The day before, Derek had told me that I could come in between 10:30a and 11a this day. The other journalists didn’t get in until this time either, so coming in earlier would mean just sitting around for an hour and a half. I was super relieved to get to sleep later. Driving from Austin, it meant I could leave around 9a (and sleep until about 8a), so that was super awesome.

Even though the first day had gone extremely well, I was even more nervous than I had been the previous day. On my way out of Austin, I stopped by the Sonic in Southpark Meadows and got a sweet tea and a grilled cheese with fries (I know it’s not breakfast food, but I was feelin’ a grilled cheese and fries). Or atleast, my brain was feeling a grilled cheese and fries. My stomach was too nauseous from the sheer terror I was feeling to consume anything other than the tea. So I sadly had no breakfast this morning.

I got to the office about 10:40am-ish. I greeted Derek and told him I was headed to my desk. It was a bit of an awkward exchange. I can be a very awkward person normally, but especially when I’m chalked full of nerves. So instead of telling him, I had asked if I should go to my desk, which was kind of stupid. He said, “yes”, so I said, “okay, I will be at my desk.” I felt so awkward, *facepalm* *facedesk* *keyboard teeth* or whatever the phrase is haha.

I said hello to Felicia and Megan, who were at their desks. Ron still hadn’t made it in yet. I sat down and settled in. After the awkward exchange, I calmed down a bit. I quickly realized it was a very slow news day for Seguin Gazette. Felicia was writing up a story she had already gathered everything for, and Megan was laying out the paper.

Megan had questions about the best way to lay some element of the newspaper out in InDesign, and Felicia came over to help. I had nothing to do, so I asked if I could watch. They said ‘yes,’ so I pulled over a chair and just observed. A little bit later, Felicia remembered that they needed to get the list of names for couples that had been married from one of the courthouses (I think it was a courthouse). She asked Megan and I if we wanted to come along for the ride, so we said ‘sure’!

On the way out, Felicia showed me a dry erase board with our names on it. She wrote in, “courthouse” in each of our boxes and explained that Derek wanted us writing where we were leaving to if we had to go somewhere for a story or something. We all piled into Felicia’s car and off we drove.

The drive to the courthouse gave me a chance to see more of Seguin. There’s this really cool amusement park that we passed by, with a tall roller coaster. I thought that was awesome! Felicia said that the people who own it built the place so that their kids had something to do. She said it was also open year-round. I would love to check this place out sometime, it looks fun!

After we parked at the courthouse, we went inside and went through a metal detector. It beeped on me, probably because of my belt, but the guy just waved me through. He seemed to know Felicia pretty well, they were joking with each other. After the metal detector, we rounded the corner and went over to a desk area. Felicia told the receptionist that she was from the Seguin Gazette and that we were there for the marriages. The receptionist disappeared for a minute and then came back with a binder.

Felicia looked for a dot that she had made next to someone’s name the last time she was there. It marked her place in the binder of names, so she knew which were the new ones. She took photos on her phone of the pages of names that came after the dot. After we got the names, we headed back to the car. On the way back, Megan mentioned needing to type them up. Felicia offered to do it instead. Then I told them that I actually didn’t have anything to do and would be happy to help and type them up. They both seemed happy about that, and Felicia said that it was settled that I would do it.

When we got back, Felicia put the photos on the shared editorial drive and showed me how to get them on my iMac. She also explained to me how to format the document. I mentioned that the computer didn’t have Word, to which I learned that they don’t use word. They use TextEdit to keep the formatting clean, as Word can thrown in a bunch of jumbly-ness when transferring it to other programs like InDesign. I do some web design work, so that makes perfect sense to me. I loaded up TextEdit and started the process of typing up the entries.

About 10 or 15 minutes into typing them up, Derek came over and handed me a flier. He asked if I could write a promotional story based on the flier and interview Jeff. The flier was offering a $10 discount on a one-year subscriptions to Seguin Gazette if people donated needed items. I finished up the marriage names first, that way Megan could go ahead and get them into the paper that she was working on. Once I finished that then I started on my story. It wasn’t too tough to write.

Jeff had joked with Ron about writing the quotes for him, since he has a very eloquent way of wording things. I wasn’t sure if they were serious, so once I finished my article minus the quotes, I asked Derek if I send it to Ron or interview Jeff. Derek said to send it to Ron. Felicia showed me where to put it in the drive, and then Ron grabbed it. This story would be published in the upcoming Sunday paper. Derek said for Megan to give me a byline, so it would be the first time that I’ve officially been published. I’m super excited about that. The dog-parking-lot story that goes out next week is my first real story that will be published, so I’m excited for that one too.

At this point in the day, it was probably sometime around 2:00pm. Not just wanting to sit around and be useless, I asked if there were any pages to proof. Felicia handed me a couple, so I got started on those. After that, Megan had a third page that she had just finished and sent to the printer. Felicia showed me were the printer was to get it. Unfortunately, “Dino,” as the printer was named, was having some problems. Derek was trying to print out 40 pages at the same time as us of the Sizzle, a yearly summer magazine that the Gazette puts out. Only for some reason the printer was struggling with the last half of it.

Derek cancelled his print job and asked Megan to go ahead and print her page. While I was waiting at the printer with Derek, I offered to look over the Sizzle pages. He gave me the first half that had printed successfully and told me to look for anything that doesn’t look right graphically: headlines with the font off, pages that cut off and such. He also told me that he read over my story and thought it sounded good.

I sat down at my desk with the first half of the Sizzle and page three of Sunday’s paper, and set to reviewing them. I didn’t find any errors on page three. As I was finishing the Sizzle’s first half, Derek brought me over the second half, which finally printed. I only found a couple of issues throughout the whole magazine. I brought the pages over to Derek and showed him. He then told me that if there weren’t any more pages to proof at that time that it was okay if I wanted to go ahead and go home.

I checked with Megan, but there weren’t any. So, I packed up, told everyone goodbye and clocked out. I felt way more confident at the end of this day than I did when I started it, both days went extremely well. My first week at Seguin Gazette was done!