Crucial Field Work

Manhattan, N.Y., May 21, 2009— It all started out with about a million phone calls on Monday. Some couldn’t make the decision and would get back to me, some asked me to send an email and some immediately answered, “no.” It was the first day on the ‘job’ and the feeling of discouragement ran through my veins.

When I woke up this morning, I went into our common room to have some quiet time before I started my day. I spent some time in prayer and God reminded me that I cannot do anything without him and that all of my accomplishments are of him. I started my day surrendering it to him and asking him to bring success in my long day of journalism field work I was going to have.

Peter Parros, from Law and Order, spoke in chapel this morning. One verse he gave was Proverbs 16:9- "The heart of man plans his ways, but the LORD directs his steps." This was so encouraging to me and gave me confidence for the day in knowing that God was directing every step I took and would lead me in all I was going to do.

Throughout this convergent project so far I have really been able to grow by pushing through initial discouragement. When this project started out the phone calls were made but no results were coming from them. It felt like I wasn’t doing anything, even though I had called all of my sources and was simply waiting to hear back.

The phone rang and I almost jumped straight out of my seat from the excitement of seeing an unknown number reading “New York” scroll across my blue phone. I rushed to the elevator to get to a place where I had service, since being in the basement of the Empire State Building all day keeps my phone from having service. When I walked out of the door and saw the baby blue sky above me I hit the call back button.

I hung up the phone after the conversation and felt an enormous sigh of relief. I had made a contact and received some information for my article. On my way back down my phone rang again with those two radiant words scrolling across my screen and I answered with confidence. My second contact had been established and I had an interview time set up.

After all of the calls had been made in the early week, my partner, Josiah, and I were finally able to hit the field for some crucial work we needed to get done. Today we left for our destination, Brooklyn School for Music and Theater, at 10:15 a.m. and didn’t return back until around 5 p.m. It was a day full of video, photography and interviewing. We were both extremely excited to get rolling on our footage.

When we arrived to the school the security and check-in consumed the doorway. No one was allowed to enter the building without first checking in and then going through security. This was a bit of a shock for me, coming from a small town where there is no security. We may have a place for visitors to sign in but no security checkpoint. Once we arrived to the classroom, the rest of the day was a complete joy. The interviewing went well and we managed to pull together quite a bit of film for our video.

After we finished talking with the teacher, Cathy Li, and the principal and students we ventured back out to find our way back home to Manhattan. On our way we came across this amazing fountain in front of the Brooklyn Museum. This fountain had the water shooting from small spouts within the sidewalk. The water would swiftly shoot up in different rotations. Finally the fountain would present a finale. It reminded me of the finale at the fireworks shows on the Fourth of July.

I absolutely love fountains, especially taking pictures of them, so I was quite enthusiastic to see this unique one sitting before me. I refrained from my initial desire of running through the fountain to cool off from the bright yellow sun beaming down on our faces. Josiah and I spent some time photographing and then went on our way.

Our mission had been accomplished. We both said that we would not come back until we had gotten everything we needed for our story and that’s exactly what we did. It was quite a success for the both of us as we were able to get interviews for our angles and start using our camera equipment. Now we are on our way to creating our very first video to be part of our convergent project.