Time flies when there’s a deadline. Today is June 16.
It seems like 9 p.m. unexpectedly turned into 1 a.m., but I really did mean to get to sleep early. My plan went astray, however, when I started the series finale of the somewhat controversial series 13 Reasons Why. While I don’t agree with the show in its entirety, and I believe numerous aspects of the plot and subject matter could have been handed with greater tact and realness, I can respect the show’s attempt and effort to bring uncomfortable, real-life topics to the forefront of conversation. As I watched the final episode, I smiled, cried and quite honestly wished I could have experienced my own high school graduation. I know television can make certain moments of high school seem essential to one’s life, such as prom, graduation and the last day of school, but because I didn’t have the chance to participate in such events for myself in the normal fashion, I feel melancholy about them.
Because of my late night, I slept in once again. When I got up, I saw a text from Anna Xu, my co-Editor-In-Chief for The Rock and Bearing News. We had done most of the heavy lifting a couple weeks ago when we sorted National Scholastic Press Association (NSPA) and Columbia Scholastic Press Association (CSPA) entries, but today we had to narrow our lists to an allowable number. NSPA and CSPA have different categories and criteria for submissions, and a different number of submissions we could enter per publication. I hate cutting words from stories, so to cut stories from competition was painful.
Anna, Robin Stover (our advisor) and I spent at least seven hours going through and comparing stories, narrowing our lists, PDFing pages, fixing captions, cleaning up posts, making landing pages and a countless number of other tasks we needed to complete before we could submit. Because of the coronavirus, the submission process this year has changed. For us, this meant finding the correct place to submit online links to Bearing News, which I had yet to accomplish after an hour of looking. I would have hated to do the sorting and submitting alone, but with Anna and Stover we collaborated, laughed, joked around and had a good time. Working at a Panera would have been nice, but because we couldn’t be together we settled for a seven hour long FaceTime call.
We didn’t finish all the work we needed to do today, so tomorrow we’re meeting via FaceTime again to (hopefully) submit all our CSPA entries and get as many NSPA entries done as we can. If I’m remembering correctly, we have until June 19 to submit Bearing News for judging as a website with CPSA, June 26 to submit individual entries to NSPA and June 30 to submit individual competitions to CSPA. I could be wrong on the dates, but I am certain we need to turn in our content as soon as possible so as to not accidentally miss the due date.
When the three of us finally called it quits for the day, my mom said she was too tired to cook and opted instead for us ordering Greek takeout from George’s Pizza and Steak. I called in our order then waited about 25 minutes before driving to pick it up. I had to wait in the restaurant for a little bit before the food was ready, but George (the owner) chatted me up to pass the time. We talked about college, his children and journalism, and he even helped me carry the food to my car. For anyone who hasn’t tried food from George’s yet, I highly recommend it.
Tomorrow’s going to be another long day, but I hope I can find time to workout or at least go for a walk, unlike today. I’m trying to be healthy, but currently my longest exercise streak has only been two days. It’s not the best record. Sitting around all day made me feel like I was back in school. I have my fingers crossed we can finish in a reasonable-ish amount of time tomorrow so Anna, myself and my mom can enjoy our days without being tied to our computers working.
“You will change the world just by being a warm, kind-hearted human being.” ― Anita Krizzan
How did you spend your 91st day of social distancing? Let us know in the comments below.
