On the beat. . .

Today was an extremely exhausting day. It started off with Breakfast with the Deans, which is supposed to be an informal Q&A with the deans at the J-school. I didn't really have any questions, but I'm running for treasurer of our student government, so was trying to impress anyone else who would be there.

Anyway, after the breakfast, where I ended up speaking only with people I know anyway (SIGH!! There's such comfort in familiarity, isn't there?), I took off to cover one of the primary election races in Jamaica, Queens, my beat. I got out of the subway and started walking, and, (surprise, surprise), I got myself lost. Now, my deadline for the story was 5:00 p.m. today and by the time I got to Jamaica (after a 1.5 subway ride), it was already about 12:00. After walking in the hot sun for about 25 minutes (I'm convinced that by the time I finish with this programme, I'm going to look like charcoal), I managed to catch a bus that took me quite close to the first polling station on my long list of two that I managed to come up with by typing in random addresses into the poll station locator. No sophisticated journalistic techniques there!

At the polling station, I had to wait a long time to speak with about four people, but to my shock, all of them actually told me, with no hesitation, whom they had voted for.

After I finished talking to the first two voters who came out, a young (cute!!) police officer who was on duty at the polling station came out to ask me what I was doing.

I launched into my spiel. "I'm a student at Columbia University, and am working on a story on the primary."

"Oh, so you're just interviewing people as they come out?"

"Yes."

"That's cool," was the answer. Pause. Then, "So are you a freshman, sophomore. . . ?"

How flattered was I!??! "I'm a grad student," I said. And then, incredulously, "Do I really look like a freshman??!?!?"

That caught him off guard, for some reason. "Well. . . if I said yes, it would be a compliment right?"

"Yeah, of course!"

Awkward pause. Then, "Ok. Good luck!" and he went back inside :-(

Anyway, at the next polling station, I spoke to a few more people, including a 50-something year old election co-ordinator, who was way too energetic for his own good. After I spoke with him, he gave me some great advice about being a journalist: "Don't try to change the world. Be a great observer, so that you can help someone else change the world." (thoughts on that for another entry :-))

From that polling station, another half hour's walk brought me back to the subway station, and I caught up a little on my sleep on the hour and a half journey back. Came back to the apartment, quickly wrote my story and emailed it to the professori!