From rough semester - to grad - to intern

The two people that never stopped supporting me

So I did the whole graduation thing.  It's so weird being done.  So, so weird.  I worked for six years and went to two universities to acquire my undergraduate degree in Communication with an emphasis in Journalism.  Graduation didn't even set in till about a week after it had happened.  The week & a half after graduation I found myself lost.  Lost, because I really didn't know what to do with myself.  I kept thinking to myself, "What homework do I need to do tonight or put off till tomorrow so I can just go to sleep tonight?" - but there wasn't any homework to do.  Really, there wasn't much for me to do at all besides work & I did a lot of that, a lot!  I was also so lazy that week and a half after graduation.  So lazy!

This last semester was by far my most difficult semesters in classes.  This was completely my fault - classes that I kept putting off and putting off because I dreaded taking them all fell into the last semester & they kicked my butt!  There were so many times that I just wanted to quit.  I was so busy.  I was working on the student newspaper as the sports editor, I was still managing the UPS Store in Orem & I was doing some freelance work for another company - all on top of the 15 credits I was taking.  I made it through, but not without many, many nights where I just cried myself to sleep.

Besides the hard course load, this semester was full of other rough times.  Two friends of mine pulled me through this semester.  I spent many days & many nights crying to them, complaining to them, eating pizza and drinking Diet Coke with them and taking in their advice.  We fought over stupid crap, we made up, we fought some more and we worked things out.  These two people know who they are and I hope they know I appreciate every moment they spent helping me.  These two people are my best friends right now & I love them dearly, despite the rough semester all three if us had together and individually.

So, I'm an intern now.  So, so weird also.  I have been given the unique opportunity to intern with KSL.com as their Real Salt Lake beat writer.  I kind of fell into this internship by a random chance.  About a year and a half ago in a class I was taking, the KSL.com news director came and spoke.  I happened to get his contact info and had spoken to him briefly about internships.  I never thought about it again until early January when I realized I needed to do an internship during the summer in order to actually get my degree.  One night, off of a whim and probably hopped up on way to much Diet Coke, I emailed him and stated I was interested in a summer internship and wondered what KSL.com had to offer.  He emailed me back, we set up a meeting, we had a meeting - and just like that he offered me an internship.  Because it all happened so quickly and I honestly was not expecting them to just offer me an internship I didn't accept it right away.  I first consulted a few journalist friends to see what they thought and after much deliberation I decided it was the right fit for me.  I accepted the internship and now here we are a few months later - the internship started last Saturday as I covered my first Real Salt Lake game.

My job as their RSL beat writer is to not write game recaps, but write the story within the story of the games and other things going on with RSL.  It's challenging and a different writing style than I've mostly done, but I accepted the challenge and hope to stand out in my internship and really show them what I can do.

I've written two articles for them so far.  The first is here & the second is here.  From here on out, I'll try to post most of my stories or at least links to them - and will blog throughout my internship so you can all experience it also.