What Am I Doing Now?

Around this time of year, the end of the semester typically makes everyone a little hypertensive. It's that time when all your final projects and final exams and student events are at their busiest. Mostly it's only overwhelming if you haven't budgeted your time well throughout the semester -- if you've put off work or assigned reading -- and of course I know NOTHING about that sort of thing. Ahem.

What I'm doing now is enjoying the steady evaporation of duties and responsibilities as the semester comes to a close and gearing up for my internship this summer. On my busiest days during the semester, I'm up at 5:00 AM for a news shift on our FM radio station, WERS. Then I'll head to class for a few hours, after which I'll hole up in the library or study lounge to work on homework, or maybe do some writing for my column in our school paper, the Berkeley Beacon. Then, depending on the evening, I may head to pre-production or a taping for EIV News, our campus TV newscast, which I co-anchor at six o'clock.

It's a lot of work, but it's all fun, it's all valuable career experience, and I love the people who work with me. That's not to say it won't be relieving to have a little downtime before my internship this summer, which will be with National Public Radio in Washington, DC. I'm especially excited to be working for NPR right now -- at a time when most news organizations are bleeding out, NPR has never been stronger or had more listeners. Just an example: their news quiz show, "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me," has a bigger audience than The Daily Show and The Colbert Report combined. It's going to be great work and great experience before my final year of college, when my biggest responsibility will be staving off senioritis.