NBC News, Homework Help, and Flirt-FM

Somehow almost a week away from the blog seems like a long time. I have had frequent thoughts about writing in general, and I’m always taken back to my Creative Writing class two years ago. There’s something about writing that I find peaceful, and after I write I find myself refreshed and ready to go again. Maybe that will serve me well if I go into journalism.

On a journalism note, I have been watching NBC’s Nightly News podcast daily since coming to Ireland (and a few days per week during the summer). Tom Costello reports for NBC from Capitol Hill, and therefore has been on-air for the past few weeks about the proposed—and albeit failed--$700 billion bailout package. On a hunch, I guessed at his e-mail and sent him a note about how I enjoy his reports and am looking for journalistic internships in Washington. (MSNBC’s website talks only about internships at Rockefeller Center in New York.) I hit send, and wasn’t expecting a reply for a few days. If the e-mail went through, I assumed, he’d see on his Blackberry, file it for later, and respond in a few weeks when the news settled down. To my amazement, he wrote back within three minutes, with the first line of, “Always good to hear from a fellow Irishman!” I was so happy that I’m pretty sure I had a bounce in my step walking to my Money and Banking class! I just found it fun and telling that a man who works at a prestigious company and reports for millions of people took the time to write back a college junior about an internship. He even invited me to a studio tour when I return. We’ll see where the process goes, but right now I am pretty excited and hopeful!

A few weeks ago, I signed up with a few volunteer organisations in the Galway area. One of them that particularly captured my interest was Ballinfoyle Family Services, a group that provides intervention services to low-income and underprivileged families. One of their weekly activities, at which I volunteered yesterday, is tutoring 7-9 year olds with their homework after school. That had to be one of the most rewarding parts of my time in Ireland! I worked with a very intelligent fourth grader on her multiplication and spelling/word usage homework. (And I learned that a “spanner” is a screwdriver – she had to teach me that!) On my walk to the school yesterday, I tried to think how you teach addition. Multiplication, it seems, is easier to teach if students grasp addition. None of the other students or supervisors were able to explain how to teach addition either – but it did prompt them to an idea that next week, we might have a meeting with a math teacher to ask!

Oh, and by the way, remember the days of subtracting 25-7? And you’d write it vertically, like:

25
- 7
-----
18

Then, you couldn’t do 5-7, so you’d have to borrow a 1 from the 2, change the 2 to a 1, and then proceed? Yeah – they don’t do that anymore. The supervisors tried to explain to me the new way, but they weren’t successful. They told me to ask one of the students next week! (Luckily, the girl with whom I was working didn’t have to do subtraction the long way!)

That’s all for now. I’m heading to training at Flirt-FM 101.3 (http://www.flirtfm.ie). Their station is pretty state-of-the-art, at least compared to WAES-FM at Stevenson High School where I worked for four years. Flirt-FM has digital recording of all shows (so it will be podcast – stay tuned for details!), computerized playlists, and the ability to use another studio to pre-record bits (or all!) of your show. Fancy, I’d say!