All In A Week's Work

Exactly a week ago, I was standing in the newspaper office with the editors and all of the freshmen staff writers. Our copy editor was reading off the list of assignments, all of which were being reluctantly accepted by writers one at a time. However, when she called out "New plastics training academy at the school of engineering," heads went down, and people inched behind thier classmates to hide. After about 120 seconds of prickly silence and tension, I sighed and said "I'll take that one." I wrote down the basic info into my notebook and left.

I tracked down the Chair of our Plastics Engineering Program - I like to start at the top - and then e-mailed him asking for an interview. A couple days later I got a reply, referring me to the Injection Molding Chair and head of the program. I fired back a nice, professional thank-you e-mail set up a meeting with the referred-to Dr. He told me to meet him in room 113 of the REDC building. I agreed, and sent him my cell number in case anything should fall through.

After about an hour of background research and preparing questions, I arrived at the engneering building 20 minutes early. I found room 113 in a massive, warehouse kind of hallway, with three-story high ceilings and no windows. The room had two giant doors that looked that they belonged on a loading dock instead of an office. I read the panel next to the numbers 113 - "WIND TUNNEL."

Hmm. The Dr seemed to have sent me the wrong room number. I walked around the building until I found a board listing the faculty and their office numbers. Dr.....213. Aha! I walked around some more until I found the hallway with the 210 offices, and found 213 at 4:00 exactly. Of course, the Dr had completely forgotten about the appointment and was 15 minutes late, leaving me with a quarter of an hour for a decent interview. I asked my questions, and he answered without the understanding that I was not an engineering major and had no idea what he was talking about. "Then the processors inject the molten plastic into heat-tempered coagultion modules," and the like. It went a little better when I asked him to describe things to me like I was a humanities major. Or a five-year old.

I went back to my room, sat at my desk, and played over the recorded interview, pausing every 5 seconds to write down potentially important quotes. I went to the bathroom. I read the blog of everyone I knew, and some blogs of people that I have never met. I shook up my bottle of extra concentrated dish soap and squeezed it so that little bubbles came out. I wrote down each point on a sticky note and arranged everything on my desk so that I had a flowing, coherant article all color-coded and lined out. I took a picture of it on my phone. I watched Gilmore Girls, I went to dinner. I came back, I spent all of 45 minutes writing it all up into a beautiful, 600 word article with a nice lead and ending quote. I sent it in to the on-line drop box.

Then I sat back for the Wednesday night feeling. No matter how dull my story is, it's a thread that keeps my week connected and linear. Once I've finished, I've met someone new, I've learned someting new, I've faced a new writing challenge. But my week kind of unravels. So I pick up the Times, or whatever book I'm reading, or flip on the TV, and wait for Thursday night, when I get my new story.