Weekly Reflection # 3

My final week of senior project was very busy. During this week, I completed my articles, spent an entire day at Upper Valley Press being a part of the entire printing process, and assisted in printing my newspaper. 

The beginning of the week was spent in Brenda's office and the library, finishing up my research for my articles. I also had to continue to get ahold of students on senior project to get their survey responses so that they could be included in my paper. I finished writing my final articles and spent a few hours finding pictures to go with some of the articles. Finally, I figured out what order I wanted the articles to go in on the paper. 

On Thursday, I spent the entire day at the Upper Valley Press in North Haverhill, NH. I first worked with  a man named Shawn, transferring my articles and pictures from word documents into the program InDesign, which set it up to look like the printed result. After we finished, we edited the color in some of the photos so that they would come out as best as possible on the press. After we finished with InDesign, I went into another office and worked with a man named Dave, to conclude how the pages would be lined up, and which ones would be printed where. Then on a large color printer in that office, we printed a proof of my newspaper so when it came time for the paper to run through the press, the pressmen would have an example to compare it to, so that they can create the best color scheme possible. After this step, we walked into the next room where the platelets are made. The articles and images are lasered onto the platelet and it then goes through an oven to set the laser design. This platelet is then used in the pressroom, as the mold for the newspaper. Finally, I helped in the pressroom as the platelet was put into the press, colors were adjusted and my paper was printed! 

It was a great feeling holding my printed paper in my hand after it was finally complete. I felt proud of myself reading the articles, knowing how much time and effort I spent creating it. I also gained a deeper appreciation for newspapers seeing just how much time and hard work goes into creating a finished product of a newspaper. Before this project, I had no idea how much effort it takes to make a newspaper. Overall, it was one of the greatest learning experiences of my life. 

Day 15

Today was a simple, but yet another productive day for me. All I did was write my self- reflection. I worked for about three hours, because it was hard to put all of my thought into words. I am glad it is out of the way though. Today was my last actual day of senior project, but my work is not finished. This weekend, I am going to be putting my presentation together. I think I am not sure yet how I will do it, but I have all the materials I need, just need to piece it together in a form that I can present. That should be done by tomorrow, so the work I did will be explained in my last weekly reflection.

Day 14

Today was by far the most exciting day of my senior project. The reason being, is because I got my newspaper printed! I got there around one o'clock, and didn't leave until around six. It took a lot of work. My sponsor hooked me up big time. I was treated like a businessman when I got there, meeting with all kinds of personel. I first met with two women, who took a look at my articles, and my photos, and they helped me decide my set-up. We decided that the best format was that of a tabloid, meaning you read the paper like a magazine, rather than a newspaper. The paper is eight pages, four pages, front and back. I worked with a man names Shawn, who helped me with the layout, using a program called "indesign" on his computer. This took us about an hour to do. Then, the process began. Frankly, I don't know where to start. It first goes through a few computers, then they are put onto platelets, which are big sheets of aluminum. These are sent through ovens, and then brought through the press. The press copies the aluminum sheets, and puts them onto paper. I got to choose the style of paper I used. I went with a basic white color, which was heavier than the grey, so I thought it would last longer without ripping. The machines take it from there, piecing them together, and then binding them with glue. The copies are then trimmed to size. I left out a steps, but much more will be explained with my presentation. I got tons of pictures, and have 200 copies of my paper to share with people. I owe a huge thanks to Upper Valley Printing Press, who helped my hugely. I learned a ton today!

Day 13

Today I got the chance to go to the press, although it wasn't until late. I was very excited to go, because I spoke with my sponsor after not being able to reach him for a few days. We talked over the phone for a while about my final product. We talked about my paper dimensions, colors, etc. He told me I had a few choices for how I want my paper to look. He said I could print it onto an actual newspaper, or I could put it onto a tabloid. I didn't know which I wanted at that time, so I told him I would see what they looked like when I get there. When I spoke with him, he told me that we would be printing the paper tonight, so I was very eager to get there and get that done. However, by the time I got there, it was too late, and all I got was a tour. The tour was much longer than my last one, and I learned a lot. I won't say I was disappointed, since I still learned so much, by I really wanted the paper to get printed. I am however, going back there tomorrow, and that will be the day it gets printed. I have Spanish second block, so I will head out directly after that. I am not sure how long the process takes, but I hope to get back in time for baseball. I also wrote my last article today on the way to my baseball game. The article was about Brenda, and her winning her award. Hopefully, by the end of tomorrow, my newspaper will be done, and all I will have to focus on is my self-reflection, and my presentation. 

Day 12

Today was mostly an editing day for me. I spent most of my time bringing my things together. I am finally finished writing all of my articles, however, I might add one more about Brenda winning the teacher award, and the 1,000 dollars. I will either write an article about her, or do an interview, since I am living at her house. I did manage to get another two articles finished today. One of them was on Earth Day, and the other was about Al Milley getting chosen to be the senior speaker. I went down to Brenda's office to move my articles from the word format, to the format she uses to make the yearbook, however we ran into some conflicts. We didn't know the dimensions of the paper that the articles will be printed on, and couldn't get ahold of my off-campus sponsor, so we decided to wait it out another night. I instead spent time gathering some of the pictures I will add to it. At this point, I am thinking about just dragging all my pictures into a folder, and saving them to  disk. Again, I am not sure if I can drag the pictures onto the document, or if they are put on separately, so I have to wait to hear back from him about that as well. I plan an touring the press again on Thursday, and hopefully hand him my paper so it can get printed in time for Monday. That will give me the weekend, to write my self-evaluation, and put my presentation together. 

Day 11

Today I spent most of my day in Brenda's office. I was just writing more articles, and planning an outline for my paper. Although I wanted to spend my time working with Brenda, she was teaching during the time I was there, so we plan to meet tomorrow night. I will hopefully have all of my articles finished by tomorrow, and will then move them onto the format that Brenda uses to create the yearbook. I spent another three hours working in her office, and some in my room, but it was all articles. For about an hour of that time, I was just editing other articles. I was reading through the articles I have so far, and fixing mistakes. For some, I added a few more sentences, for others I took away a few sentences. I also called my off-campus sponsor today, but he didn't answer so I left a message. I asked him when would be the best day this week for me to come and tour again, and also asked how much time he would need to get my paper printed. I am not sure how long it takes all together to get the paper put together, but I do not want to make the mistake of not getting it in on time. Hopefully he will call me tomorrow, and let me know what day is best for him. By tomorrow, I will most likely have my part done, and will just have to get it in and printed, with a bit more touring. 

Weekly Reflection # 2

After my second week of my project, I certainly feel like I have more solid work done. Last week, I was mostly learning new things, researching topics, and designing my blog. This week I focused mostly on writing. At this point I have nine articles completed. The articles are all school related, and almost every article is about events that took place this spring. A few of my articles include Al Milley, and how he is an exemplary student-athlete, Ian Putnam, and his dismissal from Proctor, the learning skills program here at proctor, and how so many have taken and learned many studying habits through learning skills, the few andover attractions, the spring weather, next year's school leaders, with a bit on Cam Webster's speech, the effects of "senioritis" the boy's hockey team's Lakes Region Championship, and the girls basketball season. 

Another I did was thought up a possible idea for me paper. The idea is a a page dedicated only to the students on senior projects, and some of their thoughts so far. I made a survey for all the students and almost every student replied. 

I finally got a chance to go to the press this week, although it wasn't for long. I was only there about twenty minutes, and didn't get too see the whole press. I did however, have an in-depth conversation with my sponsor about the process a printing a newspaper, from start to finish. I plan on visiting the press again for a much longer tour early this week so I can see the actual machines used to make a newspaper. 

I have set up a weekly planner for next week, since my paper will have to be finished a bit early in order to get some copies printed on time for the senior project due-date. I also spent some time with Brenda and discussed a format to put my articles on. We decided to use to format that she uses to make the yearbook. 

Overall, this week was more work, and less learning. I am happy with the way things went this week, and feel like I should have no problem finishing up my articles and getting them onto a newspaper by next week. 

Day 10

Today I certainly made up for the work I missed yesterday. I had the day off, so I spent a lot of my day just writing. I got through four articles today, which was the most I have gotten done in one day. I also did some more brainstorming today, and thought of another possible article to put in my paper. My idea was to make a survey for all seniors to fill out. The survey would help me write a "senior favorites" article, with questions like favorite movie, favorite bands, favorite foods, etc. This is still a work in progress, so it may or may not actually be made, but still a thought. I got a few more replies to my other survey for students on senior projects. The majority are saying how they wanted to go on senior project because they were simply interested in a certain topic, and wanted to explore it. Almost all are loving what they are doing, and recomend that all upcoming seniors take advantage of the opportunity. Right now, I have around ten articles, and hope to have close to fifteen by the time I finish. 

Day 9

Today was probably the least productive day I have had. The reason being, is I had a hockey tournament that started today, and I was driving all day and had an 8:30 game. That is the reason why this post is a bit late, because I didn't get back until late. I managed to get a few articles done on the drive home. They aren't very long, only a couple paragraphs each, but I got three done. I plan to make up my time I missed tomorrow, because I don't have another game until Saturday. Tomorrow I also plan on posting a few of the responses I got from the survey I made. I have yet to get all of the kids on senior project, but I do have a majority of them. My biggest priority is to get more articles done. I have about six done now, but I want to have around fifteen by the time my project is finished. This entry is a bit short, simply because I didn't get much done today, but tomorrow should be a more productive day. 

Day 8

I finalized my plans to tour the printing press tomorrow. I have spanish second block, so from there I will head north to the Haverhill Printing press. I spoke with my sponsor over the phone today for close to an hour about what he will show me, and what kind of things I will learn. Today I also continued to work on my idea of the senior project section of my paper. I got a five question survey from Michele yesterday, and decided to use this. I made a few edits in the questions, and made up a couple new ones, and emailed them to all of the people that are doing a senior project. I have already gotten a few replies. I also spent some time looking through the digital gallery, and picked out a few more pictures that I can use with my articles. 

Day 7

Today I got another three hours of work in. I think I will keep in this routine because three hours a day, five days a week gives me the forty-five hours I need a week. I spent my time at the library. I researched my sister's school back home, so too see if I could find an online version of their school newspaper. I didn't expect to find anything, but I did. After about a half hour of waiting for it to download, I had the Whitman-Hanson school newspaper on my computer. I studied it. I looked at what the articles were written on, what there were for pictures, how long the articles were, etc. This helped a lot. It helped much more than looking at a regular newspaper, because this was a school paper, which is actually very different. At one point I got a little stressed once again on what I was going to write about. This paper has a new addition every week. I was just making one. I was worried about if I were to write articles about school news that is happening now, if it would just seem like old news when I went to present it, and hand them out in two weeks. So, I went to Michele. She told me not to worry. She said that I could create a Spring newspaper, since I am creating this by myself, rather than having a whole staff of people. After talking with her, I made a list. I whole new list of possible article ideas, with events that happened this spring. The formal, earth day, sports matches and the spring play were some thoughts that came to mind. I am also thinking about adding in a special section of the paper dedicated specifically to senior projects. This will simply explore some of the other student's projects. This still needs more thought, however. Lastly, I spoke with Brenda, my sponsor, about the best way to write my articles. I asked if I should use the newspaper layouts on word, or just write them on a plane word document. I wasn't sure what to do because I didn't how they would print out on a newspaper. She told me to use a blank sheet, and then to transfer them onto a different layout that she uses to make the yearbook.

Day 6

Today I kept up with my routine and put in another three hours of work towards my project. I was thinking of ways to improve my blog, and thought that I needed to put up some pictures soon. However, since I haven't yet gotten to tour the press, it is hard to put up meaningful pictures. So I started looking online. I looked up some pictures, read a bunch of captions, and tried to get the most I could out of some of the online descriptions. I know I need some more understanding on how the press works. I am very eager to take that tour because I have a ton of questions. I hope that my mentor has a little space to fit me in early this week. I saved a few of the pictures, but I think I am going to wait till tomorrow to post them on my blog. Another thing I plan on doing tomorrow is to meet with Brenda, and discuss some plans for the rest of my project. I also decided to add more to my article on Al Milley. It isn't done yet, because I will need a little bit of his cooperation, but there is more in progress. 

Weekly Reflection #1

This week was a huge learning experience for me.  Until this week I had never written an article specifically for a newspaper. I also had no experience designing a newspaper and had no idea how a paper was made. This week I spent a lot of time talking to my sponsor, who majored in journalism in college and currently runs a printing press in northern New Hampshire. I talked with him about both writing columns for a paper, and the time and effort it takes to get those articles printed into a newspaper. I learned about the stages of a printing press, and how these stages have changed due to recent technology and computers. I also gained an appreciation for the time and effort it takes to write even just one article, as each column requires a huge amount of time and research to complete. 

This week I also wrote my first column, a personal column on a student at Proctor who I both respect and consider a close friend. He is a student who represents Proctor with everything he does, and who a lot of people look up to. Yet to write an article on him, I couldn't just include my thoughts about him, I had to make it more objective and therefore had to interview him and other students about their thoughts on him.  I also had to learn a little more about his history and how he came to be the student athlete and role model he is at Proctor. 

This week I also drew up an outline of what I want my newspaper to look like. This gave me a better sense of just how much time and effort I'm going to need to spend on each article, because it helped me figure out how long each article needs to be. 

I really enjoyed what I was doing this week because I was learning so much new information and getting to spend a lot of my time researching things that actually really interested me. It was also nice being able to structure myself on my own, and having the opportunity to choose what I was writing about and how to approach the work. 

I have also began to read newspapers daily. This was something my sponsor suggested, as he told me it would broaden my perspective to read both local and global papers as well as school newspapers like Dartmouth college's newspaper. This definitely helped because I saw what appealed to me and what I think will appeal to my peers as well. There were certainly some surprises this week, as I had not expected that just one article would take me a full day to complete. I'd anticipated being able to complete two or three articles a day, so I'm glad I got an early start in writing the articles, because know I now I'm going to have to make sure to structure my time well enough to complete everything. 

This week I'm going to be spending some time at the printing press, taking pictures and getting a tour of the press. This will really help me to best understand how the press works, and to see first hand the entire process of printing a newspaper. I'm excited for this week to be a little more hands on, and look forward to completing more of my project. 

Day 5

Today I began working on my second article. This article is going to be about Proctor memories. I interviewed the kids who live at Brenda's to find out their favorite memory from their time at Proctor. I'm planning to interview at least 5 more people, and write an article that combines their favorite memories with my own.  I also drew up an outline of how I want my newspaper to appear, so I could get an idea of what I want my columns to look like, and thus how long each article should be. Finally, I set up a time for my tour of the Press. I also contacted a few local journalists, and am hoping to set up a time to meet with them next week. Over the weekend I'm planning to create the topics for the rest of my articles and get started on writing them. Next week I plan to spend a lot of time at the Press, working on the design and understanding how a paper is printed. 

Day 4

Most of the work I got done today was done after dinner. This morning, I called the press and talked to my off campus sponsor. I asked him if I could talk with him for a bit, and ask a few questions. He told me that he was free around seven o'clock, and that I could have a phone interview with him. I spoke with him tonight for close to three hours. I asked him questions like what machines are used, and a run-through of how the papers are made from start to finish. I learned a ton, but I know things will make even more sense once I can get a tour. I spoke with him about that too, and he said he is trying to find a free slot next week.  I am waiting for a call back from him. I had planned on finishing up that article on Al Milley, but haven't had the interview with him yet. I plan on finishing up on that tomorrow. I also plan on brainstorming a few more articles to write on. 

Day 3

Today I  decided to work on my first column. I haven't completely finished it yet, but I am about three quarters done with it. I worked on it for about three hours, but some of that was just brainstorming. It took me a while to decide what I wanted to write my first article on, eventually decided that I would write an article on somebody at Proctor that everyone loves, Al Milley. Al will be labeled as the P.A. man of the year, and at some point I plan on having an interview with Al. The column will consist of Al's hobbies, favorites and examples of what makes him the perfect representation of what Proctor Academy looks for in student athlete. I am pretty sure, if not certain, that Al will not like the idea of this. But everyone else will. The column is only a couple paragraphs, but a bit more will be added. I found a way to make a newspaper layout under word documents. This way, my articles are put into paragraph form. I hope to be finished with this article by tomorrow. 

Day 2

I got a good chunk of work done today for my newspaper. The first thing I did was upload a picture. At some point I will most likely switch my picture to something relating to my project, but I got one up for now. I planned on sitting down today and plotting out a way to go about making my paper. However, when I sat down and got out a pen and paper, my mind went blank. I didn't really know where to start, or what I could write about for my articles. So I went down to Jake's Market and got 2 newspapers. I looked through the papers to try and learn a few things. I studied their layouts, fonts, articles, titles of articles, etc. I looked through all this and jotted down a few notes. I know that in order to make my newspaper interesting, I am going to have to put in some things that will catch the eye of observers. That is why I spent a lot of time studying how the authors titled their articles. I also wrote down a few things I thought I might be interested in writing about. I still have to think up some more ideas, however. I have also talked to my mom, and told her to keep the next couple of days worth of newspapers so I can do some more observing, because this is how I will get a basic idea of how to make my newspaper look appealing. 

Day 1

Today was day one of the making of my newspaper. Although I haven't exactly started creating the newspaper yet, I spent a lot of time getting used to the blogger site. I played around with basically every part of the site, and started customizing my blog. Hopefully by tomorrow or Wednesday I will get a picture of me up there. I got in contact with printing press and started setting up a schedule. I took some time to see where I had the most free time between Spanish class and baseball so I could make the trip to Haverhill to tour it. As of right now, it looks like Mondays and Wednesdays will be the easiest days to get there. The guy said a complete tour will take about an hour to an hour and a half. However, I won't need a complete tour every time I go. During the tours I plan on taking a lot of pictures, perhaps a couple movies if it seems appropriate. I am excited to get started, and will start plotting out a game-plan on how I will go about making the paper tomorrow.