Living the Life I’ve Imagined

Today was a very boring day compared to the past week. I took a long nap when I got home. I don’t even know how long it was, I don’t even remember falling asleep. Well, this gave me energy to stay up until 2 in the morning doing everything from watching TV, unpacking and looking at pictures from the conference, and then slept until 3 this afternoon.

I got more sleep in one night than I did half the conference and it was great. But when I woke up, I wasn’t at George Mason, it wasn’t 6 AM and I didn’t have to go over to breakfast. It was weird. We didn’t have to board the buses or listen to a speaker or visit someplace in DC. I was walking around and didn’t have my press pass around my neck or my GMU bag on my back. It made me really sad. I continued to look at more pictures from the conference and I missed everyone in my group and my roommates and the staff and everyone there!

I’ve mentioned this before, but I really enjoyed the conference. It was so much more fun than I imagined. I wasn’t really really interested in journalism previously and I wasn’t adamant about becoming a journalist. I went just to check it out and see what I thought about the field. The first day everyone was talking about how much they watched CNN and how they were editor of their newspaper. I got this feeling that everyone there really wanted to be a journalist and that the conference was going to based on that. That night, I thought that if I didn’t learn to love it before the conference was over, that all the speakers would bore me to sleep.

This was not the case, there were other people like me, and the conference did not leave us out. The conference peaked my interest in journalism and with each speaker I was more interested in what they had to say. One thing I loved about the speakers was how they all told their stories and gave advice of how they got to where they are now. None of them really planned on becoming a journalist, they pursued other things and found what they really enjoyed doing. This made me feel so much better about not knowing what I want to do, and even if I don’t exactly figure it out during college, I still have more time to figure out what I want to do, whether it’s journalism or something else. I really loved meeting people from all over the country, too. Hearing everyone’s accents and talking about the differences in schools and states was really interesting too.

This conference was really amazing. I know that the advance team, faculty and coordinators really worked hard to make everything flow, and they did a lot of work behind the scenes to make everything perfect for us. One of the biggest surprises was when we got to the National Geographic and there was an ice sculpture! I really hope I have the time next summer to come back to Mason and help make another conference as amazing as this one was, so that another group of rising journalists can learn what we learned, get advice from professionals and network with all kinds of people all over the country. I want to help with anything that will make the conference run smoother from handing out water bottles and snacks, to organizing chairs and setting up for speeches/ dinners. When I look back on this conference I hope I will remember all the faces of the amazing people I met, all the advice from the different speakers, all the places we visited and all the fun times we had.

Since this was the first and only conference like this in a while, there is only going to be a conference once a year and we are a relatively small group, I felt like we were all really close – a family if you will. Even the staff who weren’t always with one particular group also bonded with everyone. It really surprised me when Dean Flagel commented on my blog because I didn’t think that the faculty had time or wanted to read the blogs. It really let me know that we were all connecting as a group and we all are sharing this experience together. It was different than other conferences I’ve gone on, and I’ll always fondly look back on these times.