I feel just awful this morning, sick to my stomach almost, and I might be homesick, but I can't even put myself in a good mood. I hate being negative but it seems inevitable today. I feel like crap, and it makes think NY is crap. This, however, is probably reasonable. I am not enjoying my stay in this city... I smells bad constantly, like a mix of sour milk and garbage of every variety. The streets are crowded, the subways are worse, people constantly pickpocket other people. Street venders will hit on every female they see, I feel unwelcome and degraded here.
On a lighter note we are off this morning to New York Times, which will hopefully pull me off the streets enough to feel like I am no longer in NY.
Talking with Jessica and Suzanne of NYT I could barely focus on what they were saying while my stomach pains increased. Basically what they told was that they go for stories that will have the most impact. Suzanne used to be a police reporter, and Jessica started at Business Week Magazine doing the editorial section.
Advice they gave us that meant something good for us was "take any job you can get" basically saying that starting anywhere is better then starting nowhere, you can't be picky coming out of college/university and we should all understand that.
We also talked to them about how different print media has become. The major difference is the story size, from when Suzanne started with stories about 1300 words long, she now writes about 600 words. We also discussed the difference of PR and journalism, using twitter as an example. PR people use bias on things such as twitter accounts, and journalists tweet how they really feel and try to tweet the truth. They also shared a funny story about an up and coming journalist who had an interview at NYT and before the interview Suzanne and Jessica checked her twitter account and found her writing some not-so-nice things about the way Jessica and Suzanne wrote for the Times. It didn't help that she had many personal pics on twitter and showed up the to interview in a short skirt and fishnet stockings... she did not get the job - SHOCKER!
Outside of The New York Times
This interview lasted about an hour then we had about another hour of free time (which most of the other students took to spend money shopping at stores we have in Canada). *I do apologize for my negative undertone here.
After this Kathy had gone back to the hotel with a migraine and I truly wish I had followed. Before she left she had pulled some strings to get us into the building where FourSquare was. This is a app for cellphones that is basically like checking into anywhere you are in the world so all your friends can see. I was a bit skeptical about this app and thoughts of stalkers crossed my mind. The office itself was really cool, again it had an open concept and our tour guide was fairly insightful. They also had conference rooms that were similar to places you can check in using FourSquare (such as a vegan restaurant of airport). They also had lunch area complete with a candy bar, picnic tables, and a ping pong table. It was a fun environment but not something I could take seriously. Our tour guide explained that this was a start up company and was slowly expanding. They have 150 employees in three location across the world, NY being the main one. I couldn't see myself working here...
Finally the days itinerary ended, and Steph was able help me back to the hotel tell me to relax pop a few advil and she poured us some alcoholic beverages. She could tell I was grumpy and I think she felt the same way, so why not take the edge off. We grabbed her iPod and headed for the rooftop patio of our hotel. It was the nicest place I had been to in the city. We sat and listened to old school tunes, while chatting and drinking in the sun. It was honestly the best time I had in NY...Which is pretty unfortunate.
Rooftop Chillin'
On top of the POD 
As our fellow classmates
got back from shopping and exploring the city, we all ended up on the rooftop discussing our favourite part of the trip.
It was fairly mutual that the answer had no one specific place. It has been (all-in-all) an
amazing experience.
No comments:
Post a Comment