to identify them better. Another keychain would help. Maybe I'll find something cheap somewhere sometime. I'm not sure. I really like the wristlet thing, though. I really do. It's kind of awesome. And it makes it easy to find my keys, without getting in the way or being obnoxious. And I kinda like carrying them around on my wrist sometimes.

The keys were what I really wanted to talk about. But I feel like they were the most uninteresting part. I apologize. I was just excited.

The Wait

Sometimes I think the worst part about this job is the fact that I have to wait on other people for so much. 

I try to respond to emails in a very timely fashion. I basically have a time set aside every day to do "business work:" that is, respond to emails, send emails, look up dates and make sure my calendar is updated, plan when I'm going to do what homework and whether laundry needs to be done. So while I may not respond to things immediately, I do respond to them either that day or the next day. 

And it's frustrating when people don't do the same. 

Like, seriously? My entire project is basically waiting on YOU GUYS (yeah, you THREE professors who haven't responded in a week) since I've written articles for the rest, and you can't even respond to me in a week? Even if it's just to tell me no, sorry, you're busy? I would accept that as an answer! As long as it was an answer!

Sigh. 

But I suppose that's what happens when most of your subjects are professors. Busy people with their brains spread out in twenty different places all the time. What a life they must have. 

And I have completed two articles. So far I think I'm looking at about 7 total? I have a draft of a third and fourth, but those are the only ones I can write so far. I'm waiting on three more. I'm hoping to have them all done by the end of September, which means more writing for me! Yay! 

So basically my next week of work will be just writing and nothing else. (Unless one of these professors decides to actually respond.) Maybe I'll send a reminder email to the ones who have been non-responsive the longest. Because I have gleaned rewards for being persistent in the past. Maybe it's really the only way to reach people with spread-out-brains.

Sadistic Shoes

Not to start off with the negatives, but I currently have post-it notes stuck around the back of my heels right now. Unprofessional? Perhaps. Especially considering they're bright orange. But these flats already cut up my heels this morning, and then tore through the FIRST set of post-its I put there to protect me, so I think the presence of such serious malice warrants a little unprofessionalism.

This is my third day back at work, and I've been very productive (if I may say so). I like having an office. I like coming in and sitting down and being forced to work because I have nothing else to do or think about. I'm halfway done with my last summer transcription, and yesterday I wrote an article about a professor receiving an NSF grant. (I like writing those articles. They're formulaic, but the fun comes in trying to make it sound more interesting and conversational despite the formula.) I interviewed a professor today, and I'm set to interview another one tomorrow. I'd like to get through all of the professors on my list by the end of the month. 

This was kind of an awkward interview. I'd like to say it wasn't my fault, but it probably was, at least to some degree. I wanted to talk to him about how his research related to biology, but his answers were short and vague and he didn't seem like he wanted to talk to me very much. He kept asking, "Is that enough, or...?" "Is that what you want?" And I kept telling him I just wanted to know more about his biological research, how he got started in it, how it compared to his normal mechanical research and what that was, etc. 

The annoying part is when people who feel awkward take it out on other people. He obviously felt awkward talking about his research, but rather than just pushing through it, he would give me looks and talk with a tone that clearly said, "I have no idea why you're here or what you want and I'd so much rather be doing something else right now." 

In other words, I didn't feel very welcome.

I tried asking broad questions, I didn't let silences go for very long, but whenever I pushed him to say more, like "and what results has that research produced?" he seemed annoyed, as if I were prying. 

Anyway. He'll probably just get a passing mention in the articles. No big deal. 

By the way, my mechanobiology project? FOUR pages in the upcoming magazine! Four! Bill wants all of the professors on my list to be quoted or mentioned, but not all of them need their own articles. And we can blend a few together if their research is related. I've already started prioritizing and seeing who would make for a good blend. Then I need to write a single summary article on the relevance of mechanical engineering to modern biological research. 

Now that I know what this is eventually going to turn into, I'm much more excited to see the final product. 

They Grow Up So Fast

A mentor once told me something I've never forgotten: "It's hard to kill your baby."

Please hold the horrified response until I've elaborated.

He was actually referring to writing. He was editing a piece I had written, and crossing out entire paragraphs. I balked, telling him that I liked those parts, that they sounded nice and that they were relevant and--and--

He responded with the above statement. You're always fond of what you write, he said. It's yours, you created it. It's your baby, your child, it came from you, and to destroy it is not only impossible, but despicable to even think about. You can remember writing every one of these words, and you couldn't bear to let a single one of them pass into oblivion. But you gotta. To save this piece, you gotta.

I've never forgotten that advice. Because he's absolutely right. We never want to cut our pieces to bits, because every part of them is precious to us. I remember writing that, you think, almost as if reminiscing over your memory of a young child. I remember thinking those thoughts and putting them into words. Those are mine.

But to truly edit a piece--any piece--you have to step back, take it from a reader's standpoint. The reader will have no particular attachment to those words. Maybe a few are necessary--they're not all disposable. Some are crucial, some hold the piece up as if on columns and foundations. But shockingly few.

Looking over the piece I've written, there is a lot to be cut. The focus is lost under all of my detail (I think I'm far too fond of the details), and I enjoyed writing it too much to realize. So now entire paragraphs must be thrown into cyber oblivion.

He told me those words several years ago. I can still hear them just as clearly as if he had said them yesterday. I really have never gotten more helpful advice on writing. It is what we all so easily forget, and what is never irrelevant to whatever we're working on. Every piece you write has irrelevant parts, parts that make the thread of the piece bend slightly off the focus. For the sake of clarity, for the sake of your writing, for the sake of your piece, they must be cut.

And yes: it's damn hard to let go of your babies. But you gotta.

Summertime

The year ended in a blur. My work tapered off as I became absorbed in finals, and I ended up having to finalize the dynamics article from home (as well as a student award article). Once I got those done, I was on break for a while.

And it was odd, not having constant work to do. Even worse was that I don't have set office hours. I don't like keeping my own time. I like having a set schedule, being busy enough that my schedule is set (more often than not) around what I have to do, and then what I want to do just fills in the cracks. Now what I have to do is on a flexible schedule. There are no more cracks. There's just fluid free time, and general responsibilities without deadlines floating on the top like leaves in a stream.

I'm going to go insane.

I mean to wake up early, I do. You can imagine how long that lasted. I mean to go running regularly, to go riding regularly. But time just passes, and then I look back and I've done nothing.

It's probably a product of having such a tightly-packed schedule, non-stop, all year. I've been booked back-to-back since last August (I remember I was having scheduling conflicts even during Welcome Week) and now my schedule is flexible and fluid and it's freaking me the hell out.

I have a new, large project for work. It's a series of articles on MechSE professors whose research is related to biology. I've done one interview, and transcribed it; but have done no work for the article itself. That was three days ago. I just can't sit down and focus, I can't write it. I have no set time in which to write it, so I suppose I've just been waiting until I'm in the mood, but that hasn't occurred yet.

I'm going to volunteer (hopefully) for a middle-school physics program at my high school. It's in the morning, so I'm hoping that'll get me out of bed well-enough to regulate my sleep schedule and get me focused enough to get work done. And the school is close to the library--I might do some work there.

In any case, I need to get my act together before my brains become scrambled eggs.

I can't believe I've turned into one of those people who can't stand vacations.

An Error in Innovation

This article is probably the hardest article I've worked on all year. 

When I interviewed last week, I went there to interview a professor. He talked to me for half an hour and handed me off to a [cute and smart] grad student in his group. I talked with him for an hour. They were both trying to explain to me what their research was (which is in "theory of filtering and estimation", using Bayesian inference and a little bit of control theory), and it took me forever to get. 

I think the grad student understood that, since he reassured me that it had taken him months to get an intuition about this sort of thing, and I was learning it all in one hour. 

To make it short, they're trying to make noisy measurements like radar and precision force sensors more accurate by comparing the sensor measurement to a model, and calling the difference the "innovation error", and using that difference to keep updating the prediction until the error approaches zero. The simulations he showed me were pretty amazing, especially when I knew the math behind it had to be ridiculously complex.

It's going well, though. It took me two days to go through all the material. I did, after all, have an hour and a half of recordings to go through (some of it more than once, and I'm going to have to go back and get more quotes, unfortunately) as well as 7 pages of notes and scribbled diagrams that they had both drawn for me as a way of helping me understand. I've since drawn my own, paraphrased notes on the papers. 

The most exciting thing is that this is really my first serious piece of science writing. This is complicated stuff. Not everyone would be able to understand this like I did, with my physics and math background. And most people wouldn't care anyway. So how do I make them understand? And how do I make them care?

This is what science writing is. 

If I do this right, this'll be a very important piece for me. 

My, What Beautiful Handwriting You Have

That's what I thought while the professor was writing in front of me. Now I'm trying to read his notes and I'm lost in the beauty of his handwriting and can't find the words.

In other words, it's pretty but impractical. Good thing I recorded the whole conversation (or should I call it a lecture?)

Part-Attention

I didn't have anything to do at work today. At least, that's what I thought.

I was puttering, sending emails and updating the website for an organization of which I am webmaster, preparing some questions for a professor I'm interviewing tomorrow--and it hit me.

I have transcripts of two student interviews that I never wrote articles for.

They were from at least two weeks ago, if not three. I panicked just a little bit. How did those slip through the cracks? How had I forgotten already? They were not time-sensitive, by any means, and I had been keeping busy these last three weeks with other things, but how had I never come back to them? I had had little tidbits of time in which to work on them, if I had wanted, but I had completely forgotten.

A problem with working part-time: your job tends to take up only part of your attention.

I have schoolwork, rehearsals, riding lessons, places to be, and it's hard to keep track of everything. Work sort of falls to the back of everything, since I technically only think about it 9 hours out of the week. I get behind, I lose track of things, I forget things by simply focusing on "what's due today" rather than the long-term, no-due-date projects.

I think I'll need to make a system for that. I already have post-its on my desktop with some proper phrasing things such as saying "the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering" BEFORE I use the universally-employed "MechSE," which I suppose is an acronym, but I've never thought of it that way.

Anyway. I'll have to make a master post-it with all my projects on it. Then maybe this will stop happening.

Being a full-time student with a part-time job is a lot like having a full-time job.

More pictures.

I was just elected to be the English Historian for the equestrian club.

I definitely need a better camera!

Pics (Or It Didn't Happen)

I feel so obtrusive as a photographer. You have to get in front of people and duck behind tables and run while bending over so as not to block any views. And the whole time you are SO conscious of like, your existence. And what you're wearing. And literally every move you make.

Still, I got a few nice pictures. The event was pretty small; it was just an elective night to educate upperclassmen ME majors as to their upper-level electives that they need in order to graduate. So I got pictures, plus a few words from the VP of ASME and the head of the undergrade MechSE office (whom I already knew). I would call it a successful outing.

I'll upload the pictures and such to the network at work tomorrow. Along with pictures I got of the EcoMarathon. I don't know whether I should interview people about it or just do a short news piece on what happened, who won and who didn't, and throw in a couple of names that I get off their website. We already did a piece on them before the competition, so I feel like another piece should just be the news-worthy part, which is the results. (? Maybe?)

Also, if I'm going to keep taking pictures, I need a camera without a digital zoom. If you zoom in with a digital zoom, all motion is blurry. And that's reeally not useful for journalistic purposes.

Laziness and Photography

I'm sitting cross-legged in an upper hallway of the physics building as we speak, waiting to go to work. I originally came here because there was a hold on my account that kept me from registering for classes--even when there really shouldn't have been. But then, as I waited for them to get back from their lunch break, I logged on and found the holds had been removed already...even though I hadn't talked to them yet.

Maybe they were just a little late in getting my registration eligibility approved. Either way, I decided to stay here. And I'm not sure why, because people keep giving me weird looks, and one person said "Hey, how are you?" when I swear to a stack of holy bibles I had no idea who he was. (Although I replied enthusiastically all the same. No reason to make it awkward, especially when he was so nice.)

I have a photographer gig! I mean, not really. Sort of. Bill has a conflict at two upcoming MechSE events, and either I or Chad (my fellow worker) have to cover the events. Chad has a conflict on Tuesday, so I'm covering Tuesday and he'll cover Wednesday. I'm not sure exactly what I have to do, but I like taking pictures. Maybe I'll upload one or two?

When I did an interview this weekend, I barely remembered to take a picture of him before I left, to put in the article. Unfortunately it was against a wall (I should have gone outside, why didn't I think of it) but my phone takes pretty good pictures, so quality won't be a problem.

He didn't say if we had to write articles on the events. I suppose I can just ask him today.

Three of the five articles on the MechSE site right now are mine. Oh, and four of the six spotlights.

That makes me feel really good.

The Concrete Cylinder Crushed by 1500 lbs of force

At Engineering Open House two weeks ago. I interviewed exhibitors and took pictures. It was definitely a party.
(When I say "crushed", what I really mean is "exploded". Just look at the kids' faces!)

I got it! I'm keeping this job over the summer!
HALLELUJAH.

Crossing Fingers

I hope he says yes to the telecommuting. Please say yes. I don't want to work in food service for the rest of the summer.

My other plan is to reach out to my contact in communications at Fermilab. My professor connected me to her, I did an interview on her for a career project. I might send her an email asking if there's any room for me.

IF this doesn't work out. I hope it will. Pleasepleasepleaseplease.

Maybe I wouldn't mind working as a waitress. I dunno. I'd rather be doing something more productive, though, for sure. We'll see.

It took me forever to finish that large article on EOH. It was just a conglomeration of all the MechSE exhibits, but it took me forever. I had to research details, names, I listened to the audio of all the recordings that we got and tried to nutshell it in the best way I could. So it took me ages, and when I got it to him, he didn't seem entirely enthusiastic to get it up right away. He hasn't contacted me all break about it. (But then again, the website shows nothing new...) I wonder if he's just busy with other things. I like having multiple things to do, prioritizing, multi-tasking, but recently he's just been waiting for me to finish one thing and then sometimes taking his time in shooting me another.

Makes me feel less important in a silly, insecure way.

Tuesday

"Does anyone want this can of chicken noodle soup?" Betsy asks the office at large, emerging from the cubicle she had been cleaning out.

"ALWAYS," Bill declares from his cubicle.

"Really?"

"No, please throw that out. I'm sure it's a decade old."

"Probably."

The office is going through major changes. I told you I lost my cubicle? I got one back! Although it's been recommended to me not to make myself comfortable, as we'll be getting a larger, shinier office soon.

Of course, they've been saying that for weeks, but I don't mind.

There's also a new student worker. He looks a bit older than me, and we haven't interacted much except when our shifts interfere, which is only Mondays. In which case I found another place to work until I could get my table back.

There are no hard feelings. Bill has a lot of work to do. It's crazy to me that they just hired a Director of Communications this past summer, and hadn't had one for the past year. They've piled him with catch-up work, AND all the daily work that a director of communications for a major engineering department at one of the largest engineering colleges in the world would USUALLY have to do. That's one of the reasons why he was so desperate to hire me back in October, even as a freshman with no experience. He just needed help.

And I hope I've been doing him proud. He has offered me this job over the summer, which I'll take, assuming I can telecommute (since I really can't stay here, not this summer). The only problem is when I take on research, as I'm required to do as a physics major looking to get into graduate school. I'm not sure I can do research and this job at the same time.

But, I shall take it as it comes. Research probably won't start until next summer anyway, which means I can give him at least another year of work.

And I do like this job. I like the experience it's giving me, I like Bill and Betsy, I like interviewing interesting people and getting my name on a website with my writing--my writing!--for everyone to see. It's kind of awesome. And as a potential science writer, this experience is priceless in helping me decide what I want to do as a career.

Pretty much the only question left is whether or not I like research more. And I really don't even have the slightest clue what the answer to that question will be.

Awkwardawkwardawkward

I thought I was getting better at interviews. Blah. Never mind.

It doesn't help that I can't hear out of my left ear at the moment, and you'd be surprised how disorienting that can be. I also think I've accidentally been speaking louder to the people on my left all day.

The conference room wasn't reserved properly, we had to improvise with a classroom. And I was interviewing three people at once! And they didn't really have a lot to say about their project. Their answers were simple and unattached. It was just a project, they said. Not anything out of the ordinary.

How helpful.

So I was trying to coax something profound out of them with some questions, but I don't think I got anything really story-worthy. It won't be a very interesting article, I think, but they did win first place. So that's something. Even when I asked them why they won first place, they didn't seem very proud. "Our organization, I guess," one person said. "We were really organized, got all our reports in on time."

I'll end up spinning something. I guess it wasn't the best subject. It didn't seem to mean much to them. They didn't really care, they were struggling for things to say. It's the interviews where you can get people talking about what they really, really care about. Those are when you get the best quotes, the best conversations. The best articles, really. But if your subject doesn't care, it's hard to imagine how you're going to make your readers care.

Until then, my feature on the prosthetics organization is up. I am happy. :)

"Ands", periods, and commas.

These are the three things I have most commonly added or deleted from the quotes from yesterday. There are too many ands and not enough commas. Very little rephrasing.

I'm so excited about this article. I hope Bill likes it as much as I do. These people are doing such great things, and I really want to make sure everyone knows about them. Everyone should. They went from trying to make prosthetics out of two-liter bottles to a viable marketable prototype of an affordable, durable upper-extremity prosthetic, the only one of its kind, the product of four years of work. It's just beautiful. They're making a difference.

Back to writing.

Carry On and Keep Doing What You're Doing

(a quote from my transcription today)

The one bright spot of doing all these transcriptions is that one interview was held with a professor who had a British accent. That made me just a little bit happier. I can't help it. He's saying his words all funny and rounding his vowels and saying pro-cess instead of prah-cess. He also had the stereotypical British dentistry, I noticed, which amused me at the time, but he was perfectly nice and very well-spoken.

You know how you listen to someone speak an accent, and then you just keep thinking that accent in your head? I'm typing this with a British accent right now.

But it was really very cute. I was interviewing him on the prosthetic non-profit, because he had been with them since the beginning. He described the founder, coming into his office as a young sophomore, as a naive, charming young man who truly looked like he could have been in middle school. But he was honest, enthusiastic. "You couldn't help but want to help," he said.

The other interview was with a very conversational vice president of the prosthetic non-profit. We never really realize how ridiculously long-winded we sound until we have to type every word that comes out of people's mouths. Sentences are run-on to the extreme, and sometimes don't even make grammatical sense. It never occurred to me while I was interviewing him. But while I was typing out his words, long strings of words where the sentence has 7 independent clauses and some fragments and starts of sentences that stop when he changes his mind and flow abruptly into a new sentence, it just suddenly struck me how natural it sounds when you hear it and how awkward it sounds when it's read.

It'd make a very interesting book to have the characters talk like we do in real life.

It also leads to a great amount of paraphrasing in transcription. Whenever you see a quote in an article somewhere, realize that it's an edited version of the exact words they said. But if we all published exact words all the time, we'd end up with a lot of "um's", "ah's", "you know's", "it's kinda like's", and "I mean's".

"And using all of that, all that can come together to bring us from, like I said, the first prototype to the first viable product, and I mean that's pretty much a summary of how, just what we're trying to do."
"But Jon is there to facilitate what this grant is actually about in terms of putting arms on people, and watching them for a period of time, and seeing how their skin behaves, how they behave, what they can use it for, how the device stands up to the wear and tear, is it easy to understand how to use, because that’s a big thing for us too, is the average person needs to be able to figure out how to use the device, because it can’t be something that’s so complicated or unintuitive that they have a hard time using it."

So I add a few periods and subtract a few conversational transit words. It never changes the meaning. But I can see how it might be a slippery slope--that's why we always email our final drafts to the subjects, in case they want to change any of their quotes. A good system, I think, and the subjects have always seemed to appreciate it. They always make similar changes, making it sound smoother and more professional. 

Sounding just as professional in conversation as in writing is much harder than it sounds.

Mondays.

That day when you're supposed to be transcribing interviews, and you leave your headphones at home.

Sigh. Hooray for Mondays.

Oh, well. I've been moderately productive today without them. It means I can't work on my biggest upcoming article, but it's not exactly time-sensitive (and I already have half a draft), so I think I'll be all right. I've edited two of my pieces and sent them for approval, and also sent a finished article to the head of the undergrad department for review. That should be published soon.

I've also got a few interviews up and coming. I'm getting much, much better at interviewing. I had two interviews Friday for my big IPT article: one with the VP of IPT (a very nice student, who had a lot to say), and one of their faculty advisors, who was a charmingly quiet older man with a British accent who had amusing stories and anecdotes about IPT's naive beginnings. I think this article will turn out very well.

Of course, I'm not transcribing the interviews now like I should be. That'll have to wait until tomorrow.

I have an interview with a student, sometime this week or next, who won the Knights of St. Patrick award. (Or....who has become a Knight of St. Patrick? I'll have to be sure to figure that one out...) I already met with him last semester to arrange for his award application for another distinction--which, by the way, he won! Bill emailed me, very excited that a MechSE student had won, and thanked me for my work on that. Most of my work on the award applications was done over my winter break--and while I was on vacation in Maine.

I feel like I could write an amateur's guide to interviews sometime in the near future. When I have the time, I'll put it together. I've learned quite a lot through failure, it seems, judging by how well my present interviews have gone compared to the ones I've held in the past. It's very much an art, and not nearly as simple as one might think. At least, not in the case of interviewing for journalism purposes.

I'm also writing this from a small table in the corner of the office. They hired someone new recently, and she took the front desk while Becky took my cubicle. I'm being told it's temporary. I don't really mind. I don't need much space. The new girl seems a little gloomy, though. Becky always said hi whenever I walked in the door. The new girl at the front desk doesn't even look up for me to say hello.

Becky has apologized to me several times for making me move to a small table. I laugh and tell her it's all right. I almost like it, except for the small lack of privacy.

I'll tell you how the interviews go later this week. And...there might be more complaining about transcriptions. In fact, there probably will be.

"The key to salsa is...passion!"

(the title is a Scrubs quote, for those of you who don't know; I always think of it when I think of either salsa or passion)

I will begin by saying, I've actually been getting interviews right lately. I've had to do a few small interviews with senior students who had worked on senior design projects in the department, and I feel like I'm finally getting the hang of it.

I got them talking about their projects, asked follow-up questions of their explanations, followed the story from beginning to middle to end. And as the final question of every interview, I asked them how taking the class had personally benefited them.

Man, did I get some awesome answers to that one.

And I think that's the trick of interviewing. Find out what the subject wants to say. Don't ask them about their personal responsibilities, ask them about what they're most proud of. Don't ask them what their senior advisor was in charge of, ask them how their senior advisor guided them. And most of all, ask them about what they're really passionate about.

For some of them, that was the projects themselves. I said, "Tell me a little bit about it," and they launched into a long detailed spiel like a torpedo out of a sub. For others, they were careful explaining their project around me, avoiding details and trying to go for the simple big picture. They only really showed passion when I asked them what their favorite part of the project was, or what the most satisfying part was. That got them going.

In my most recent student interview, the subject paused after I asked the last question, and thought about it for a bit. Then he told me that the best part of the senior design project was that it brought together everything he had learned over the past three years and put it right in front of him, right there for him to touch, and that it was the most satisfying feeling in the world. Closure, one might say.

Definitely using that quote.

Nerves of Steel/Steeling the Spotlight (or other lame and cliche steel pun of your choice)

My feature article was published!

I've been working on it since before winter break. We originally did the interview with this particular professor in the beginning of September, and between the transcription of the hour-long interview (which was hired out to someone else, and took several days to get back), the analysis and picking apart of the interview, and all the separate research it took to put into it, the whole thing took about a month when you subtract winter break. It was a very involved article--and I'm so proud.

The most significant help in writing this article was actually my first feature article when I first started working here in October. It was about an alumnus who had decided to bequest money to the university in his will. I looked over the interview, wrote the article, and gave it to my boss to edit. He just finished editing it recently (no rush on this one, apparently), and I was astounded by the edits he had done. He had almost completely rewritten the article. He used the same quotes, but in a different order, and the whole thing was almost utterly unrecognizable.

I tried not to let it get to me. It was one of my first articles on the job, anyway. My personal attachment to it wasn't unbreakable. With it, he had attached a small guide on how to write a good AP-style feature. I cross-referenced the guide and his work--sure enough, I could see the parallels. The story running through the whole thing, the transition from one idea to another until you reach the proper conclusion. It made sense.

Then he handed back my steel feature, and told me to edit it according to the guide. That was the only instruction I got from him.

And I discovered he had been right. I looked at the alumnus article, the guide, the steel article, and saw what I needed to do. Instead of piling on details, I needed to make them flow. One idea led to another until the reader doesn't even know they're being guided. And then at the end, you reach a point: a culmination, so to speak, of why the article is important, and what made it so worthwhile for the reader to take time out of their day to digest.

So I did what he asked. I cut and pasted paragraphs in entirely different orders, sometimes even splitting them or omitting them. I wondered how I hadn't seen this before, why it hadn't occurred to me before that this article had sounded wrong, had read wrong. If you read it from top to bottom, you were saturated with information. If you read my edited draft from top to bottom, you would hear a professor explaining his work, and why it's important. For the next draft that I sent Bill, he had no edits.

That feature article was probably one of my most educational experiences here to date. There's no better way of learning than being forced to work on your own project, separating the pieces and then putting them together the way the reader likes to see them written, even if they couldn't tell you why.

I am getting better.

Pause, Rewind, Play. Pause, Rewind, Play.

Transcription is a job for monkeys.

I might be bitter, so you should probably take those words with a grain of salt. And probably these words, too: transcribing interviews is a terrible, mind-numbing, carpal-tunnel-and-back-injury-inducing task. How do closed-captioning writers do it? That'd be a fascinating feature piece to write, "The World Behind The Words."

Twice as far as I've known him, Bill (my boss) has paid people to transcribe interviews. I think it might even be the same girl. And now I'm starting to wonder how high the price is to transcribe a 45 minute interview. That would have taken her hours, if her typing speed isn't superhuman (which it may very well be; I won't assume).

And I do pride myself on typing speed. It's normally somewhere around 100...110 on a good day, and perhaps with a little bit of caffeine. Transcribing has given me a lot of practice recently, though. Taking another one of those Facebook Typing Tests sounds tempting.

Today I finished transcribing two interviews. One was very short, more informational than anything, and I got to be selective on what exactly I wanted to keep. The second was the interview I did last week (which ended quite abruptly, and was about a half an hour long). That took me the most time. I worked on it all of yesterday and into today.

Remember Shawshank Redemption? Hard labor on the railroad tracks or somesuch? We could make them do transcriptions for journalists.

I'm reminded of the third grade, with Mr. Ecklemeyer. We would go to the computer lab after handwriting a first draft, and type up our essays. He used me as an example in front of the class for a very simple reason: I typed the essay by sentence, not by word, looking at the paper much less often than some of my classmates. As a little teacher's pet, you can probably imagine this incident was a matter of pride for me for some time. To be perfectly honest I still get a little twinge of pride just remembering it. (Might be that teeny fraction of teacher's pet I still have in me...)

The point is, it's very much the same concept with interviews. Don't pause every sentence, just pause when you start getting behind. It'll let you get further, faster. You might make it through a couple of phrases before you can't catch up.

And remember, unlike real life, you can always rewind.

Five Minutes

I've discovered today that the voice recorder on my phone goes up to 5 minutes of recording before shutting off.

Don't worry--I figured it out about 6 minutes into the interview.

I was early, she was late. I was waiting outside her office for a few minutes before I saw her running up the stairs, half a sandwich in her mouth and a brown bag in her hand. "I have to be at a test at 2," she said after we briefly greeted each other. "Just so you know." It was 1:32.

Let me just tell you: I had prepared for this. I had questions about her career, her research, her involvement in the department, the whole kit and caboodle. But I was nervous about going into it by myself, so I spoke quietly and asked her to talk about her recent public engagement grants.

Blunt and to-the-point, she told me the grants really didn't have much to do with the department, and she didn't even have much to do with one of them (her name was just on it as the PI for the grant), but she spent almost 15 minutes straight explaining exactly what the programs were, as well as a partial history.

Every five minutes, I would reset my recorder.

I fumbled to phrase a question about her research, throwing out terms I had read on her website: balance, pregnant women, firefighters. I think she could tell I had no real aim. She first stated she had already given the department information about her study on firefighters and the grant that came with it, but didn't give me a chance to meekly pipe up that I had only been here a few months. Instead, she chose to explain the details of the study, her tone fast-paced and purposeful.

Me: "Do you have any other ongoing projects?" (This is not a very intelligently-worded question to ask a professor. The vast majority of them always have several.)
Her: -laughs- "Of course we do!"

I'm sure in her head she was thinking, "Where on earth did they find this girl....?" But she continued, telling me about her research into pneumatic and fluid-powered orthoses, and the progression from metal to plastic to--

A knock on the door. A professor with a thick accent: "Liz! We have test!"

"Oh, crap. [to me] Sorry, I've got to go."
"That's all right. I'll probably send you a follow-up email--"
She was already grabbing the rest of her lunch, with a few folders and a bag. "Mmhm, that's fine. Nice talking with you!"
"Yes, thank you very much."
And she was gone.

So here are my thoughts. My boss (Bill) was thinking of two articles: one on the public engagement grants, and one on her. I definitely did not get enough information for an article on her, but probably enough for one on the grants. So I'll tell him that, and also tell him that she was under the impression we had enough information on her research, and offer the one article. If he wants a second one, there will have to be a second interview. Hopefully a more successful one than the first.

I can see why there exists the "absent-minded professor" stereotype. They have so much going on around them, it would make anyone dizzy.

In other words, it didn't go as badly as I feared. But I still have a ways to go.

And somehow, I feel as if I'll be ending posts with those words quite a lot.

Music and Lyrics

I know our generation is supposed to be really connected to music. Ipods filled with 1000+ songs, Spotify/Pandora/Grooveshark/etc, the rise of indie and the "you've-probably-never-heard-of-them" hipsters, and all that. We're compensating for the post-90's disintegration of MTV, someone once told me.

Relative to the musical stereotype of my generation, I feel very much like a square. I skip a despicable percentage of the songs on my mp3 player. Most of them are songs unconnected to albums (who has albums anymore? sooo pre-millennium) played by artists of whom I have heard exactly 3 songs. 3 of those are on my player.

(Yes, I'm one of those people:
"What kind of music do you listen to?"
"....uh, alternative rock pop indie folk-pop instrumental acoustic hard rock orchestral....music. Yeah."
"Well, who are your favorite bands?"
"....uh.")

So our musically-saturated generation goes through life with earbuds firmly secure. The most tedious task of our lives: homework. You could listen to teenagers' homework playlists for eons, and never reach the end. However, being the square that I am, the list of homework subjects I can successfully do to my typical range of music consists of only two subjects: math and physics. For anything else, I thought I couldn't possibly listen to a song with lyrics.

I mean, really. You're listening to that Foster the People song, writing your english lit essay, and all of the sudden your next sentence looks a little like:
"The latent symbolism in these pumped up kicks, demonstrates a clear need of the main character to better run better run...."

Editing that paper will be real fun.

I've discovered, however, that as long as I don't know the lyrics, I'm in no danger of accidentally transcribing the words in my ears instead of the words in my head. This has led to a rather obsessive use of Pandora and Spotify, and a strange compulsive addiction to new music.

As long as I've never heard it before, I can write to it.

Except if I'm writing in French. Word to the wise: the duality of listening to English lyrics while struggling to remember the word for "basement" in French is a very painful way to do homework.

Frequently Asked Questions...Among Other Things

One of these days, I'm going to get an interview right. I just know it. There'll be one time, with this one person, where I'll be on the ball and ask all the right questions and get them to say funny and interesting things that would be good for the article and I'll cover every base and have no questions left by the end. My article will be full of witty quotes, essential information, and leave the reader saying, "Wow. That was cool."

Until then, I'll continue to stop halfway through articles and realize I don't know a crucial piece of information about my subject. And send them a humble email asking them for said information that I never asked them while I had them sitting across from me, voice recorder ticking.

Oh, and have five mini-interviews for award applications, and intelligently arrange to meet them at a crowded coffee shop. The interview recordings were 1 part interview, 2 parts laughing people, and 5 parts roaring espresso machine.

The one interview that did go well was one where I tagged along with my boss. It would be my first feature article; he thought it would be prudent if he came along and led the interview, while I watched. (My first thought: "Oh, thank God.")

The subject was a professor who headed a consortium of steel companies and the NSF, researching the casting process. We'd planned to be with him for about a half an hour--he gave us twice that. He would take a single question and launch into explanations, tangents, anecdotes, and we could only sit and listen.

My boss asked him questions about his research group, the award he had recently won, how his consortium worked...but that's not what I wanted to know. My question was about his research, using numerical methods to minimize defects in continuous casting.  What advantages did continuous casting have? How did it work? Could the molds be different shapes?

I noticed this in my science journalism class--journalists ask different questions than scientists do. Journalists want to know the story. Scientists want to know the science. Their interests lie in different places.

I discovered, however, looking back on the interview while I was writing the article, that I couldn't use much of what he had said about the process. That's not what the article was about. The article was describing him, his consortium, and his research. No one would read the article for an explanation of the continuous casting process. That wasn't my job.

So in my interview with a grad student today, I tried to cut down. I stayed focused. What is your research on? What is your end goal? What award did you win? Which professor are you working for? And in focusing so hard to ask the right questions, I never asked the necessary ones. What are you majoring in/which department are you in? How many students presented in your symposium? Where did you go for undergrad? What year are you?

That's right. I don't know what year of grad school my subject is in, or even her major.

One of these days, I'm going to get an interview right.

Until then, I'll send her a humble email....

**stay tuned for next week, when I interview a professor for a feature article--on my own. eeeep.