Oh the places you will go. December 7, 2009

Today was surreal.

Looking over the resumes of interns to interview for this position next semester… I felt something that I never would’ve imagined. Pangs of jealousy. These bright-eyed interns will come in, terrified during the interview, lost amidst the seemingly-endless hustle and bustle of the news room during the first couple of weeks, and then, before they know it, everything will click. They will feel at home. They will be competent. They will change. They will learn so much, and will make what I hope will be lasting friendships with the people in the newsroom. Then, it what seems like a blink of an eye, it will be over. It will pass by right when they get their footing, and then sent out into the world again, in hopes of forging their own way.

Before this started, I never would’ve dreamed that this is the way I would feel today. With the semester coming to a close, and consequently, this blog seeing its final days, I think I must look at this as the end of one chapter, and the beginning of a whole new one. A chapter entitled “What Happens Next”.

To end, I think it is appropriate to quote from the book that my mother read to me after every graduation, K through 12.  The legendary Dr. Seuss can say it much better than I ever could:

Congratulations!
Today is your day.
You’re off to Great Places!
You’re off and away!

You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself any direction you choose.
You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the guy who’ll decide where to go.

You’ll look up and down streets. Look’em over with care. About some you will say, “I don’t choose to go there.” With your head full of brains and your shoes full of feet, you’re too smart to go down a not-so-good street.

And you may not find any you’ll want to go down. In that case, of course, you’ll head straight out of town. It’s opener there in the wide open air.

Out there things can happen and frequently do to people as brainy and footsy as you.

And when things start to happen, don’t worry. Don’t stew. Just go right along. You’ll start happening too.

Oh! The Places You’ll Go!

You’ll be on your way up!
You’ll be seeing great sights!
You’ll join the high fliers who soar to high heights.

You won’t lag behind, because you’ll have the speed. You’ll pass the whole gang and you’ll soon take the lead. Wherever you fly, you’ll be best of the best. Wherever you go, you will top all the rest.

Except when you don’t.
Because, sometimes, you won’t.

I’m sorry to say so but, sadly, it’s true that Bang-ups and Hang-ups can happen to you.

You can get all hung up in a prickle-ly perch. And your gang will fly on. You’ll be left in a Lurch.

You’ll come down from the Lurch with an unpleasant bump. And the chances are, then, that you’ll be in a Slump.

And when you’re in a Slump, you’re not in for much fun. Un-slumping yourself is not easily done.

You will come to a place where the streets are not marked. Some windows are lighted. But mostly they’re darked. A place you could sprain both your elbow and chin! Do you dare to stay out? Do you dare to go in? How much can you lose? How much can you win?

And if you go in, should you turn left or right…or right-and-three-quarters? Or, maybe, not quite? Or go around back and sneak in from behind? Simple it’s not, I’m afraid you will find, for a mind-maker-upper to make up his mind.

You can get so confused that you’ll start in to race down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space, headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.

The Waiting Place…for people just waiting.

Waiting for a train to go or a bus to come, or a plane to go or the mail to come, or the rain to go or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow or waiting around for a Yes or No or waiting for their hair to grow. Everyone is just waiting.

Waiting for the fish to bite or waiting for wind to fly a kite or waiting around for Friday night or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake or a pot to boil, or a Better Break or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants or a wig with curls, or Another Chance. Everyone is just waiting.

No! That’s not for you!
Somehow you’ll escape all that waiting and staying. You’ll find the bright places where Boom Bands are playing. With banner flip-flapping, once more you’ll ride high! Ready for anything under the sky. Ready because you’re that kind of a guy!

Oh, the places you’ll go! There is fun to be done! There are points to be scored. There are games to be won. And the magical things you can do with that ball will make you the winning-est winner of all. Fame! You’ll be famous as famous can be, with the whole wide world watching you win on TV.

Except when they don’t. Because, sometimes, they won’t.

I’m afraid that some times you’ll play lonely games too. Games you can’t win ‘cause you’ll play against you.

All Alone!
Whether you like it or not, Alone will be something you’ll be quite a lot.

And when you’re alone, there’s a very good chance you’ll meet things that scare you right out of your pants. There are some, down the road between hither and yon, that can scare you so much you won’t want to go on.

But on you will go though the weather be foul. On you will go though your enemies prowl. On you will go though the Hakken-Kraks howl. Onward up many a frightening creek, though your arms may get sore and your sneakers may leak. On and on you will hike. And I know you’ll hike far and face up to your problems whatever they are.

You’ll get mixed up, of course, as you already know. You’ll get mixed up with many strange birds as you go. So be sure when you step. Step with care and great tact and remember that Life’s a Great Balancing Act. Just never forget to be dexterous and deft. And never mix up your right foot with your left.

And will you succeed?
Yes! You will, indeed!
(98 and ¾ percent guaranteed.)

Kid, you’ll move mountains!
So…be your name Buxbaum or Bixby or Bray or Mordecai Ale Van Allen O’Shea, you’re off to Great Places!
Today is your day!
Your mountain is waiting.
So…get on your way!

~Dr. Seuss

Until tomorrow,

Your Blogger,

Deanna Gillen

We Wish You A Merry Christmas! December 7, 2009

This past Friday, I was given the incredible opportunity to participate in one of the timeless traditions here at 30 Rock, the NBC Sing-a-long.  Taking 2 hours worth of takes, it was totally worth it, for I got to see my fellow co-workers here at WNBC in a whole new light. Plus, the 50 or so times we say “We wish you a Merry Christmas” really put me in the holiday mood!

‘Tis the season to be jolly!

http://www.nbcnewyork.com/station/community/NBC-New-Yorks-Annual-Sing-A-Long-in-Photos-78634342.html

Gabe Pressman on Elvis and Marilyn | NBC New York December 7, 2009

A discovery of a picture of Gabe in Vanity Fair leads to his debut on the debrief!

more about “Gabe Pressman on Elvis and Marilyn | …“, posted with vodpod

 

Quote of the Day December 7, 2009

“The future depends upon what we do in the present.”
- Mahatma Gandhi

With all of my worries about the future and what’s in store for me, I think that the best advice is to focus on here and now. Do not give up hope or worry about what’s to come. When you look back on your life, you don’t want to think that if you did something differently that your life would have ended up somehow better. So my advice to the class of 2010 is to live each day as if it were your last, because one of these days it will be.

The Presentation Scripts December 6, 2009

-For our capping project, we did a joint blog and named it Now What? The Tale of Two Soon-to-be College Students in Search of Jobs After Graduation.
-Our main focus was to write interesting posts about our weekly lives that expressed our woes in the issues of internships, graduate school applications, and classes.
-In our quest, we were able to take something special away from it and learned a few of life’s lessons as well.

-Before we were able to coin the idea for our blog, we made a list of possible proposals.
-This included blogs about weird stories that occur in the news like the lady who called the police at Mcdonalds because they were out of mcnuggets.
-We also thought about doing a satire piece on world news as well as an entertainment based blog that could be compared to perezhilton.com.
-I even thought of an idea to do a series of children’s books about my pug travelling to different places, but eventually we decided that what better idea was there than a blog about our lives and our worries about the future.

-So, we started to think about what we really wanted to write about and share with the world and our peers.
-What came out of this project was something that we would have never expected.
-Our blog is based on both of our lives, which detail the struggle of two college seniors in their quest to find a full-time job after graduation.
-In the blog, we told both of our stories, one of a journalism student struggling to find a job as every facet of her field (i.e. newspapers, magazines, etc.) start to crumble,
-and the other of a former journalism student moving over to the education realm in hopes of having a better chance of getting a job post-graduation.
-The intended audience is college-aged students, like yourselves, all of whom would be interested in our blog because they are sure to be facing the same obstacles that we will be discussing.
-Also, in our posts we provided advice for students and talked about what we would have done “if we knew then what we know now.”
-Furthermore, we used multi-media elements, such as pictures and videos to detail our quest for a job post-graduation, while also utilizing the latest medium our major has to offer; new media, also known as blogging.

-In order to obtain an audience, we had to utilize every college student’s favorite bookmark on their computers; facebook.
-We created an interesting marketing campaign by making a page on facebook and inviting hundreds of friends to follow our blog.
-We generated 123 “fans” who were told exactly when we posted new items to our blog.
-Each time this occurred, a post appeared on their homepages.
-We also used our statuses and the newest obsession in social networking, twitter, to gain more readers.
-Additionally, we made flyers that advertised our blog and handed them out to students on campus.

-And the result of this advertising campaign? People actually started reading this.
-In fact, on the very first day we made our facebook page, we received 139 hits!
-We usually average around 50 hits once we generate new posts.
-Within 3 months we got a total of 1900 hits.
-Not only were people reading our posts, but they were also commenting.
-We actually received almost 100 comments from readers.

-Earlier this summer, a movie came out titled Julie & Julia, which was about a woman who was blogging about how she plans to cook her way through beloved chef Julia Child’s cookbook.
-During our blogging, we seemed to encounter the same pitfalls Julie faced, wondering if we too had an audience.
-At one point in the movie Julie asks desperately if anyone was even reading her blog, in which her sole reader, her mother, replied yes.
-Here is a clip from the movie where Julie is about to give up.
-This fall I interned in broadcast journalism, at WNBC News Channel 4 at 30 Rockefeller Plaza.
-I got an inside look of what it takes to produce a news broadcast, while simultaneously interning underneath Senior Correspondent Gabe Pressman.
-At NBC, I am given the incredible opportunity to discover how a story “has legs”, so to speak, and can evolve from a tiny blurb to a major story.
-Furthermore, working with a cameraman, I am responsible for editing film, writing scripts, and turning the raw footage into segments for the 7 o’clock news.
-An incredible experience, yes, I blogged in order to give students a first-hand look into the fast-paced world of journalism.
-Also, this blog detailed my job search, at NBC and beyond, in hopes of finding a job post graduation!

-For the Fall semester, I interned for a total of ten weeks at Cablevision News in Wappingers Falls, NY.
-It was there that I was able to have a first hand look at the production of a broadcast news program, as well as the research and development of how news stories are found and created.
-While working for Cablevision News, I blogged about certain aspects of my internship in order to tell college students of my adventures in journalism.
-Although I will be heading off to grad school for teaching next fall, I decided to keep my internship for the experience.

-At first, our blogs were written in a more diary-style.
-They were written about things that happened to us that we found to be interesting and “blog worthy.”\
-But later we evolved into actually explaining our feelings about the pressures of our internships and lives in general.
-We were able to shy away from the diary-style and focus on making this blog sort of a how to guide in surviving college and gaining employment.

-Some conflicts arose that we gained a lot of our focus in our posts.
-These include applying for graduate school, which I achieved a couple of weeks ago, even though my deadlines are not until April.
-In my posts I explained my need to get this over with, and I am glad that those applications are done.
-For me it was studying for the GREs and LSATs that got to me. It was also difficult to juggle school and our internships while trying to have a social life.
-For me, I realized that Graduate School wasn’t my immediate path.
-While working at NBC, I fell in love with the company, and as such, applied for the page program.
-I have already had my first round of interviews.

-This is an excerpt from one of my last blogs which explains what I got from my internship and this experience.
-As I walked out of the studio after a long, hard working day, I turned around and took one last look at the Cablevision building.
-It was in that instant that I recalled all the times I spent leaving this place aggravated, annoyed, and with thoughts of quitting.
-But I did not quit, I finished my internship and learned a few things from my experience. I have learned that I need a job with a definite schedule and actual tasks to do.
-My internship has ultimately taught me that this job is not for me and solidifies my choice in becoming an English teacher.
-In a shocking turn of events, my internship has given me all I ever wanted; to know that I am making the right choice.
-So, thank you Cablevision News, for making me realize what I didn’t want and allowing me to see what I did.
-Unlike my fellow blogger, Jason, who ended his internship at Cablevison on Wednesday, with no intention of ever pursuing a career in the business, I have found that my internship has strengthened not only my desire, but need, to pursue a career in broadcast journalism.
-It is with that knowledge that I applied to the page program, and have already made it through the first couple rounds of interviews.
-Hopefully I will be able to make this dream a reality.

No Sleep Tonight December 4, 2009

If it is one thing that I have noticed about these last fours years at college it is the fact that as semesters come to a close, incredible amounts of work tend to be assigned out of nowhere. This has put a damper on my recently-awarded days off now that my internship has ended. Instead of enjoying my Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays off, I have been filling my days with an increased amount of homework.

I suppose I had this coming, since I do not like to start assignments until a week prior to their deadlines, like so many other people I know. But the amount of my workload did not initially become apparent until I found myself leaving my night class early, so that I could go to the library and write a paper. If that’s not one of the saddest things you have ever heard, just wait.

Not to mention the stress that comes with having so much on your plate; it can keep you up at night. It certainly does not help that I have been battling a cold that has had my ears clogged and my nose stuffy for the past two weeks. At least I have winter break to look forward to. Oh yes, a month-long vacation that includes Christmas and a trip to Florida!

That reminds me, I have yet to go Christmas shopping! Usually, I do all of my shopping months before online, but I suppose this year it completely slipped my mind. Plus, it could also have something to do with not having any money to purchase the gifts. I suppose that would help.

Hopefully I can stop worrying about how I will probably have two dollars in my pocket when I graduate in May. I guess its normal to worry about stuff of that nature, but I wish I had a little more security in the job department. I suppose I’ll always have Best Buy, but if I am still working when I am 25 years old, just put me out of my misery.

Do you have a lot of work to do this week?

Times they are a changin’ December 3, 2009

 

Last night I had one of the best nights I’ve had at NBC all semester.  There was an air of excitement around the studio, as the crowds formed outside to watch the 77th annual Christmas Tree Lighting. During the hustle and bustle, I learned that Gabe’s former intern, who is now the VP of Marketing for the Miss Universe Pageant, was upstairs in the SNL studio, and I was invited to go upstairs and meet her.  When I got to go up to SNL on the ninth floor, and meet a former intern of Gabe’s, I was also fortunate enough to meet Miss Universe, and Miss Teen USA, as they prepared for the festivities outside. The night came to an end when I met two of my housemates, Emily and Moira, who also intern in the city, to watch the end of the festivities outside in the crowd.

Coming off the heels of such an amazing night, I couldn’t dream that something could possibly ruin such an amazing week. Oh how wrong I was!

Flipping through the New York Times at my desk this morning, I came across a story that stopped me dead in my track. On the cover of the business times was an article entitled “A Clandestine Courtship”, which detailed the secret meeting that eventually led to the deal announced today, that GE sold the majority share over to Comcast, resulting in a 51 to 49 percent ownership of NBC Universal.

I was terrified. Over the past 4 months, I have come to think of NBC as my home. I have grown to love all of my co-workers, and hope to one day join this team at WNBC permanently. What would this mean for NBC? Would they all lose their jobs during the integration process? Would the page program me eliminated? What would this mean for the company as a whole?

With questions flooding my mind, and consequently, flooding the page as I write this, I was comforted to learn that there would be an in house town hall meeting, in which Jeff Zucker, CEO if NBC, would meet with the NBC Universal community, along with GE CEO Jeff Immelt, and the three new players from Comcast, Ralph Roberts, CEO, Brian Roberts, Chief Executive, and Steve Burke, C.O.O. I immediately switched to the in house channel, to watch the proceedings go down.Broadcast is changing, Cable is changing, and if you don’t keep moving, you may get lost in the shuffle. That is what I drew from the town hall meeting. Alleviating my concerns, albeit mildly, I learned that there was very little overlap between the Cable Company and NBC Universal, and very few jobs will get lost in the shuffle. The overall message that permeated throughout the town hall meeting was NBC got better today… I really hope they are right.  

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/03/business/media/03nbc.html?_r=1&ref=business

Yes Virginia, There is a Santa Claus | NBC New York December 2, 2009

My Boss, Gabe Pressman, recalling my favorite story of his… “Yes Virginia, There is a Santa Clause”

more about “Yes Virginia, There is a Santa Claus …“, posted with vodpod

 

It’s the most wonderful time of the year December 2, 2009

Walking down fifth avenue this morning, I could not help but get in the Christmas spirit! Watching the families examine the window displays outside of Lord and Taylor and Saks, I felt pangs for my own family, wishing that I could be home to celebrate the season with them…. but who am I kidding, I’ll see them soon enough.

I am too excited to feel anything but, for tonight is the night I have been waiting for all semester. It is the 77th annual Christmas Tree Lighting at 30 Rock… and I have the best seat in the house!

 

WATCH

 

Growing up in New Jersey, I watched the annual Christmas Tree Lighting with my family every year, and always wished that I would one day get the opportunity to see it first hand. Never did I ever believe that I would be able to see it from my desk in Studio 7E! (I apologize for being giddy, this is very big for me)

In attendance tonight will be Shakira, Alicia Keys, and (drum roll please)… Barry Manilow! As a self-proclaimed fanilow… this is most definitely a dream come true!

Though the weather outside is supposed to be frightful, inside it is most definitely delightful, but I’ll be sure to wear my interning clothes inside out and backwards (metaphorically of course) in hopes of turning the projected forecast from rain to snow!

Stay Tuned… I’ll be here all night! : )

 

Quote of the Day December 1, 2009

“Your families are extremely proud of you. You can’t imagine the sense of relief they are experiencing. This would be a most opportune time to ask for money.”
- Gary Bolding

Parents, friends and relatives: this is perfect for including in your invitations to the party and ceremony. After all, at what other point in time can we truly expect your child to receive hundreds of dollars for graduating from the education that you paid for?