J-School is no joke / by Helen Arase

It's 12:30 and I have no idea why I'm awake. 

I was at school yesterday until FIVE-THIRTY IN THE MORNING working on my final. Came home, slept for three hours, showered for the first time in like three days and came back to school. 

I made the deadline but I'm not happy with the work. 

It could have been better and I could have worked harder. 

I really care about my topic and I want to revisit it when I can do it justice, but right now I feel like never want to look at my final again. 

I just spent like every free hour of the last week thinking about, writing about, listening to interviews about, or coding a website about multiracial young adults - who are half white - and their thoughts on white privilege. 

It was an interesting idea but I don't think I executed it well. 

Journalism graduate programs are no joke. If I had to pick between and accelerated program and a two year or even one and a half, I would take the extended one. It's not even the workload but that I can't learn everything that I want to and produce work that I feel is good. 

I feel like I spent this semester sucking at everything and maybe next semester it will be alright. But I wanted to walk out of a master's program with my life together and feel like a real adult and professional. 

I mean, the workload is crazy too. In college when I thought I was 110% committed to photojournalism, I never worked this hard, except for maybe my senior project - which I also finished in a panic. 

All of the master of science students were taking at least five classes or "labs" AKA working in the media center/newsroom. I was doing eight.

I feel like an insane person, but at the same time I know I'm enjoying it because if I were a little bit unhappy to be there I would be SO unhappy and grumpy.

I know I just spent like 10 minutes complaining but I'm glad I'm here. I would have never been able to teach myself any of this and the opportunities you can take advantage of are awesome. I don't have time right now but I'm going to try when it's closer to graduation. 

Less procrastination in the spring. However, I know that's how I'm most productive, so I'm not giving myself permission to procrastinate but it's an annoying thing to realize and think of as like a weird safety net.

I'm working on a documentary next semester. I'm going to work on cutting a fake sizzle reel. I did the interviews but the visuals are not mine. So obviously this is just an exercise for the pre-production class and if I want to make a real one I'll have to do it when I start shooting, but I'm having fun.