Friday, March 28, 2008

End or the beginning.............?

I know I blog in sporadic bursts, but ACJ has taken most of my time. Which is also the reason why am blogging in the midst of all the chaos and pending work that is due on March 31st.

Yes, thats my last day for submission of all my work in order to obtain my Journalism degree, but like most things in ACJ dont think all our assignments will meet this deadline. They cant blame us, they have overloaded us with soooooooooooooooo much work that at two different points in my final term, I wanted to quit ACJ and give it up.

But common sense prevailed and shouts like "Are you mad? You are this close to getting your degree and you want to quit? Crazy girl!" from various corners of the room were reasons for me to go on.

Now that the end of life in ACJ seems so near, I am actually missing the dread of meeting deadlines and the labs seem lifeless.

The past few days that I have spent in labs 3 and 4, make me feel so lonely that I cant sit there for more than a few minutes at a stretch. The labs are empty without the 'staff'' of Digantik working on the site. There is no hollering out, "Is that story in? Where is the damn reporter?" and the frustration creeping in, "Why is the damn style sheet not attached? Why are the links not working?". The tension, "Are MJ and Gita going to approve of this headline? Is the banner all right?" All of this is gone, to be replaced my silence. Although most of us were stressed out with the tension in our news rooms or in this case, news labs.. we used to thrive on it too. We made scores of mistakes and our two Hitlers ensured that we learnt from them.

The postmortems as MJ and Gita liked to call it, but Manikandan, our software prof, thought it was uncool and unfair to call it that as he felt that we were creating something (our site) and not killing it. Nevertheless, all three of them joined hands when it came to ripping the site apart and pointing out our mistakes. Of course, after asking us what our problems were. But at most times I thought that was just a formality and the true reason was that they were eager to get their teeth in.

ACJ is/was stressful annd I have had my moments when I wanted to tear someone else's hair out (mine is too good ;) ), but I also learnt to tame myself and keep my short temper in check.

Alas, it has to end. But there is also a beginning.. to life outside of ACJ which begins with our placements on April 1st. And like a true ACJian, am looking forward to the fun of sitting it a room with media bigwigs and although I did like to tell them that we are a bunch of crazy people to the all that we do, I shall sedately sit there and sell my talents to them. In this case, my ACJ degree will do most of the selling for me. :D

3 comments:

zen81 said...

all d best jessi...and thank god u dint quit...or our poor granma wud have got a heart attack...lol..all d best again...

Avantika said...

hey jess!
wow I feel quite proud now!
Cant believe youre graduating....
anyways im looking forward to the good times vllhave when I get there on may 6th!

IMJ said...

@ Zeens - one granma wld have had a heart attack coz i wasted her son's money and the other coz her pryers wld have gone down de drain :D

@ Avan - Thank u :).. looking fwd to meeting you.. come sooner na.. will be leavin 2 bbay a day or 2 after u get here