Open for Questions

On Wednesday, March 25, I learned about President Obama's virtual town hall meeting while I was at work at NBC News Channel. I liked the idea and knew that if I asked a question, it would be about making college more affordable. My two best friends, Kristen and Malorie, were in town during Kent State's spring break, and when I got home from work, I asked them if they wanted to ask a question and submit it to the website. They kind of laughed it off, but around 6:00 p.m., I asked them again, and we began writing a question and recorded this video with my digital camera while sitting on Jenny's bed:



After that, we continued with our evening. I posted the link on my facebook, and the next day at work, a producer watched the video and forwarded the link to a few more people in our office. My co-workers said they liked it and thought it was a good question.

During President Obama's town hall, I was being filmed because I was a young person watching it on the computer while texting my friends. A reporter jokingly said, "When he answers her question, get ready to run so you can get her reaction on camera." I had spent a lot of time going through the website voting on questions, so I immediately recognized two top questions that both received over 6,000 yes votes. Our video got 6 yes votes and 12 no votes, so I knew our question would not get played.

I began eating my peanut butter and jelly sandwich while watching the town hall meeting on my computer. I then heard one of our reporters and a producer yelling. They were watching the town hall on the NBC feed, so it was several seconds ahead of the internet broadcast. I heard the moderator of the town hall say "Alex from Ohio", then I saw our video come on the screen.


I began shaking, and I couldn't breathe. One of our photographers ran towards me, and other people in our office began looking at me and watching me freak out. It was such a meaningful and powerful moment in my life; something I don't think I've ever experienced.

My reaction was caught on camera, and a reporter compared me to the annoucement of Miss America. I was in total shock... I still can't wrap my head around the idea that the President of the United States watched my silly video and looked at me and talked to me and listened to me and answered me.

The best part was after our video was played, President Obama said, "That was pretty well done!" The audience laughed and clapped.


The "Open for Questions" forum received over 104,000 questions. President Obama answered 4 typed questions and 2 video questions - including mine. The remainder of the questions were asked by people in the audience.

At work, the D.C. NBC News Channel package included me. It had my reaction and also a few good sound bites from Secretary Geithner and President Obama. The package ended with "Geither's goal: blahblah. Obama's goal: blahblah. Alex's goal: taking a breath."

Our office is shared with a reporter from the Columbus Dispatch, a reporter/photographer for Ohio News Network, and Telemundo, and they all wanted to include me in their pieces that day. Our managing editor contacted the person in charge of NBC stations in Ohio to inform them of what had happened. A little blurb about me was on the 11 o'clock news on the NBC Cleveland affiliate station, WKYC. Here are a few appearances of our video in the news:

CNN (We're at 1:15)

ABC World News

The Columbus Dispatch


I would like to thank Kristen, Malorie, my co-workers at NBC News Channel, everyone at the Semester in Washington Journalism program, my parents, and the White House staffer who first viewed our video and liked it.

You all made yesterday the best day of my life.

Yay Alex Vitale!

Obama held a virtual town hall today answering questions from around the nation and Alex's question was one of the 6 questions (of over 100,000) to be selected and answered by the President himself!

This is what they submitted:


And here is a bit from CNN featuring their video (it's at about 1:15):


Very exciting!!!!
She is an NBC intern and a camera person there caught her reaction when she saw it aired and then she was interviewed by NBC for her local news in Ohio!

It was an exciting day!

Bill Nye- The Science Guy?

The past few weeks haven't been so great. I decided to quit smoking. I woke up one morning and thought, "Hey, you're settling in too well. let's test your emotional stability." I have gone five days, today is day six, without a cigarette. Yay me! Aside from waking up every two hours and having some really creepy dreams, I am doing ok.

Thursday and Friday made up for the last two weeks, though. I got to meet Bill Nye the Science Guy on Capitol hill and Helen Thomas at the National Press Club! It doesn't get much better than that! (I look really awkward in the pic, I know.)  I was really star struck and very shy around him. I grew up watching the show and was so nervous that I went up to him three seperate times. The second time, he actually said, "So, you're back again." I blushed so hard I almost fainted. HaHa. Seriously, though. Anyway, me and this other guy, (I think he was an intern for one of the representatives on the Hill, )got to talk to Mr. Nye about science and degrees and regualr stuff for about 15 minutes. I told him how every man in my family has a degree in either electric or mechanical engineering and then Bill Nye asked me what I was going to do for science. I told him that I want to be a health/science reporter and get my masters in biology. He said, "Good. You should definitely do that, becuase we regret the things we didn't do." So, now I have to get my masters in biology because Bill Nye the Science Guy told me to! HA I know, I am such a dork. I don't care though. 

Anyway, that was my Thursday. Friday is when I met Helen Thomas. I admire her for so many different reasons, which I will not go into here, because I don't want to. To keep it short, just know that I believe that she is a cornerstone of DC journalism and any future journalist would benefit greatly from meeting her!

Update on DC

Hi people,
Lots has been going on, my weeks are so busy. In a good and bad way.


^This is a picture of me sitting on the steps of the Library of Congress.

Let's see if I can think of some important/cool things that have been going on...

1. Last week was overwhelming. Really busy between class and three jobs. Too much juggling and not enough sleeping. But SIW did get to go to a Capitols game!

2. I really like my job at DC Department of the Environment. They always ask me if I want to participate in all these cool things they have going on (usually can't because I don't have time, but one of these times it'll work out). I wish I was working for them more often. It feels good to be there because I think that I have a lot to give, but also a lot to learn. Which is a nice feeling.

3. Tuesdays I work at Old Glory (A restaurant in Georgetown). I can't decide what to think about working there. I like to meet people and I'm really nice to all my tables, but I'm not so sure I'm the best waitress. I forget things a lot... and no one likes a waitress who forgets things. Anyway, I'll just be really nice and do the best I can. I'm not going to worry about that place too much. Being a server is something that I could let stress me out a lot because it's often a very stressful environment, but I'm not going to do that. I'm just going to do my best, smile a lot, and hopefully make some money. (!!)

4. Island Press (my other internship) is getting better. I have a friend there now, Max, so that's nice. We have lunch together and complain about staring at excel too much. I get to go to a conference for them tomorrow morning, so that'll be fun, and a nice change. This weekend they paid for me to go to this environment conference... but more on that later.

5. This week during all my walking between jobs, I realized that even though there are a million people in this city, everyone is very much on their own. Even if you have tons of friends, this place is just too big for someone to be supported by others all the time. There are too many place to be, people to meet, opportunities to seize, and no two interests match 100%.
This sounds depressing, and it was to me before, but now I think it's good.
But anyway, what this means, is that even if things are a certain way for people who know you (i.e. stressed, tense, whatever), when you step outside, you're just another person on the street who has the opportunity to positively affect someone, or not. So, this week, after having realized that, despite my stress, I decided to be one of those people who totally rocks out to their music walking down the street (like, kinda dancing a lil bit...). And I said hi to people, and pet dogs, and held my head high, and smiled. It sounds ridiculous, but I actually did this. And it helped.
I don't think I have really made clear what I mean here... but I'll think about it and hopefully get back to it later.

6. On Friday, SIW went to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) for a conference about covering drug addiction in college papers. It was a poorly organized conference, but overall, I thought it was a good experience.It made me feel both naive (that I have no idea about all the drug use that goes on at college campuses) and happy (that I have no idea about all the drug use that goes on at college campuses). After the conference, we were done for the day and it was my first afternoon in forever to RELAX. And I did. I took a nap, worked out (a great one, while proudly representing my BUCKY t-shirt), hung out with Alex (my roommate)... it was great.

7. I forgot, after the NIDA event, I got off the metro downtown, and walked around (unfortunately in the rain) to see some sights, stop into a few stores, and rub my new positive attitude off on a few people. It must have been the Jason Mraz in my headphones. But that was nice. This is just a picture of a building that I took with my phone. I thought the red was really pretty with such a dark sky... but it's kind of hard to tell from this picture. I think I need to invest in a real camera....

8. On Saturday, I went to PowerShift at the Convention Center. PowerShift is the biggest youth environmental conference in the nation (12,000 students)! It was a very cool experience. Great atmosphere of motivated people, amazing speakers, lots of opportunities. I met some really great, interesting people. On Sat., I went around and interviewed people for another Planet Forward video and attended a seminar called, "Social Media for the Greener Good." They talked a lot about how to use new technology for certain causes. Basically... Twitter! DO IT! If you do not know what this is, or want more info... ask me! or, check it out! www.twitter.com. And look for me... I'm @jclynes.
But yeah, PowerShift was great. It taught me (once again) that I need to learn more, specialize, learn more, do more, ahhh.... so much to be done. It's kind of overwhelming, actually.

Anyway,

9. Saturday night I hung out with Alex and friends. We went to J. Paul's in Georgetown and then just relaxed.

10. This morning I went back to PowerShift to sell a book for one of Island Press' authors, Jon Isham, who was speaking at one of the seminars. The book is really cool, I highly recommend it. It's called Ignition.
I also sat next to the guy who wrote this book, Planetwalker. The book is my new friend, John Francis', biography telling the story of how he gave up riding in cars and ONLY walked for 22 years. He also gave up speaking for 17 years. WOW. You can read more about him here, but basically, I can't wait to read his book (and Ignition, too).

11. After PowerShift I was tired. I napped again (this was equally as excellent as the first nap). Then I had the lamest workout ever, then met Alex for dinner, then more procrastinating/grocery shopping/talking to my sister, etc.

12. PowerShift was good and I'm glad I went, but my mom and sister offered to come out here to visit and couldn't because I was busy there... so that made me sad. I'm excited to see my family over spring break... in 2 weeks. I'm not used to staying put for this long! It's a new record!

Ok, time to do my homework and go to bed early. I'm praying for a snow day in DC tomorrow, but I doubt that'll happen.

Sorry this is really long.
Love,
Jenny

Oh, also, we got to meet Chris Matthews and attend a live taping of Hardball with Chris Matthews last Friday. It was cool! The best part was when he encouraged me to go visit my friend Claire in Mozambique because its a place he has been and really enjoys. Random. Here we are with Chris in his office:

The Road to DC

Pictures from the road in South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia on my way up to D.C.