Thursday June 30th, 2011- My Last Day

Today was my last day at the Sports Information Office at Duke. It was very bittersweet. I am so sad to leave this wonderful experience and put it behind me, especially when Zach and Kelsey still have over half of the summer left here. I however, am so glad to move forward and think about the amazing things I can continue to improve upon in my senior year of college after having a dream internship that really caused me to think about my plans for life after next year. As far as work went today, I just continued updating the back-end of the website archiving football rosters from the 1920's. There were some funny names, like Stonewall Durham. We went out to lunch for my last day and Chelesea's last day of the summer, but she ended up not coming because right before we were about to go she found out that her dog got hit by a car and died. I had a talk with Lindy about my internship and he said that I did a great job, the main comment he had was that he would recommend the career center require an internship be longer. I agree with this, at least for this type of experience, but feel that when we were talking in the spring he should have recommended I do a longer internship. I ended the day with a great conversation with Cook about getting in to the Sports field, coming from a small college or university. (Cook went to Wofford). He said that he hadn't really heard of sports information until his senior year of college and then he started working for the SID office at his school and also did two internships with local papers. He recommeded I reach out to the local papers about doing sports articles. I ended up crying tonight because I had so mixed emotions about the experience being over. I had an amazing experience that pushed me to think about my life plans and I made networking connections that will benefit me greatly, and last a lifetime.

Wednesday June 29th, 2011

Today I made CD's of the Women's Tennis Seniors who just graduated. I burned each of their picture files onto a CD. Then I spent the majority of the rest of the day uploading pictures from the ACC and NCAA Wrestling Championships. I uploaded the pictures and went through each CD and found pictures of Duke Wrestlers and put them in their respective folders. This was easy for the first two CDs, because the first CD was the NCAA Championships and it was only pictures of Duke's sole wrestler in the NCAA tournament, and there were only fourteen pictures on the CD and then the second CD had a bunch of pictures on there but every image was named with the people in the picture, so that was very helpful. The other six CDs did not have the images labeled according to what wrestlers were in the image, so that proved to be harder. Especially since I am not familar with the Duke wrestlers, and a lot of the images aren't good pictures of their faces. But it just took a while, Chelsea was able to help me identify a good many of the wrestlers and when she couldn't I asked Meredith. I finished that and then I asked Blevins for something to do, and he had me input old football rosters onto the backend of GoDuke.com. I was working with rosters from the early 20th Century. There is not much information on some of the athletes from that far back, some of them we just have their last name. So in those situations I had to put A as the first initial because the first name is a required field on the website. I put a few years in before the day was over.

Tuesday June 28th, 2011

Today was a very productive day. I got to work and finished the fall composite schedule that I had been working on. It has all the fall sporting events of all the schedules that have been releases so far. Then Lindy had me write up some questions to do a Q & A for the website,with women's basketball senior Shay Selby, since I was already doing her senior profile. So when she came in at 11:00 I did her interview and then I transcribed it into both the senior profile and the Q& A for the website. I wrote a paragraph at the top of the Q & A to introduce the story, saying " Shay Selby checked in with GoDuke.com... " Then I looked up the statistics of Duke Alumni playing Minor or Major League Baseball and reported that for Cook. Then I had lunch and finished up those baseball statistics. Then it was time for Coach K's summer press conference. We got to go to that, which was really neat. It was exciting to hear him talk about the upcoming season, the team's trip to China at the end of July, and everything else! Within three hours of the press conference there was already an article about it in the Miami Herald. That was neat to see the behind the scenes of the Media/University Athletics working together.

June 27th, 2011- The Beginning of the End.

Today was my last monday at the Duke SID office. Thursday is my last day here. But I have lots to do until then.
Today I wrote another Duke in the WNBA Update for GoDuke.Com, in the two weeks since my first update, there has been a new Blue Devil added to the WNBA. Joy Cheek signed a contract last week with the Washington Mystics. Now five of Washington's 11 players went to Duke. I spent the first two and a half hours researching, writing, and then editing that article, there were a few minor changes that Lindy made, but nothing major.
I spent the rest of the day working on the Fall Sports Composite Schedule. Some of the sports schedules are not released yet but I worked with what I could. I got to Oct. 30th.
Also, today Art had us interns, and Chelsea come in his office for a little Sports Information 101. On Saturday a New York Sportswriter wrote an article saying that Coach K had been apporached by the Minnesota Timberwolves for the head coaching position. Well, Steve Wiseman, a Durham sportswriter who covers Duke Athletics for the Durham Newspaper saw the story and called Art on Saturday night. Art hadn't heard anything about it, so he called Pliz, and asked him about it. Pliz called Coach K and he said he hadn't heard from or talked to the timberwolves. Pliz relayed this information to Art, who relayed it to Steve Wiseman. So Moral of the Story is the New York Sports writer had not basis for his story.
Tomorrow is a real exciting day as it is Coach K's summer press conference. I an very excited as we get to help set-up and listen to the press conference. Should be a great day!

Friday June 24th,2011

Today of course was relaxed as it was friday. I got to work and started back to work on the Games By Location section of the Women's Basketball Media Guide. I've only gotten to Mid-January but me just say there are a whole heck of a lot of games, all time in January. period for that matter. Well so I was working on that, trucking along, and then I decided to ask Cook if he had anything for me to do. He had me work on some fencing bios. I did about three of those and then Art volunteered the three of us interns to help out in the Iron Duke office. They are about to ship off there annual letters. And we were pulling letters out of the envelopes to be signed by the Boss, well for his name to be signed on them anyway, and then stuffing the envelopes once they were signed, and then adding two stickers to each envelope. Mindless work but it was nice, that we all agreed. And I made nice conversation with a intern in the Iron Duke office who is going to be a senior at Furman in the Fall and whose dad, like mine, went to Duke. When we got back to the office we just had about an hour left before noon, aka quitting time on friday. I did another fencing bio and then returned to work on the Media Guide.

Thursday June 23rd, 2011

Today my boss was back from his family vacation in Aruba. I showed him the work I had done, and he said it was good. He said that I did a good job with the WNBA update that I wrote. He had gotten an email from the Mystics suggesting we send out a release to vote for Alana Bead for the 2011 WNBA All-Star game. So I got working on that, and then he changed the wording of some of it and then added a section at the end about her career at Duke. Then I said "So Lindsey didn't get nominated this year?" and he said " Oh man I'm sure she did, I gotta get my mind back on work" So he was gonna add Lindsey in there and then someone came in to talk to him and he said we'd finish that in a little bit, but when that guy left he went to go watch his son play some games at basketball camp.

Us interns went to the plaza for lunch because zach and kelsey didn't pack. I got a locopop, pomegranate tangerine. It was very good.

When we got back to the office I finished up the release with Lindy, and he showed me how the back end of the website works, and how you put a story up on the website. Around 2 some football seniors came in for interviews and Chelsea, a work study student and I emailed the Kicker. I used a recorder and had pressed record and put it on the table, but somehow it didn't record. I have no idea how that happened. Now, we'll have to get him in here again and ask him the same questions all over again. Chelsea and I agreed that it would be easier to just email them the questionaire. But whatever. Afterwards I've been continuing working on the Games by Location Section of the 2011-2012 Women's Basketball Media Guide. Then I worked with Kelsey on setting up the schedule for when we will release all of the senior profiles. Then it was time to go!

Originally us interns were gonna get together to watch the draft at like Mellow Mushroom. But Kelsey and her boyfriend are going to Tennessee tomorrow and so they had to pack and buy groceries and they live all the way in wake, so that didn't happen.

But I had a pretty awesome night with danielle and ryan and mowgli. We had homemade pizza that ryan made and then watched the draft. Danielle and I were pinning,( pinterest.com, check it out, it's addictive) and wanted to make something so she decided we would make cookies! So we made homemade chocolate chip cookies. they included pecans and rum in the recipe! They turned out more like scones but oh they were good!

Wednesday June 22nd, 2011

Today i kept on keeping on on the Games by Location section of the 2011-2012 WBB Media Guide. But at about 10 Art asked the three of us to come in his office. Every year Sports Information does Senior Profiles of all the Senior Student-Athletes. So the three of us were put in charge of confirming all the seniors in every sport and coming up with questions for the Senior Profiles. We divided the sports up, 21 sports and so we each got 7 sports. We each looked up the seniors of our sports and then put there names in an excel document, under their sport and the SID in charge of that sport. Then we compiled all of our excel documents into a mass document of all the senior athletes. Then the fun part, coming up with questions for the athletes. We had last years questions to go by, and then we came up with different questions looking at a Sporting News magazine and websites. We have some pretty killer questions like Who would play you in a movie?, most embarrassing music on your ipod?, favorite place to study on campus?, and favorite durham restauraunt?
Kelsey and I ate lunch outside, it has become routine : ) I had leftover mac and cheese and some lays. Then we went back inside because it is REALLY hot! The high was supposedly 100 for the day. I went back to work on the Media Guide. Art asked Zach to take some dollies down to the file room, and so I got to take a tiny break from the Media Guide to show where the file room is located.
Then it was back to archiving every game Duke Women's Basketball has ever played in North Carolina. I got through December and I'm at around 275 games, theres 3 more months plus the first week of April to go!
But good news is that Lindy is coming back tomorrow and so hopefully I'll get a new assignment. AND on next Thursday(my last day) Greg Louganis is coming to speak with David, Nick and Abby as they prepare for World's. So Kristina is coming back to help with that and she said I can help her!