It's Finally Over ...

... school that is.

Yep, you're reading right. I have finally graduated college. I am now a proud University of Maryland alum. I'm still having trouble accepting the fact that come the end of August, I won't be heading back to campus for classes. I don't have a full-time job yet, but am looking everywhere I can. I am still interning at the Washington Blade and actually had a very exciting interview this afternoon. Once the story is available online, I will definitely post a link here.

Being a LGBT Studies student and working for an LGBT paper, this story caught my attention.

Two Mothers are Better Than One

This article is kind of old, almost a year, but its interesting because I hadn't read about the study mentioned in it anywhere else, not even at my own paper. I'd really like to see the actual study and not just an opinion piece based on the study.

Another Year, Another .... something

Hey people!

I'm going to give this blogging thing a try again and I'm going to begin with a quick update on my life.

I am still interning at the Washington Blade, doing more features like the one in my previous post.  It has been a great experience so far and I'm sure it'll continue to be one for as long as they are willing to keep me on. How many people can say they got to interview real celebrities on their very first internship?

Anyway, I'm about a month into my final semester of college (its about damn time).  I'm taking 13 credits (one is my internship).  Three of my other classes are journalism (Media Law, Women in the Media and Photojournalism) and then I have one English class, Women and Comedy.  So far, I have enjoyed my classes, I just hope I'm still feeling that way at the end of the semester.

I know I often post about shows that I'm watching, so here's my current shows (many of which overlap which means I have to catch up on a couple of them):

Pretty Little Liars (ABC Fam); Top Gear (BBC America); Glee (Fox); NCIS (CBS); White Collar (USA); Hot in Cleveland (TV Land); Bones (Fox); CSI (CBS); Grey's Anatomy (ABC); The Mentalist; Big Bang Theory

I have a few other shows I am watching, but they are on hiatus right now.

I've been doing a log of reading too.  I've read over 25 book since August 2010. I realize that might not seem like lot, but since I graduated high school, I haven't been doing much reading for pleasure (its all been for classes). I'm working on the Rizzoli and Isles series, the Temperence Brennan series, the Dexter series and the Pretty Little Liars series (all of which have inspired television shows).

I don't really know what else is worth mentioning.  A lot of this you all probably don't even care about, but oh well.

Hope to blog something tomorrow.

J Schools

Help Wanted/Needed

Hello Friends!

I need some help with a project I am working on for school.

So, I am taking a class which is about autobiographics in the age of Facebook.  As a final/semester project, I am doing a multimedia autobiography.  I got the idea after reading parts of iDracula, a retelling of Dracula in modern times using emails, texts, voice mails and more.

An Update

Having such a great time at my internship. I'm writing a lot, had three bylines this week, plus the weekly calendar of events.

I'm glad I didn't give up on journalism. I was seriously considering it this past semester. I didn't think I could hack it as a real journalist, but it seems I can. I haven't gotten much feedback on my stories, some issues with the paper mean I've been having to work from home, but soon, when we get a new office, I will have more of a chance to meet with my editors about my stories but also get a chance to watch some of the behind the scenes, hopefully. I'd really like to be able to sit with our layout guy and watch him set up the paper. I took a layout class, but have never seen a real paper laid out.

On my personal writing front, I haven't done much. I found an old fanfiction I wrote, its Buffy and was started before the series ended, which tells you how old it is. Anyway, I was reading over it the other day and WOW did I suck back in the day, lol. Apparently I didn't understand the concept of tenses or not using a character's name in every single sentence. One problem that has nothing to do with my writing skills when I wrote it, I seem to have hated it so much, I deleted the file (or it just got lost in one of many computer changes). So now I am working on retyping it, making some changes and hopefully improving it along the way. I actually remember some of the ideas I had for it, so I think I might attempt to finish it. Of course, I'm saying this and I have almost 100 unfinished fanfics. I think my problem is when I start writing a story, even when I mean for it to be short, it always ends up being really long, almost uber length.

I wish I knew someone in creative writing who would read my stuff and give me some feedback. My friends read my stuff, and their opinions matter, but they're not professionals. They all like my work, but I don't know if they would tell me the truth if my work sucked. Oh well, once the new semester starts, I will be taking a creative writing class and will definitely be getting some constructive criticism. I just hope the professor at least sees potential in my writing.

I guess I should just stop dwelling on this. There's a reason why I'm in journalism and not a creative writing program. I'm more likely to find success in journalism than I would in creative writing. Also, there's not as much pressure of hoping people like my work. In journalism, I just need to keep my editor happy, if an article makes someone mad, and there are no errors in it, then I'm doing my job right.

Alrighty, well, I know my blog has now become kind of boring. I'll try to get an entertainment post in here every once in a while, maybe I'll be able to work a weekly entertainment themed post.

Anyway, if I do start posting weekly, there is one week I'll probably miss, the first week of August, because I will be on vaca in ATL visiting my best friend and her mom.

Keep cool!

OH! Btw, not long after I applied for the internship at DC Agenda, the paper was able to buy back the name Washington Blade.

Oh yea, and that's the internship I'm currently at. :0)

Umm ... Wow

Okay, so, its been almost a year since I last posted on here. For those still subscribed to the feed, I apologize. I just haven't had much LGBT related to post about, and I was wanting to keep it in that topic, with the exception of weekly crushes, which are only semi-LGBT related.

I temporarily was considering switching out of journalism and into Early Childhood Education, I've actually been taking education classes all semester, but it just isn't for me. I've made some amazing friends and I've loved working at my placements, especially the preschool, but it would mean two extra years of school (which i am so sick of) and a VERY stressful final year.

All this means ... well, I'm not sure what it means. I do know that I am currently getting my resume updated to apply for a writing internship at DC Agenda, the new LGBT newspaper in Washington, DC. I'm doubting that I will get it, but I have to try. I always wanted to intern at the Washington Blade, which got shut down earlier this year and the staff created DC Agenda.

Anyway, that's my update. I'll try to be better about updating. I'm considering doing some retro reviews. We'll see.

Until next time ...

School Year Has Started

So, a new semester has started and I have a very busy schedule. I am taking 18 credits, which consists of 6 classes, 4 of which are journalism and 2 are LGBT Studies. Insane right? It only gets worse. One of the journalism classes requires me to go out into the real world to write some stupid ass stories for class, they'll never get published, and they'll never even have a chance at getting published oh and on top of that, I have to get 10 articles published. That's still not all. On top of all of this, I am working at least 10 hours a week, not counting the hour I "volunteer" for, basically just me being in the office helping out and not getting paid for it. Plus I have a two hour commute, one way, that costs me $8 a day. I'm an admin for a fan site that, let's just say needs a lot of help and I'm not able to do much about it, and I will most likely be helping out with a paper on campus just so I can get those 10 clips.

I repeat, insane right?

Anyway, I'm saying all this, not to make excuses to my past suckiness at updating, but to make excuses for my future suckiness. :0) I'm gonna try my best to update at least once a week. All my journalism classes take place in computer labs, and I typically get to them early enough that I can at least get a little work in on a post.

But considering how many days ago I actually started writing THIS entry, we'll see if that actually works.

Anyway, hope everyone had a good summer, I know mine was mostly busy with a few awesome moments, one of which I may blog about, or maybe not, we'll see.

Hope to be blogging again soon!

J School

The Most Wonderful ... and Horrible ... Time of the Year!

UGH! I know I have been extremely bad at updating my wonderful *coughcough* blog, but this semester has been pretty rough on me since I've been dealing with a lot of stuff that happened near the end of the spring semester and this summer. School is just plain old CRAZY. It doesn't help that all but one of my classes require a paper which is worth a HUGE part of my grade. I have one due tomorrow that I have barely started, my small birthday (my 21st) celebration tomorrow night, an office Christmas party (with Secret Santa) Friday afternoon, a surprise birthday party Saturday night (for someone else), a take-home final due Monday which I haven't even started on yet (and most likely won't start until Sunday), two papers due Wednesday, and then a final on Thursday.

FUN.

Anyway, all this means I most likely won't be updating regularly (as if I ever was) until the end of January (I'm going to Maine for Christmas, up north for New Year, and then Germany until about a week before the wonderful things called classes start again).

I might occasionally post about something, such as my trip to Germany, if any good lesbian storylines show up on television, or any other reason, but in case I don't, have a good holiday (whatever holiday(s) you celebrate) and a happy new year!

Clueless People

So, I'm in a LGBT Families class. What we discuss is pretty obvious from the title. I think it should be a class that requires at least one other LGBT class as a prerequsite. There are some people (most people) in there, that have no clue about current LGBTQ issues (and for those who don't know, the Q stands for Queer).

"Homosexual"
I really don't like this word. There are so many things wrong with it. For one, its totally old school. No one in the LGBT community uses the word anymore. It has such a bad history. Homosexuality use to be a disease and thats when the term homosexuality first came about, when it was actually put in the big book of diseases. Homosexuality signifies there is something to cure. Whenever you read an article about gay rights, you can always tell what way the publication leans by whether they say gay rights or homosexual rights.

A group of my classmates were giving a presentation today. There were four people, three of them used homosexual every time they were talking about someone who was gay. I couldn't help but cringe every single time I heard them utter that word.

"Sexual Orientation" vs "Sexual Preference"
I don't think that even my professor realizes the differences between these two phrases. She mentioned them today, but did not explain. The biggest difference is kind of like the example I mentioned about with homosexuality. People who use orientation, usually believe that being gay is NOT a choice, that you are born gay. People who use preference, are the ones who believe being gay is a choice.

There was one girl who tried to say if a person was transexual, they were attracted to people who are transgendered. Really? Are you that dense? Transexual means kind of the same thing as transgendered, just it usually refers to epople who have or are planning to have SRS (Sex reassignment surgery).

Politically Correct
There are a lot of people in my class who don't understand that the terminology has changed over the years. It is no longer correct to call someone a hermaphrodite, they are intersexed. I actually had someone ask me what intersex meant. You learn this in Introduction to LGBT Studies. That class should definitely be a prereq to this class.

Some Good Notes
So, a few good things did happen in class. Obviously the above bad things were corrected, so people were educated. Also, some new terms were brought up that I know none of these people had heard before, but aren't commonly used anyway. Pansexual was mentioned (being attracted to any and all people), as well androgynous. Both terms needed to be explained, but at least these poeple who are completely clueless, learned something new. Also, because of the reading, people learned why there is sch a stigma on AIDS/HIV. There were a couple people who freely admitted that they had not known AIDS use to be called GRIDS (gay-related immune deficiency syndrome).

I would like to say, that not knowing any of these things is not a totally bad thing. What I am saying is, if you are going to take a LGBT studies class, especially an advanced class that is a 400 level, than you should do a little research and get some background information on the subject. You know, maybe just learn a few key phrases, especially things that you should NOT say.