write

I am pleased to announce that the internship I was awarded so many months ago is moving along swimmingly.

Although I began a few weeks later than I thought I would, things are going well. 

I'm interviewing my last subject later this afternoon. I cannot believe how quickly those twenty interviews flew by. 

I'm working on a project for The Edmontonians, a magazine focused on business here in the city. The September publication is "The Sizzling Twenty Under Thirty." Nominations are received, and my editor picked out who she believed deserved to be recognized as one of the cities top business people under the age of thirty.

At first I thought that all of the people who be the same, a cookie-cutter business person, set out to get money and fame and that huge house on the hill.

Turns out, 

I was wrong.

(A feeling I'm quite familiar with. Ha.)

I can't tell you how neat its been to interview this diverse and innovative group of people.

I've interviewed a woman who moved to Canada from Yugoslavia at the age of seven and opened her own massage therapy college just 12 years later, at the age of 19.

I've talked to a man who is a world class sprinter, and will be competing in the 2010 Olympics on the Canadian bobsled team.

I've visited with a girl who, after graduating from the University of British Columbia with a major in Asian Studies and a minor in Film, jumped on a plane with a camera in hand and hardly anything else. She's been working on a documentary about the conflict in Southern Thailand called "Same Same But Different." Also, check out this website she's created. It's going to change the world.

I just barely interviewed a young man who, at barely 20 years old, is the youngest of all. He is an internationally recognized musician, who has organized immense musical projects and is currently studying at the Manhattan School of Music.

I've sat down with so many people over these last few weeks, and the interviews have played out differently than I first thought they would.

In school I was always taught to;

"Be a professional!"

"Have your interview mapped out before you arrive."

"Make sure that you're running the show."

...but every time I sit down to do an interview, I forget all of that.

We meet in coffee shops, in restaurants, in peoples homes. They let me into an intimate part of their lives when we visit and I'm able to discover who they are and why they love what they do. 

And that's what it feels like; visiting.

I feel like I'm sitting down with a friend, albeit a new friend. The first few questions might be awkward, or forced, but then something funny or personal comes out, and I get to find out the unique things about them, the things that makes them tick.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I wanted to study Journalism in the first place.

I feel like it's never been just the story for me, but the people within the story.

Who they are, and why they are the story.

Oh, and, the fact that I'm kickin' it in a hammock right now, shaded by my jungle of a backyard, makes freelance pretty dang appealing...