An update

As usual I have been very busy and quite a few things have happened since the last time I posted. I generally don’t write too many of these personal journal-style posts but I feel like I should give everyone some new content before I put up the good stuff this weekend. A more recent event that has happened is my appointment to the SGA Senate as a senator for the college of business. I am also working in the public relations committee within the senate and we have been busy planning events for homecoming this month. So far I feel really at home in this organization and have met some pretty interesting people. General elections for next school year will be taking place next month and I will need everyone’s help to put me back in office but I will go into that later when campaigning begins.

I have also been occupied with some writing that I have been doing outside of this blog, mainly journalism related. I’ve been working on advancing my freelancing career and I’m really starting to try and focus on developing relationships with editors at multiple newspapers as well as some magazines. The journalism class I am currently in keeps me busy with assignments and I’ve also been writing for the University Times a bit, however I am irritated with the UT at the moment for several reasons.

The initial complications with the UT were really only minor annoyances including things like inconsistencies with the way they signed my name, poor photo captioning, as well as choosing titles that clearly showed that the copy editor did not read my article and made assumptions based on the first couple of sentences. The editors would sign my name to my articles one week as Rob McCormick Jr. as I told them to and as Robert McCormick the next. Signing my name either way is fine but I just need consistency for two main reasons: the first, as silly as it sounds, being the fact that many people will not distinguish between Rob and Robert. I say this because by just adding Jr. at the end of my name confused many people who were unaware that I am indeed a Jr. The second problem with the inconsistencies is the fact that I am building a portfolio in case I ever need to show editors my work and by having name changes it appears as though I can’t choose an identity. However, it wasn’t until last week that I went from mildly annoyed to completely hot due to an article pertaining to the unfortunate and tragic death of my team mate Steven Archer. First of all this article wasn’t written by a new staff reporter, it was written by the editor in chief who should be one of the most seasoned journalists on staff. The first major problem with the article is the fact that Steven died Monday night and the article stated he died Tuesday. The second major beef I had with this article was the fact that absolutely no journalistic work was done what so ever. It would be one thing if the article came out the day after his death, but this article came out on Thursday which gives the UT ample time to source and do actual journalistic work. Not one phone call was made, not one interview was conducted and nothing was done that I would remotely call journalism. The article was basically the Charlotte Observer’s article with the date of death wrong and Coach Olesen’s quote cut in half. The third problem I had with this article was the fact that it was only 195 words which is five words shy of your most basic journalism story. I hate to break this to you editors of UT but this is not your basic news story. A student-athlete who is in good health and is one of Charlotte’s best long jumpers of all-time freakishly dies playing basketball and you guys brush it off like it’s a story about some kid’s calculator getting stolen or something. If you turned the page in the paper two of our basketball players got 3/4 of a page on regular rehabilitation that almost all athletes do weekly for Christ sakes! This got quite a few people I know who had no involvement on the team agitated. I could go on but since this is not the focus of the post I will not. I am also emotionally involved so therefore I am obviously biased.

On a more positive note I feel like my training is going quite well right now. Within the past three weeks I have had workouts that have been progressively the best of my life. I have been much happier with my running as well as all around in general because I haven’t been nearly as hard on myself. I tend to beat myself up pretty bad for not meeting my ridiculously high standards and I raise the bar every time I get even remotely close to meeting them. Everything feels like it’s falling into place though, I feel myself getting stronger by the day and I feel as though I am in a state of zen. I am definitely looking forward to tomorrow and the days that follow.

RGM