Classroom Neighbors

This room is structurally in the middle of the relatively small journalism school. The narrow cylinder of the room and thin walls makes the room susceptible to hearing involuntary sounds. The rooms white bare walls and desks with Macs on them and desk and dry erase board and printer are all typical, but the Jersey Shore soundtrack is an intruder.

Reminiscent of Freshman year, when you would have neighbors who decided to play their loud (and bad) rock music exactly as you were sitting down to study.  Any other time but now would be great, for you to obnoxiously and carelessly play bass-heavy tunes. It seems obvious, that if you play music or soundtracks or film or even YouTube videos at a high enough volume others outside of the neighbors room can hear.

Its loud, intrusive, but somewhat comical, this rave-like music that permeates the walls seems oddly out of place even in a school known for pushing "normalcy" boundaries. After the quiet laughter dies down of students hearing the music from the familiar inconsiderate class next door, things somewhat return to normal.

Hearing unsolicited noises is funny ... only the first few times, and then it becomes a nuisance.

Jingle His Coins

Mr. Bitner possessed many qualities one would associate with a science teacher. He had a high-pitched nasally voice, he wore high-water slacks and tight v-necks, routinely acted like animals, and he liked to touch himself in class.

Mackenze Webber had Mr. Bitner for sixth-grade science. She knew she was in for an interesting year because his reputation as being a strange person preceded him.

"He was your typical science teacher, just crazy." Webber said.

Webber recalls one occasion in particular involving bizarre role-play. Mr. Bitner was describing his beloved dog,named Sputnik, as he so often did, and got down on all fours on the carpet. He crawled on all fours and a student jokingly threw a pencil down. Bitner proceeded to pick up the pencil in his mouth as if it were a bone. "Bitner didn't understand that we were laughing at him, not with him." Webber said.

Mr. Bitner had student-assigned nickname as Bitter-balls. Webber laughs as she recounts all the times Bitter-balls would reach down into his tight pants pockets and jingle his coins. He always carried spare change in his pockets and would turn his back to the class and jingle them. The students tried holding back laughter, but often could not.

"There was a jingle sound, but we all knew when he reached his hands into his pockets it served a double purpose," said Webber.

Webber and her classmates will always remember the jingling sound of Mr. Bitner.

Change of Plans

Since I could not quite work out my initial idea due to lack of people available for interviews, I am going with option B for my profile story. It is of a friend of mine who had a tragic death in her family. I want it to sound like an episode from Law & Order without being too cheesy.

Note: I will have to revise my query letter as a result.

I seem to have been experiencing the worst of luck with writing this magazine article seeing as my flashdrive lost EVERYTHING and keeps reading an error message, even for a 10-page paper that was due as of 10am today.

However, in spite of it all, I know that I am able to pull off a really interesting profile assignment. I am dreading going first as far as reviewing and workshoping my piece but it could be a positive learning experience, so there's that.

Cuddling with the Stanley Cup

For our day back amidst the snow/ice storm we were to read an article on Sidney Crosby, a famous hockey player from the east coast of the US. This story is written in the normal profile format, but what seems to be different is the additions of little details within anecdotes. This adds interest and drama to an otherwise mundane story about a hockey player.

We do have a glimpse into his childish, love-able personality within the first few paragraphs and this is added to within the first story about a prank pulled off where packing materials where put into his teammates SUV. We find that he is a prankster and a fun guy coupled with a very noticeable determination as the youngest captain to with the cup.

The author points out the fact that we are so overcome with obsession with celebrities and athletes, all while adding to the frenzy. Or so we think.

The next page goes into a story about a winning shot and interaction with is teammates. A change from Sid the Kid, to Sid the passionate athlete. All of these stories help to round out an otherwise one-dimensional person that we only read about or hear about.

This was a very skillful piece.