Journalism School

First of all, it's Talk Like a Pirate Day!  This is a major holiday, but sometimes we can't celebrate the holiday to the best of our ability due to work and school schedules.  That being said, we did actually talk like pirates today, and told a few pirate jokes too.  Daddy put together these Mr. Potato Heads using pirate accessories we picked up at Disney or elsewhere.  But I think we'll have more time to do "piratey" things this upcoming weekend.  For now, it was a big, busy day.  And let's start out with the field trip to Athens!

As a part of the yearbook team, Madison was invited to the GSPA Fall Conference in Athens, Georgia.  It meant getting up around 5am, meeting at the school and heading down to a facility called "The Classic Center," which seems a little pompous to me.  I mean, what has this building done so far to earn the adjective "classic" in front of it?  All kidding aside, here's a picture of the building, which is exactly how Madison described it upon getting home.

It had a statue in front of it.  My guess is that this is Athena, given that this place is in Athens.  That seems like a classic thing to do.

Anyway, this sounded like a wonderful educational opportunity for Madison.  She went down there and attended a few different sessions, described as follows:  "Sessions are designed around six skills-based tracks. They include Design, General (Nuts & Bolts), Leadership, Multimedia, Photojournalism and Writing. Content is geared toward broadcasts, creative/literary magazines, news magazines, newspapers, news websites and yearbooks."

She really enjoyed the classes and said she learned a whole lot, taking a good deal of notes.  One story amused her greatly, one where a teacher was imploring students to always take a camera with them wherever they go.  When asked, "What if we're going grocery shopping?"  The answer was, "What if there's a dead body on aisle four?"  And then later, this speaker got on the floor on aisle four of the grocery store, just to make a point that you don't want to miss anything out of the ordinary, and yes, bring your camera with you at all times!

In the morning, they ate at Chick-Fil-A, and for lunch, there was Mellow Mushroom.  Madison had a really great day.

Daddy was working in another direction today, helping with the beginning of the Divine Conference. We'll share pictures tomorrow, but it was a late night helping with photos and elsewhere.

Ba-Ba had his appointment with the radiation doctor today, and we're waiting to hear more information.  We're going down there soon to see what we can do.  But there's a battle coming, a struggle against cancer.  We want to help Ba-Ba win it, and we'll be down there very soon.

As said earlier, it was a big, busy day.  Madison went to bed early, after studying a bit for a math quiz.  Daddy got home much later, and it was time to head to bed rather quickly.  Some of these conferences can be quite tiring!