Easy Does It, Easy Does It…

Well, the newsletter project is going really well so far–and hopefully, it’ll continue to do so. I’ve already held a meeting last Sunday with everyone and the team had lots of ideas. They weren’t exactly falling all over each other to talk–I had to prod them a couple of times–but I got a good page-and-a-half of my hurried chicken-scratch, which was nothing more or less than what I had hoped for. Woot!

On Wednesday,  I met up with my two Layout-and-Design people (whom I’ll name Smiley and Bahsein, ’cause I ain’t sure if I should use their real names on a public journal) and Dr. Mike–who is the faculty member who is supervising the whole project. Mike arranged for us to meet with two graphic designers, who work at the college. They seemed very eager to help us out–even offering to help us spruce up the pages once we got a layout set up. Then Smiley and Bahsein went online to check out newsletter templates and found quite a few good-looking ones. I’m hoping they worked on them over the weekend so that we have something tangible to work with this Sunday, which is when the next meeting is. Once we get the design done, the writers would know how long, or short, their articles should be–and how many pictures each page can withstand.

Thing is, we can’t make the articles too long because 80% of CNA-Q is made up of Qatari nationals, many of whom don’t speak English as a first language. So making it too word-heavy is going to guarantee very few readers. We want to make the newsletter about tabloid-size–rather large–because we have a lot of features we’re planning on making recurring. (Interviews with teachers, book/movie/music reviews and such). Plus I’m thinking of making the text larger than average, so it’s easier to read. (I’m sure smaller text is not well-liked when you’re not fluent in a language).

Well, newsletter-wise, this is about as far as we got. We still don’t have a title for it…Jayson suggested ‘The Scribe’ and another girl thought of ‘Papyrus’. They’re both good names but I’m leaning more towards the former. It sounds…I don’t know, kinda cool. I still have to discuss it with the rest of the team though. The Vice-President of the Student Council suggested making the naming of the newsletter a kind of competition with a prize. That’s not a bad idea either…I just hope the students give good suggestions. I mean the school mascot is a moose named “Mahmoose” which is one of the worst names I’ve ever heard–and that was a result of a mascot-naming competition. So, so long as it’s not as bad as that, I’m all right with it. I s’pose we’ll see.

Letter from the Editor:

I haven’t mentioned this before since I didn’t know where it was headed. Now that I’m more or less certain, it’s time to let it out:

I made editor of my college newsletter! I applied for it a few weeks ago and was chosen–though, really, I have no idea who my competition even was, but who cares? This is something I can really dedicate my free time to.

Thing is, this newsletter doesn’t even exist yet. So my little team and I have to pretty much bring it up from scratch. I’m optimistic though, because I think I can gather some pretty cool ideas from my team and I’ve been exposed to newsletters from college and university in Canada, which is a good background so far. Moreover, my writers, photographers and researchers are mostly people I know–hell, one of the writers is Mikey and the cartoonist is Jayson.

This is pretty exciting…we can really make something out of this if we try our best to not let it go down the porcelain throne because of disagreements or general inefficiency–which, unfortunately, my college is notorious for.

Oh yeah, basicallythis newsletter is also the reason I stuck around for Global Village because, if we were going to write an article about it, I might as well know what goes on. Too bad I couldn’t really do that though, thanks to the frigid, windy weather. Gah!

Anyways– hey, if any of you readers have ideas for things we can feature in the article (nothing political or religious though), that would be deeply appreciated. Anything you enjoy in your school newsletters or even regular newspapers would be great. Thanks!

My Wireless is Fickle

Salutations y’all.

Well, yours truly is back! And I do believe I’m going to go for a double-post thing.

My wireless internet is working on making sure I lose all semblance of sanity–slowly but surely. It can’t decide on whether or not it wants to stay connected. Sometimes it gives me a nice glimmer of hope. A pretty little smile–if wireless internet could smile–that says, “I’ll keep you online for as long as your little heart desires, Judes, because you’re just that awesome.” Then after about–oh five minutes?–it cuts itself off in a fit of sneering and maniacal laughter as I die a little more inside.

Internet sob story aside, I’ve had a pretty good week:

Three days ago, on Wednesday, I decided to stick around after classes to see what the Global Village–which is something that the college holds every year–is all about. It goes on for three days, and I didn’t attend the first two because I had to be home early. Since Wednesday was the last day, I thought I’d stick around just to satisfy my curiosity–and for other reasons which I’ll get to in a separate post. Anyways, that was a bit of a regret because it just so happened to be REALLY FRIGGIN’ WINDY and COLD and I was smart enough to only be wearing jeans and a short-sleeved T-shirt.  (I swear to God, the days before that were sunny and AWESOME! I’ll bet you anything that the weather is conspiring with the wireless Internet).

Basically, the Global Village is kind of like a cultural day, where each country represented in college sets up a booth with their culture’s food and dress and things like that–and there are sing/dance performances that anyone can come check out. However, because of the weather conditions, the booths were dismantled and the entertainment was moved into an auditorium. I had been told that the booths were the better part of the Global Village, so it was a little disappointing that I couldn’t see them on the one day I stuck around to do so. *Glares*

Anyways, my friends and I decided to sit in the SRC office for a while. There was a lot of food in there, since the SRC members had the right to stock their office with snacks and drinks and such. We were bored, so we put on some music and made sandwiches. Sarah made some salad and we sat around, joking, laughing and generally pigging out. (Not really–most of us just had one sandwich each and some salad. Still, it was great!) After that a few of us sauntered over to the auditorium to see what was going on. All I could say is that it was *really* crowded–there were tons of people milling about. We walked into one of the rooms where a stage was set up–and it was FULL! No one was performing yet, but there were people onstage–probably getting ready to do something. We didn’t stick around for long though, soon I was back in the SRC, chatting and waiting for my driver to pick me up. I didn’t exactly get what I stuck around for–but some time with my crazy (sometimes a little too crazy) friends and a sandwich-and-apple-juice snack is not a bad deal.

It’s Been a While…

And, because of that, I figure I’ll give a short update. To be perfectly honest, I have logged onto LJ at least three or four times in the past week or so, planning to post something, but I never got around to it because I was too busy reading other people’s journals or whatever. Even when it comes to talking about yours truly, I procrastinate. What’s up with that?!

Anyways, I thought I’d try to breathe a bit of life back into this before my next little hiatus. (Which wouldn’t be long…but I have a very busy week this week–four tests! And that’s not counting the quiz I had this morning. It’s nuts.)

I am planning to saunter over to the library to study Accounting. I’ve got a midterm tomorrow on three chapters for it so I gotta get crackin’! It’s not quite as simple as it was last semester. (I suppose I can go so far as to say it’s not really one of my favorite subjects anymore). I mean,two out of the three chapters are all right…but one of them just confuses me to no end. I figure an hour or so of practicing can do me some good before I pack up and head home. I’ve also got my HR test tomorrow…which sucks because I thought it was on Wednesday for some reason. It doesn’t matter though, the good thing is that I have a three-hour break on Tuesdays before my class which is more than enough time for me to study.

Wednesday should be an okay day. I have two exams on Thursday though–one for Marketing II and the other for Microeconomics. It’s a good thing I stuck around for the Microeconomics review today–it greatly decreased my confusion on some of the concepts we were studying, which means I don’t have to kill myself over my books for the test. Marketing II shouldn’t be too bad either–just a lot of memorizing off the PowerPoint slides. Woot! No, really. Woot!

Heh heh.

Well, until I find something more interesting to talk about–and I do have some stuff, I’ll get back to you.