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!

Tuesday June 21st, 2011

Today I worked on the Games By Location of the 2011-2012 Women's Basketball Media Guide. I got to North Carolina today! I'm gonna be there for awhile. This is every game Duke has ever played in the state of North Carolina- Every home game, every UNC game, Wake game, N.C. State game, UNC Asheville game, UNC Charlotte game, UNC Greensboro game, Eastern Carolina, Western Carolina, Davidson, etc. A whole heck of a lot of games. I got through November games today and already had 50 something games. Most other states don't even have 50 games period, let alone in the month of November. Art, the big boss, came in and gave me a break from the Media Guide, he had me proofread the statistics in the Football Media Guide. Then I got another break from the Media Guide later from Cook who had me create New Folders on the Y drive. One of a bunch of different hard drives on the computers in the office. Inside the 2010-2011 folder I created 108 folders, a folder for every page of the 2010-2011 Duke Yearbook. A yearbook that archives Duke Sports. So there was IFC-Kevin White Intro/Letter- which was the Inside Front Cover Intro/Letter from the Athletic Director, and then 2- Baseball, 3- Baseball, etc. It was four folders (pages) for every sport, and then folders at the end for Compliance, Student-Athlete Development, etc. That was real easy and a little break from my Women's Basketball Media Guide.

Monday June 20th, 2011- ESPN taping.

This morning I worked on the media guide some more. I got to the M's ( Maine, Mass., etc.), We ate lunch as us interns, outside on a bench. We talked about the afternoon, we were real excited and nervous for the taping of ESPN's difference makers: Paterno and Krzyzewski. Coach K and Joe Paterno were taping the show at Penn State and there was a live feed to Duke at the Telcom Building. The three of us SI interns, Chelsea a SI work study student, and an intern from ticketing were recruited by Zach who works in marketing and promotions. He is the one who was in charge of the whole event. He had recruited us a while ago, and today was the day! So this morning he came in SI and asked Zach and Kelsey to write questions under the categories family, leadership, excellence, and teaching, random, and questions for former players. We did and we emailed him the questions and he came back in about an hour later and told Zach he'd be asking his question on family, Kelsey would be asking her question on teaching and possibly her question for the former players and I would be asking my question on excellence, and possibly my question on teaching and my random question about Coach K breaking the record for all-time most wins. Well Zach ended up being the only one of us interns to get to ask a question. The way ESPN did the show, there was only one question from each school for each topic. That paired along with the fact that Coach K's answers were not exactly brief and JoePa's were about twice as long as Coach K's, made it pretty hard to get many people up to ask questions. But it was still really neat to see, and be part of, and I should definitely be able to be seen because they got crowd shots. The show is airing on June 30th @ 8 PM on ESPN and continues at 9 on ESPNU, so be sure to watch and/or record! After the filming was done we headed back to Cameron. Zach, our intern was kinda worried about getting back because Chelsea, the SI work study student had left. Clearly he underestimated my knowledge of campus, because I knew how to get back easily! lol.

Sunday June 19th, 2011

Today I went to church here.

I love church in the Duke Chapel, it is absolutely amazing. The Chaplin Sam Wells is an awesome speaker.

After church we went home and I had a grilled peanut butter and jelly sandwich, it was amazing, the peanut butter and jelly were all gooey and melted and the bread was toasty.

Then Danielle and I went to a coffeeshop to get some work done. I got a white hot chocolate that was so rich. I have to write weekly papers to get academic credit for my internship. I wrote my paper in about an hour and a half, including facebook and twitter breaks. I wish all papers were so easy!

After I finished my paper I went down to Vaguely Reminiscent this cute little store I love. It is tiny, but every inch is jam full of so much cute and random jewelry and gifts. I think I'm definitely going to do some birthday/christmas shopping done there before I leave.

Then we came home and chilled. We had tacos and rice for dinner. It was very yummy.

Then we watched the panama/el salvador game that went into a shootout. And then was the Miss USA pageant. Then I watched KUWTK and now it is time for bed.

I have a busy/exciting day tomorrow as we are filming a tv show for ESPN. Most of the show will be filmed at Penn State but there will be a live feed to Duke where they will show a bunch of us, in a room and we can ask questions. But.. I don't think I'm gonna ask a question.

Friday June 17th, 2011

Today I have officially been here for two weeks! CRAZY! today, as it was friday, was very relaxed. Most everyone was gone. Art was in Pennsylvania, Meredith was in Ohio, and Cook was in Vegas, and Blevins has been on vacation all but one day that I've been here. So it was just us interns, Jade, Ashley, and Pliz. I worked on the Game by Location Section of the media guide, and made it through Georgia. Zach from Marketing came over and chilled for most of the morning. ( we leave at noon on fridays). He was going to test a tshirt gun that he had fixed last week but somehow since he fixed it, it became unfixed. So that was a fail.

When it was about 12:10 us interns left for the day and Zach, the intern, gave me a ride to ninth street. I went to The Duck Shop, a shop on 9th street that has a bunch of Duke Apparel but since it's not affiliated with the college can't be called the Duke Shop. Then I walked into Vaguely Reminiscent, a cool little boutique that has cute hairpins, necklaces, bracelets, TIARAS, fun random gifts, etc. I always love checking it out. I then went back to The Duck Shop and bought a shirt, I couldn't decide between two shirts. I ended up getting a lacrosse shirt because I have a ton of basketball shirts but not a lacrosse shirt! Then I met ryan at a record store and we headed home. I had a french bread pizza and doritos for lunch and had a relaxing day at home.

At about four I walked down the street to this little baby park in Ryan and Danielle's neighborhood and swung for awhile. There was this little girl that was the most precious little girl I have ever seen. She came walking up to me while I was swinging and I had to stop not to hit her. She walked right up to me and I said hey, and she put her hands on my knees and tried to push me in the swing. She was precious, in her grandmother's words "she's never met a stranger in her life". It was adorable but her grandmother said it meant they have to be real careful because she truly will just walk up to anyone. On my walk home I called my mom and had a nice chat with her.

We had spaghetti and meatballs for supper and it was delicious. The meatballs were especially good. Then I just chilled and watched tv. It was a good day, and unbelievably it was the ending of my first two weeks.

Thursday June 16th, 2011

What did I do today? you guessed it. the Game by Date section of the media guide. but guess what? I finished it! four and a half days and nine pages later I finished. I was practically done around 11 but took a break and helped Chelsea, a work study student find pictures of field hockey all-americans and put them on a cd. then it was lunch time and Kelsey and I ate outside on a bench in front of Cameron. Then I went to the bookstore for a little bit and tried on a shirt I liked but decided against it and went back to work. I finished up the Game by Date section - it was amazing, then I realized i needed to add spaces in between each day and because of formatting it took a little while. But then I started the Game by Location section and got to Florida and then it was time to head home!

Wednesday June 15th, 2011

Today I got to work and started Kelsey, Zach and I talked for a minute and then Art came in and told us there was food upstairs if we wanted any. He asked me if I knew where Scharf Hall ( It's in the K Center) was and I said I did. So I showed Kelsey and Zach the way and we went over there and there were omelets and waffles being made, and a bunch of fruit and bagels. I just had some fruit and an amazing cinnamon crunch bagel. It was really neat and kind of random. We sat and ate for a little bit and talked and then went back downstairs and got to work. I continued working on the Game by Date section of the media guide and got a few more pages done. I made it though January and most of February today! I went with Kelsey down to the file room to put up some files of football players she had made. The file room is definitely one of a kind. It is a small rom down in the basement of Cameron full of file cabinets with clippings of every sport and athlete that has ever played at Duke. When we got back upstairs it was a quarter till five and so we worked for fifteen more minutes before calling it a day. Danielle has class on wednesday and so she picked me up at 5:30. My plan was to go the bookstore for a bit before I met her but it was closed so I was out of luck!

Tuesday June 14th,2011

Today I continued working on the Game by date section of the 2011-2012 Media Guide. It is a tedious and at times a daunting task. I had brought a french bread pizza for lunch yesterday and didn't eat it since I went to lunch with Kelsey on the Plaza. So i ate it today and it was very good. Okay so here's the deal I am an overthinker. I tend to overthink everything and I keep analyzing my experience. SO between senior year coming ever closer, and this internship, I am all too aware of the imminent arrival of my life in the Real World, in about 11 months. That is nothing. and I have way less than that to decide plans for next year. I have to start making decisions. I don't want to go to grad school, but that is definitely an option I need to consider. I had a conversation on facebook with a girl who interned here for a year. After she interned at Duke for a year, she went to Grad School at UGA for Sport Management and Policy, and worked as a grad assistant in the athletic department. But Kristina who was a year long intern here this past year, and whose last week was my first week, she interned here for a year after she graduated college and doesn't plan on going to Grad School. She has sent her resume to about 40 different schools looking for a job. That honestly sounds much more appealing to me, but then with the economy the way it is, I might should go to Grad School to help me get a full-time job.
And then there's the fact that with it being summer, although I am getting a great experience I am not getting the most ideal picture of how it would be to have this job. Since no games are going on in the summer, it is more there down time. Honestly I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with my life because while I am enjoying my internship, It is work, and so far I'm not sure if office life is for me. But then again it is not as much "office life" when sports are in season. I do love that it is very laid back but still professional environment. Get your work done and you're free to leave. I did enjoy writing the article for GoDuke.com and would definitely like to do more writing. Hopefully I can cover the NBA draft next week. well enough overthinking for one journal entry, but that's a little insight into my mind. lol

Monday June 13th

Today was the first day of my second week, and it was the first day for two new summer interns. I am kinda jealous because the new interns that started today, one will be here through mid-September and the other one through mid-August, and I'm just here through the end of the month. I honestly thought about trying to figure out a way to stay another month, but in the end I think it's best to go home and have some time for summer. While I am jealous that they get to be up here longer, through the whole NC-ProAm and for when Nick, Abby, and David get back from Diving World Championships in Shanghai, and when all the freshmen and returners are here doing stuff in the late summer, There are things that I'd miss if I was here all summer. I'm going to visit my friend Alex in Pa for a week, My Church's campmeeting, My mom's family reunion, and Me and Erin's Beach-OTH Road Trip! Anyways you could so I had mixed feelings when I found out the other interns were gonna be here the whole summer. But so the new interns arrived and Art ( Head SID) asked me to take them to the card office, so I did and I showed them the chapel too. When we got back to the office, Art talked with all three of us about our internships and getting all that we can out of it. He emphasized that we are way ahead of the game, even doing an internship. That made me feel good because I certainly do not feel ahead of the game. The two new interns, one is from Ohio University and one is from Ohio State and both have worked in their school's Sports Information Department. This made me wish I went to a big school where I could have gained valuable experience working in the Sports Information Department. Although LaGrange has a Sports Information Department, it's pretty much a one-man show and not quite the same as at a DII or DI school. But maybe I should consider talking to Mr.Hughes and seeing if I can help out in the office. I went to lunch with Kelsey, one of the new interns. I took her to the plaza and we got lunch at The Loop and took it to one of the Covered Table Rockers ( that's the best name I can come up for them,)

I enjoyed talking to Kelsey, she goes to school at Ohio State and works in their Sports Information Department. They just got out of school and her job for the past two weeks has been to stay on the elevator and not all journalists to come up. ( Because their coach just resigned amid an NCAA scandal). We made our way back to the office after lunch and got back to work. I started working on the Women's Basketball Media Guide some more. I'm making a section that shows the Games by Date. So it will list the date, like November 10 and then all the games Duke Women's Basketball has ever played on November 10. I had started this a little last week but had not done much. Today I got about a month done. Ryan picked me up and we went home and played with Mowgli and had supper, Chicken and Green Beans. and Couscous, but I didn't try it. maybe another time.

Day 5- Friday June 10th, 2011

Today was Friday! Fridays are half-days department wide. Today I was really excited because it was my first writing assignment. I wrote an article for GoDuke.com about how the Duke Alumni in the WNBA were doing so far on the season. I spent the morning researching and then writing the article, which can be found here http://bit.ly/ifPMaJ ! I got Cook, ( one of the Asst. SID's ) to look over my article when I was done. He made a few little changes and said it was good and then he posted it on GODUKE.com. It was really neat to write something and it be online less than an hour later. After I finished my article, I did some more work on the Media Guide on the Game by Date pages and then Cook was giving me a ride home and we left around 12: 15. I had a great first week. I'm excited for my second week but already kinda sad that there's not that much time left.

Day 4- June 9th, 2011

Today I continued my work on the 2011-2012 Women's Basketball Media Guide. All of the SID's were at a 'retreat' for the day, which was just a 5 hour meeting. I finished putting the jersey numbers next to the player's names in the All-Time statistics and in the 1,000 point scorers. Yesterday while working on this InDesign kept closing on me and I eventually had to restart the computer, and when I did, I opened it up back up and had lost all my work. Fortunately though I remembered most of the numbers from the first time, so I got back to where I was quicker. There were four players numbers that I could not find in the 2010- 2011 Media Guide's list of All-Time leading scorers. I asked Kristina and she couldn't either, but she suggested we look in the file room. Durham Public Schools were having graduations in Cameron so we couldn't just cut across and go down, we had to walk upstairs to the concourse around and down stairs and down to the file room, which is in what is like the basement of Cameron. I was only able to find one of the players numbers that I needed by looking up their names individually in the file room. So we went back upstairs and when the rest of the staff got back from their day long meeting, I asked Lindy how to find them and he said to look in the box scores for the years that the players I was looking for played. I couldn't believe I hadn't thought to do that. I easily found the numbers that had been evading me. Then I started on the Game by Date and Game by Location pages in the Media Guide. Lindy liked the way Auburn had put a section in their Media Guide showing every game they had played on a certain day and every game they had played in a certain location. So i started with the earliest dates and looked through the All-Time Results in the 2010-2011 Media Guide to figure that out. I got through November 16th by the end of the day.

Day 3- June 8th, 2011

Today I woke up very tired and definitely fid not want to get out of bed. I am not quite use to working a 9-5. Although I get up the same time or earlier during the school year, I have breaks between classes and am always done by 3. So it's just an adjustment. Today I thought might be tough to get going because I was so tired but it wasn't at all. Lindy, my boss, is going on vacation Friday, and so he gave me a list of things that I could work on while he is gone. A lot of the list was working on some pages in the Women's Basketball Media Guide for next season. My first task on that was to add the jersey numbers to the all-time statistics, so by each player's career statistics I added their jersey number. I was able to find out the Jersey numbers I didn't know or remember from the previous year's media guide's list of all-time jersey numbers. I got started on this and then around noon we went out to lunch as a staff. We went to Mellow Mushroom. It's one of several restaurants right near the Durham Bulls Baseball Park. They are a minor league baseball team that play teams like the Gwinnett Braves. Going out to eat as a staff was awesome. My office has some pretty funny guys. Especially the head Sports Information Director, Art. He's a Character. I rode to Mellow Mushroom with Cook, an Asst SID, who works with Baseball, Volleyball, and Fencing, Kristina who has been a year long staff intern and worked with Rowing, and Swimming & Diving, and my boss Lindy Brown, an Asst SID who works with Women's Basketball, Women's Soccer, and Women's Golf. I talked with Kristina about how she came to work here as a year-long intern and how she is now applying to lots of Sports Information jobs. We got there and had a great lunch. I got a 10 inch pepperoni and meatball pizza and had half left-over for dinner ( since it was my first night by myself, as ryan and danielle are gone to Annual Conference). When we left we walked around the parking deck for a few minutes trying to find Cook's car, lol. When we got back I went with Kristina, as she was overseeing Video Interviews of our three Divers who are preparing for the World Championships in China in a few weeks. It was pretty neat. It was scorching though and the interviews were outside. We were going to have them on the concourse in Cameron, but there are the Durham Public Schools Graduations going on all week and today was the rehearsals, so it was too loud. It was really neat to meet and listen to the Divers talk about preparing for Worlds. There names are Nick McCrory and Abby Johnston, from Duke and David Boudia who went to Purdue and is Nick's Synchronized Diving Partner. These are literally a few of the top divers in the World. They are sponsored by Li-Ning, the Chinese Nike. And Drew Johansen, Duke's Diving Coach is one of the best coaches in the world and as such was named coach for the USA Team at Worlds. After there interviews, Abby, Nick and David were all warmed up and ready for practice. Kristina and I helped Tomko, the video guy, bring the film stuff back to Cameron. I then went back to work on the Media Guide and before I knew it, it was time to go. Definitely a great day at work!

Day 2- Jun 7, 2011

Today was my second day at the internship. The office is very friendly and laid-back. I was actually the first one in the office today, so I just finished some statistic research I had been working on yesterday. A few minutes after I got there everybody else arrived. My boss didn't have day care for his daughter and so she was with him and so he just came in for a few minutes since he had to watch her all day. I talked to him and told him I finished the top ten most double figure scoring games in a season, top ten most 20 pt games in a season, and top ten most 30 pt games in a season, and asked if he wanted me to just continue on other statistic research. He said to ask around if anybody needed any help with anything and if not to just keep working on the statistics. Meredith one of the assistant sports information directors said she had something for me to do. She opened up StatCrew on the computer I was working on and had me put lacrosse schedules/results into the StatCrew so we could then put them on the website. GoDuke currently has the schedules/results archived through 2006. I spent the day putting in the schedules in StatCrew, I archived the 2005 through the 1992 season. Then it was time to go. I didn't have a ride home today because Ryan had left for Annual Conference and Danielle had her last day at work, so I got a ride home from Meredith. I realized when I got there that I hadn't picked up the key that morning and so I was lokced out. So I went next door to the neighbors, and they didnt have a key but I chilled with them waiting on Danielle to get off work. The wife of the neighbor couple was talking to Danielle on facebook, and it ended up that we went out to eat and Danielle met us at the restauraunt. We went to this Asian restaurant Sushi Love. I got fried rice, but everyone else got sushi and multiple rolls. So i tried two rolls. I think one was called an Acapulco roll and the other one was called a Blue Devil Roll. They were definitely interesting, and even kinda good.

Day 1- June 6th, 2011

Today was my first day of my internship. I arrived about fifteen minutes early since it was the first day. My office is in Cameron Indoor Stadium 115. Today I met with my supervisor Lindy Brown, and filled out my learning contract. Since it is the summer the work environment is much more relaxed. There are no games going on, so it is really more of a time to catch up on archiving statistics, and do projects that there isn't as much time for during the school year when all the sports are in season. Today I worked on some Women's Basketball Research. The WNBA draft was recently and three duke players were drafted and they all made the final rosters for their teams and so now there are currently 7 former Duke players in the WNBA. My first task was to compare how that number ranked against other schools. So I looked at the rosters for all the WNBA teams and recorded how many players there were from each school that is represented in the WNBA. UConn and Tennessee both have 11 and Duke's 7 is third. I then researched what schools had the most players drafted in the last four years. For that statistic Duke is #1 with seven (not the exact same 7 as currently in the WNBA), UConn and Tenn both have Six.

My next task was more statistics but not as interesting, and a lot more time consuming. I was given a list of different statistics to research, such as most offensive rebounds in a season, most defensive rebounds in a season, most double figure scoring games, etc. For those first two statistics I was able to look at season records to figure that out. To determine the double figure scoring games I was able to look at game by game season records. This took me the rest of the day. While this became boring, it wasn't hard and it was something that needed to get done. Overall it was a great first day.

Internship

I have been blessed with an amazing opportunity. I am interning at the Duke University Sports Information Office for the next three weeks. I will be blogging about my experience here! Monday is my first day. Any body who knows me knows that this is a dream come true for me. I was able to get the internship through my initiative, the Lagrange Career Development Center and one of my professors, Alvin Lingenfelter. My awesome professor also helped me find housing for my internship. I am staying with LaGrange Alumni, a young couple Danielle and Ryan Snider, they went to Lagrange and he just graduated from Duke Divinity School. You hear all the time how important networking is but all of this has really shown me how true that sentiment is. My dad helped me move up here to Durham on Friday and has stayed to buy books around the Durham area and is going to head home tomorrow after church at the Chapel. I am so excited about my internship and a good bit nervous to be honest. I didn't really realize that I was nervous about it until I was packing Thursday night. It kinda snuck up on me. I mean I knew the internship was getting here really soon. But I was just excited. Then I realized that I was packing for it, and was scared of what that meant. I am still kinda scared. I've been okay for the past two days just being up here, but even writing this and knowing that tomorrow is the last day before I start working scares me. It's just that this is Duke. I live and breathe Duke. In high school some girl I'd never seen before ( or after, for that matter) walked up to me one day ( when I wasn't wearing a Duke shirt or anything) and says hey your that girl that's obsessed with Duke, right? and I just laughed and said yeah I guess that'd be me. But the point is this internship is pretty much a dream for me. And I really don't want to screw it up. I have passion going for me. I just want to soak it all in and learn as much as I can. But I really hope that I impress them and I don't know I just want to do great!