Today we went to the National Press Club, to three Smithsonian museums, and on a DC bus tour. It was an absolutely scrumptious and exhilarating day, full of presidents and elephants and planes and banners and bloggers.
Everything we did today was super important or exciting in some way, and at times, it was hard to figure out exactly how certain activities could possibly be valuable. Hopefully, I can bring the positive qualities of each activity to light (in my own quirky, insane way).
Okay, so going to the Press Club was pretty cool. Jim Brady, Jonathan Martin, and Chris Cilliza were the three panelists at the Political Journalism panel. Vaughn Ververs, more fondly known in my notes as Ververs, moderated the event, but he really was just like a panelist, adding his own perspective whenever it seemed appropriate.
What was really cool about this event was how Mr.Ververs considered all of the panelists to be his colleagues and friends. In this way, the panel seemed to participate in a dialogue, exchanging their experiences and opinions in a more leisurely way. Their common passion for political journalism probably made a difference too.
Walking to the museums was mostly miserable and yucky, but we also had many opportunities to take photos and lag behind the group a bit. Challenging ourselves to catch up with the group must have been fun to watch : four girls in matching polos (and heels) running down a sidewalk in DC. Walking was epic.
The Air and Space museum, however, was not. We were stuck there for almost three miserable hours. The reason why so few of us enjoyed this museum is because a lot of us aren’t science or technology or war people. We like writing, and stories, and history. The Natural and US History museums were naturally a hit with the national journalism and media students. Get it ? US, national. Natural, natural ? Hah. Hah. Whoooo.
One of the most lovely discoveries that was uncovered at the Smithsonian museums was a book about the first dog. Not the first dog ever in the history of the universe, but the First Dog, the “Commander on Leash,” Bo the Obama’s dog. It was an adorable children’s book that was super random and fanciful. Dogs flipping burgers with Biden on the 4th of July? A puppy dying the White House fountain water green for St. Patrick’s day? A former president owning an alligator?
The last one is actually a fact, but the rest of the questions are simply spoilers for the book (because you know you want to read it now, right?). Anyway, that was super epic. That book made my day.
We went to the Arlington campus and did a “Mountain Adventure” activity, which was meant to be a team-building activity. My favorite part of the small group work was when we went and spied on the other groups (yes, we spied on the other groups). Of course, we were misrepresenting ourselves, but it was super fun.
We ate dinner in one of the lecture rooms, but it was especially exciting because the chairs were crazy! Kylee says they were “double swivel chairs of epic proportions.” They were wild!
Then we had speakers. Madison, Kylee, Nicole and I went to see Mark Potts, who pretty much invented the online newspaper. And he has this blog called Recovering Journalist, which is supposedly pretty sarcastic. He didn’t talk about it though. He talked about the direction that he thought journalism and news media might go in, but his ideas were viable. Like, we could envision a future with curation and hyperlocalizing. Like Kylee said, “He told us we could change the world, and proceeded to tell us how to do it.”
After that, we toured the capital and visited the Lincoln, FDR, and Einstein monuments. Kylee and I sang ABBA songs half the time and took tons of photos. It was wonderfully wonderful.
So pretty much everything was awesome. Final word.
