This has been quite a busy week for me. Last Thursday, I was doing the NBC thing, when I got one of those “big breaks” you hear about. The photographer I was working with let me shoot the entire story we were working on (about the Albemarle County School Board), and because of various circumstances leading to the fact that no one was physically in the newsroom to edit the piece together, I got to do it. The producers took a little while to warm up to the idea (I am still an intern, after all, and they had scheduled that piece to lead the 11o’clock news) – but eventually they decided to let me go for it. I still haven’t actually spoken to back at the station since they’ve seen the final piece, but I think I did an okay job – a few mistakes, but nothing –too- major…

More drama: Last period of the day on Friday, I get called down to the Media Center: apparently, I was scheduled to take the Earth Science SOL. The only problem? I’ve never taken Earth Science… I explain this to the unfortunate teacher that had been relegated to SOL duty, and after being told by the assistant principal that she didn’t know what to do, we go on a 20-minute pilgrimage across the school, first looking for my guidance counselor (out for the week), eventually finding a different guidance counselor before being referred to the chair of the guidance department before being referred right back to the assistant principal we started with.

In the end, we managed to find out that I need to take one more science SOL in order to get an advanced diploma (*sigh* - bureaucracies…). The second snag? The SOL testing was only going on for one more week, and since I was going to be in Hawaii that whole time… So now I need to wait until April to take the Biology SOL (a class I took four years ago and hated). And though I seriously doubt I could even manage to fail that test now, for years after I learned the material, my diploma status is still technically in limbo for the next three months. FUN!
And then of course there’s the fact that I’m going to Hawaii this week for my grandparent’s 50th anniversary (yes, I know it’s a bit ridiculous… :P). I was supposed to fly to Chicago on my own, where I would meet up with my grandparents for the 8-hour flight to Honolulu. Naturally, the tickets were messed up, and now I’m flying the whole way on my own ?. Ah well, I guess I kind of like being out on my own… Relaxing, in a way.

P.S. – I wrote this in the Chicago airport, just feet from the exact spot (next to the moving walkway) where I thought up the idea to do a music video for MMMBop, which led me down a series of adventures in videography that eventually got me into NYU. Yay!