One crazy week

Has it really only been six days since school started? It feels more like six weeks. This is a good thing, in the sense that I now feel more or less like I'm back in the swing of things, but this is a bad thing, in the sense that it's still the second week of January, and school's not out until April.

In addition to going to class and working part-time, I spent almost 20 hours at the Daily Universe this past week. This would have been awful a) if I had never spent extensive time in a newsroom before and b) if I didn't love what I was doing. And what was I doing? Well, on Tuesday I had an interview with a microbiology professor, but really I spent most of the day playing phone tag with BYU's head spokesperson, trying to get some information about a hiring freeze at BYU. When I finally did get to talk with her, I found out she was also getting me a statement from church headquarters because the hiring freeze is church-wide. Surprise!

I got the church's statement on Wednesday, and my story ran on the front page on Thursday. Another story I wrote ran in the campus section. Thursday was also the day Print Services delivered our new magazine. I guess when it rains, it pours, right? Anyway, between my story running on the front page and Eagle's Eye being delivered, I was pretty dang excited.

Thursday's Daily Universe and Eagle's Eye magazine

Friday I covered "Sing for Your Books," a competition sponsored by BYUSA that was a lot like American Idol, minus the cruel remarks. And minus the bad singers. And minus the big contract at the end. Instead, the first-place prize was $350 for textbooks; second place was $150. The winners were announced a little after 1:00 and I had a 2:00 deadline, which gave me just enough time to run up to the winner, thrust my microphone in his face, and get a quote before running across campus to the newsroom where I finished the article and submitted it to my editor. All in a day's work.

In any case, it was a crazy first week, and now I'm looking at another week that promises to be just as insane. So far, though, I'm loving it.

Bring it on!

Stop . . . er, start the presses!

Today my boss and I got a phone call from the people at Print Services inviting us to come up and give the magazine covers a final thumbs-up while they were on the press. Turns out they were just how we wanted them. After we gave the okay, the printers offered to show us around and let us watch the covers as they came off the press.

A four-color printer like the one at the University Press Building

One of the guys took me up onto the printer and showed me how it works. At the top of each tower is a trough of dye (either cyan, magenta, yellow, or black). The ink runs down into the press and is printed on the paper in tiny dots--take a really strong magnifying glass to a colored page and you'll see them. All the colors on our cover come from dots from those four different colors. Pretty sweet.

We watched a batch of our magazine covers go through the press, saw several pallets of "True to the Faith" covers, and watched the workers spiral-bind the missionary planners (apparently Print Services produces at least some copies of "True to the Faith" but only does the binding on the planners).

It was a cool, unexpected field trip. The people at Print Services told us they'd call us when the magazine was being stitched together, so I might even get another one if I'm around for that. In any case, Eagle's Eye should be completely finished by the end of the week, and I'm pretty happy about that!

Back from the break

The cubicle at Eagle's Eye: my home away from home

It was awesome while it lasted, but my five-day break from work is now over. I was back in the cubicle for seven hours today, going over the final proof of this year's Eagle's Eye magazine and doing some organizing while everyone else was still gone.

It really wasn't bad, though. For one, it felt amazingly good to green-light the color proof that Print Services sent us; we've been working to get a final color copy we're happy with for a couple of weeks now and this looks like it should be it. If all goes well, the magazine will start rolling off the presses when Print Services' student staff comes back to work at the beginning of the semester. There are not words to describe how happy this makes me.

Also, I don't think the word "cubicle" does my workspace justice. It's really four cubicle-type structures sort of turned in on each other to form a workspace bigger than some offices I've seen. There's room for four people and we only have three on staff right now, so it's actually quite spacious. There's also at least 10 years' worth of photos, wedding invitations, comic strips, award plaques (for the magazine), newspaper clippings, posters, and pins covering the walls. It's a far cry from Dilbert's dismal little cubicle. Which is good, since I'll be working full-time until school starts next week. Yikes!