A Fresh Start

Part of learning is by researching and not getting much out of anything, I guess. After finally getting a good week and a half blocked out for some long-term reporting following the hubbub surrounding Gary Forsee, which had me filling in missing pieces here, covering his first day there, etc., I thought I would get somewhere with m investigation into some study abroad programs at MU and if they were doing some thigns that other universities in New York were doing which made the state's attorney general quite upset. Not to be.

I wasn't horribly frustrated about my findings — I did a good amount of research and it just didn't pan out the way we thought it could — but it was mildly disappointing. Nonetheless, it's better to find these things out now than after doing weeks upon weeks of research for a project only to find nothing. There's still time.

My meeting with Liz had to be pushed back to Friday since she was gone, hence the lateness of the blog post. We found another solid project that could be accomplished in a decent length of time provided I can properly balance it with the shells project. My other daily work has been fine, and contributions to Five Ideas this week was a nice stop-gap clip while doing this research. 

Progress: The extended investigation I've done still taught me a lot about in-depth reporting. It's definitely not always (or maybe even often) going to work out just the way you want it to. But at this stage, that's OK. I know of some techniques I can use to more quickly get to a conclusion next time, and now the project notes from lecture will help me make sure that the new project I'm working on will get accomplished on time. In deciding which side of the desk I enjoy more, learning is the best possible outcome from anything I do this semester.