Delta Omicron Zeta, Epsilon class!

Tuesday night at 6:58 p.m., I was in my best head-to-toe business casual, clutching my resume and a copy of my weekly schedule, willing my stomach to stop flip-flopping and my palms to stop sweating.

20 minutes later, I emerged blinking into the main basement of Leavey Library, beating myself over the head for having just told my two baffled interviewees that I would invite Edna Buchanan over for a potluck dinner — and that I'd bring the macaroni and cheese.

I was positive it was the end of the road.

But three nights after that, I was standing in a crinkly disposable poncho, a blindfold and an unstoppable downpour somewhere in the mountains of Los Angeles, about to embark on the quietest, wettest and perhaps strangest hike of my life.

Three hours later, I officially became one of 19 journeyman in the Epsilon pledge class of Delta Omicron Zeta.  

During the 10-day rush process, we'd attended an information session, a barbecue, a meet-and-mingle session, a speaker event, a speed-dating-esque brunch and a 20-minute interview, but Bid Night on Friday was our first chance to really meet each other. 

As we sloshed back to the cars, blindfolds in hand and sodden tennis shoes squishing rhythmically, we chattered excitedly with each other and the actives, enjoying the instant connection we seemed to share. 

The Epsilons are as diverse as it gets: guys and girls, freshmen and juniors, biology and anthropology majors, Californians and Brits and Persians and Midwesterners, but we share a common passion for leadership. 

We're now entering nine weeks of bonding and teamwork, called the "Journeyman program" (read more about it on the DOZ Web site). 

It's said to be demanding but rewarding, encouraging personal growth, self-reflection and leadership development.  I have no idea what I'll be doing, but I'm so thrilled and honored to do it alongside these other 18 amazing people. 

Don't be so negative.

Kkksscchlickkk. Kkschlickk. 

You're probably not currently cradling a Nikon F5 analog, but now you'll never have to: that's the sound my shutter makes. Exactly. 

And trust me – I had plenty of time this weekend in silence to figure out the exact onomatopoeia. 

I spent Friday, Saturday and Sunday afternoon huddled over an enlarger in USC's photo lab, sharpening, exposing and washing, so I could finish my first photo exhibit for class by Monday morning at 9 a.m. 

Something about the darkroom kills social impulses. Maybe it's the orange safelight, which makes everyone look jaundiced and pudgy. Or maybe conversation just dies in the air of intense concentration. 

So as I fished dripping print after print from the tubs in silence, fingers, hair and jeans absorbing the developer's acrid smell, I had plenty of time to think.

I love it.

After a lifetime of shooting disposable and digital, the gritty reality of SLR film photography has captured me: the crisp kkkschlick of the shutter, the smell of the developer and the permanency of the image I create. 

Film can be damaged or ruined, fat thumbprints and dust scamper gleefully across negatives (trust me, I learned that lesson), but the image never truly disappears the way megapixels can. 


Most of my pictures don't turn out the way I want. I can walk away from a shot feeling confident I got it, only to discover days later that it isn't at all what I expected. That's half the fun. 


Shooting with film has made me more deliberate. I can't just glance at my camera, wrinkle my nose and press "Delete." Now, each roll has an exacting process: loading, winding, finding, framing, metering, adjusting, shooting, advancing, bracketing, repeat. The rote repetition is soothing.


And, most importantly — starting my two most difficult class days with three hours of photo calms me, focuses me and wakes me up in time for print and broadcast journalism at noon.


I don't begrudge the Roski School of Fine Arts a cent of my credit card debt (neither does Visa). 


So far, it's been worth every penny.


• • •


I displayed my first prints during class Monday. They certainly have a host of technical issues, but I was very proud of the way my shots turned out.

Once I get them back, I'll scan them and put them up.

Byline: Re-in-Stated

If I didn't work out for five months, I'd be miserable, slow and sore my first day back at the gym. Only muscle memory and unwavering willpower could get me through two sweaty miles or pushups to exhaustion.

A five-month reporting hiatus produced exactly the same result.

After slogging through a reporting marathon for a State of the Union watch party in Marina del Rey,  juggling a laptop and its power cord, an audio recorder and bag, a video camera and bag, two different sets of headphones, a bulky tripod, a digital camera, a notebook, multiple pens and my heavy purse, I was as exhausted as I would be coming back from the gym.

At times, I felt absolutely lost.

After all, I've always been a print reporter. I shoot video for broadcast class, but I've never even collected audio, photos, quotes and video all at once. I had no muscle memory to fall back on.

But in the Neon Tommy newsroom, In-N-Out cup in hand, quotes on paper, audio and video and photos on cards, I started to perk up.

My love of writing woke up, looked around and stretched enthusiastically after five months of forced dormancy. I hadn't realized how much I'd missed it.

Maybe this multimedia thing isn't so bad, I thought. Yes, it's hard to be a one-man band. Yes, I'll always love writing more. And yes, I messed up and the audio didn't really come out at all. But shooting and editing and writing all at once is great training. It's a learning experience. And I'll get better.

By the time I stumbled out of Annenberg at 11:15 p.m., a menagerie of technology and belongings slung across my back, I felt exhilarated.

There's really nothing like trudging out of a newsroom in the middle of the night, absolutely exhausted but knowing you've met your deadline and done good work.


I've missed that feeling.

• • •

Read my first Neon Tommy post here, as a segment in a larger piece: "Obama supporters gather around L.A. to watch speech."

And be sure to check out the slideshow and captions.

It's great to be back.

Wow. Sticker shock.

This is the first time in my life I won't be able to pay off my credit card at the end of the month.

And it's a scary thought.

I haven't eaten out for more than $5 since I got back.  I didn't splurge on sunglasses or designer jeans. And I'm not looking forward to a Cabo spring break trip, a weekend in Mammoth or even a refrigerator full of groceries.

Instead, my dresser is piled high with 28 rolls of 36-exposure, 400-speed black and white film, a 50mm fixed lens, a bulky negatives binder, 100 5X7 negative sheets, canned air (not even air is free these days...), scissors, a grease pencil, 100 sheets of photo paper, a microphone, headphones, a headphone adapter, two history textbooks, two journalism textbooks, an exorbitant photography handbook, 5 mini-DV cassettes and a partridge in a pear tree.

I couldn't believe my eyes when I added everything up.

But after quadruple-checking it, I had to face some depressing financial facts: it's spending crackdown time.

So this, my friends, marks a new era of frugality — of making do with the dusty whatevers in the back of the cupboard. No more eating out, no more homemade cookies or banana bread for friends and (sniff) no more sunglasses from the vendor on Trousdale. Who's with me?

... That is, until I've paid off the balance and put a nice lump back in savings. Then I'm going out for a full cart of groceries, a nice steak and new sunglasses to celebrate.

(On the bright side, this is great training for life on a starting journalist's salary.)

Ark construction currently on hold

For six straight days, I've been waking up to three sounds: my Sonic Boom alarm blaring, sleepy mumbles from my dormant roommate and driving rain slamming into the window a foot from my pillow.

I've always loved rainy days. Something about the peaceful pitter-patter soothes me. But this week, as Los Angelenos faced flooding, evacuations and thousands of dollars in damage, I couldn't find much to like.

(via NowPublic)

Like a lonely kid stuck with a bad babysitter and longing for his parents, I'd started to think our loving sun was never coming back.

When I blearily cracked an eye open at 10 a.m. Saturday though, something felt immediately different. The bird were chirping. I didn't hear the drip-drap of raindrops falling from the eaves. And cheery sunlight was streaming through our blinds.

I floated through the rest of the weekend in a sunny haze. I smiled more at a DOZ rush barbecue, laughed more with my roommate and dawdled more on my way to develop film, savoring the gentle wind tugging my hair and the warming California sunshine.

During six days of drippy misery, I remembered why LA needs rain occasionally. It's for the same reason I need the Midwest when it's miserably icy and —4958° below zero (roughly). Besides satisfying my cravings for seasonal variety and washing this year's drought statistics off the charts, last week's rain renewed my appreciation and thankfulness for weather like this.

I've always loved California's breezy sunlight kisses on my cheeks while I slowly bike to class. I love seeing disbelieving Midwestern high schoolers on campus tours wiggle their ghostly toes in long-forgotten flip-flops.

And now, I love even more the days I can leave my bike at home — because the lock's been finicky and I'd rather not bother, or because I'm early and have time to walk. Or mainly because it's 70 and sunny, and so I just can.

(It may only be in the '50s, but at least it isn't snowing, right? Silver linings. Silver linings.)

I'm not dead!

I've been back just under 10 days, and my dogeared planner's already bursting.

This morning, I've already showered, dressed, cooked breakfast, eaten, biked to campus to shoot the sunrise, shot 36 black-and-white 400-speed film photos (it was cloudy), biked back, finished my journalism homework and read the news.


And it's only it's 7:40 a.m. 


I'm exhausted, but not even this drizzling rain can dampen my enthusiasm for this semester. It's going to be a great one, partly because last semester was not. The "Sophomore Slump" supposedly gets everyone. But it hit me particularly hard.


Some days, the world felt colorless, like I was squinting at the world through a pair of grimy sunglasses. The sunny, beautiful campus I'd loved so much as a freshman felt dreary and stressful. Days felt like months, weeks dragged on for eons and I was on the verge of tears three days out of five. 


But so far, this semester's seemed like a different beast, and I'm excited. Clean slate. 


I'm down to my last two GE's, which means my schedule this semester is finally chock full of classes I wanted to take: two reporting classes, American history, photography and the second-level sailing class. 


My print reporting class has been assigned to West Hollywood, which means we'll be going to WeHo once or twice a week to cover government, crime, features, neighborhood news, economy, you name it.  Our syllabus lists homework assignments like, "Write at least 500 words on this week's City Council meeting." I'm excited to finally be graduating from fact sheets and 1960s inauguration speech transcrips to coverage of the real world.


I'm also facing a full semester without the Daily Trojan for the first time. I'll be writing for either Annenberg Radio News or Neon Tommy to fulfill class requirements, but I have about seven hours more a day than I used to. It's an overwhelming glut of time, and I'm using it to jump into more campus organizations. 


I'm currently in the rush process for a campus-specific co-ed leadership fraternity, Delta Omicron Zeta, founded by a class taught by our University president, Steven B. Sample. I'm also applying to Society 53, the student outreach arm of the Alumni Association, and possibly the communications department of Undergraduate Student Government. 


And on top of that, I'm taking a three-day voyage on a brigantine, which will include a nighttime navigation test. While in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, our captain will spin us around in the dark until we're thoroughly disoriented and tell us to find our way home. Captain Ron says it usually takes about two hours. What an adventure!

I hope this semester also means lots of blogging material. Because I know, I know. In the amount of time I've been MIA, I could have walked (briskly) to Denver. My apologies.

On entering my '20s.

In 10 minutes*, I turn 20.  I've been freaking out about this since my last birthday, when someone slapped me on the back and yelled, "In a year, you'll lose your childhood forever!"

(Wow... happy birthday to you, too.)

I hope I've made some kind of coherency about the expectancy (and tinge of sadness) I've felt for the last 365 days.

 10 years ago (you know, last millennium):
• I was nine-turning-10 and in the fourth grade.
• I had buckteeth.
• I wanted to be an astronaut or a veterinarian. 
• Bill Clinton was president.
• Sept. 11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq hadn't happened.
• Gas cost an average of $1.14.
• The extent of my journalism experience was editing the Maurer Cheesetown News (which, at one Cheesetown dollar daily, seemed to be too expensive for Cheesetown residents, so my co-editor and I went on strike — what's up, journalism rights?).
• Crazy Bones. Lisa Frank notebooks. Limited Too. Yes please.
• I'd never spoken a word of French.
• I'd never picked up a flute, touched the steering wheel of a car or used a laptop.
• Only three Harry Potter books had hit the American or British markets.
• No one had a cell phone until they turned 16. Texting was a fledgling invention: users sent an average of 35 SMS messages a month.
• AIM and chat rooms were all the rage. On dial-up, of course, which meant your home phone line was busy as you heard, "You've got mail!"
• Social networking didn't exist.
• USC wouldn't be on my radar for about eight more years.
• Apple hadn't invented the iPod.
• Google had been around for a year and a half, and no one had heard of it (we all used Dogpile, of course).
• I'd only been in the ocean once — and that was actually the Gulf of Mexico.
• And I'd never been to California.

Did I know any of this would happen? That I'd end up as far removed from NASA as possible, speaking a language I'd never learned, in a state I'd never been to?

Of course not.

And that leaves me absolutely terrified — but breathlessly excited — for what the next 10 years may hold.

Right now, these first 10 years of the 21st century have no official name. What will we settle on? The '00s? The zeros? The 2000's?

But for me, the next decade's already named: my 20s.

My 20s. A summer in St. Petersburg, a semester in Paris and a year and a half in LA. Then graduation, my first apartment, my first job. And then?

My 20s. Maybe a football national championship, maybe life in another country, maybe my friends' weddings, maybe even my own engagement. Maybemaybemaybe.

The most exciting part? I don't know. No one knows. And no one can know.

So here's to the last decade. To seven years of sometimes happy but always formative teenagerhood, to 10 years of growing and changing and learning to an overwhelming extent.

And here's to my 20s, the great unknown stretching out before me in a golden mosaic of possibility, the decade with a name.

It starts in 10 minutes. I can't wait.

*(no, I am not blogging 10 minutes before I turn 20. I am probably with friends. I just thought ahead and pre-scheduled this post to be timely!)