April and I slept in a little bit today and it was pretty splendid. When we went to grab breakfast, April saw a girl wearing DG letters (April’s sorority), so she went to introduce herself. We ended up sitting with her for about 30 minutes and had some great discussions about what our papers were doing. She attends a smaller private school in Iowa, so it was interesting to compare that to our large public land-grant institution.
For once, April and I also attended all of the same sessions today. We hadn’t done this throughout the week (except for the big design seminar with several hundred people in it) because we wanted to cover a large variety of topics. We started out with a legal session, which was led by the University of Alabama’s adviser and Student Press Law Center’s (SPLC) executive director Frank LoMonte. The Reflector has recently been in contact with SPLC and they’ve been very helpful, so it was great to meet the executive director today.
We also attended a session about writing for the Internet. We’ve heard from many people over the week that you shouldn’t just paste your stories from your paper directly onto the Internet. The leader did mention this in his session, but it wasn’t as helpful as we had hoped.
Our last session of the day was “100+ Story Ideas,” led by Lori Brooks from the University of Oklahoma. It was really helpful, entertaining and fast-paced. She was quick to give direction but also asked for student input. This was definitely one of my favorite sessions and I can’t wait to try some of story ideas.
We did some sightseeing today with a couple of new friends! (Wow, that sounds cheesy.) We visited the state capitol, the University of Texas campus (where I spotted the Jumbotron that’s bigger than MSU’s) and the Congress Avenue Bridge. We headed to the bridge around 6:15 and stayed there for over an hour to watch the world’s largest population of urban bats (1.5 million) leave for the night. It was pretty amazing. Sadly it was dark, so the photos didn’t turn out great, but that’s OK.
We met this guy on the bridge while waiting for the bats. He was walking on stilts!
Since it’s Halloween, we ventured into Austin’s Sixth Street (entertainment district) and watched the madness — Halloween costumes everywhere! It was kind of amazing, scary, weird and entertaining all at once. We can still hear people yelling outside, and I’m sure we’ll be hearing lots of them coming in around four or five a.m.!
Time to call it a night. It’s been a great conference, but I think we’re ready to head back “home” tomorrow. (Pray we get home on time - I haven't been able to check in online tonight, which makes me sad...) Oh, be sure to view April's blog here.
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