Engineers, prom, and proselytization of...

Hello everyone who chooses to read the Pioneer instead of the County News and inexplicably happens to read my wacky thoughts. As is frequently the case, it has come down to me having to write this column and I have no idea what to write about. However, this week I covered some events for the campus newspaper, the Minnesota Daily, and for class, so I’ll tell you all what I’ve been up to. 

Mainly, all of my events happened on Friday, which was probably my busiest day of the week. Pretty ironic considering it was a Friday. Anyway, on Friday, I had an interview at noon, and then I went to SWEekend. 

SWE stands for the Society of Women Engineers. My roommate and a lot of our female friends are involved with the group, so when I had to pitch a story idea for my multimedia class, SWEekend came to mind. 

SWEekend is when SWE invites high school girls admitted into the University of Minnesota to come stay for a night and spend the day doing fun lab tours, attending a tour of the University with insight that is not the usual tour-guide spiel, and a fancy dinner. As a reporter, I was there to video it all (for my multimedia class). I followed one of our friends who was volunteering for the day and took a bunch of fun videos, and got to call it “homework.” What was funny was when Goldy the mascot showed up to the dinner to interact with the high schoolers. Once he saw my camera, he was all show, making funny movements and jokes and playing to the camera. It was awesome. 

The next step for me is to spend hours figuring out what parts of the footage need to go into my two-minute final project for class. I have to do the voiceover and everything; I’m not looking forward to listening to my own voice over and over as I try to get everything right.  

After the SWEekend dinner was over on Friday night, I ran home to drop my camera stuff off and then got changed to go to Goldy’s Prom, an event happening at the Union put on by the Student Union and Activities. I went to cover the prom for the Minnesota Daily, but since it was the first ever Goldy’s Prom, there were very few people there. The DJ was playing to a dark room occupied by about ten people, most of them freshmen with nothing to do on a Friday night (whoops, did I actually say that?). I’m just kidding, I think Goldy’s Prom is a great idea, I just don’t think it was well enough advertised. 

After I sped through my interviews of people who were there, I went home to - you can all guess - do homework! I can hear all of you right now: “Wow, Amelia! Do you do anything besides work?” The answer is no. 

Speaking of work, I am currently cranking out the ten-page paper due for a class which has unfortunately become the bane of my existence. It’s about proselytization of religion and how the immigrated Europeans and U.S. citizens forced Native Americans out of their own land and to conform to their new ways of life. Interesting stuff, I know. 

My Determination: "That is the secret of happiness and virtue—liking what you've got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World