Our last paper was modeled off the novel we read in class, Norman Mailer’s Miami and the Siege of Chicago. We were to go “out into the field” to a political event, take notes on the event, interview people as an “unbiased reporter”, then write the paper from a biased standpoint.
I chose to attend a debate-watching party with the FSU Obama Re-Election Campaign, Organizing for America, at a crepe restaurant downtown.
This paper was definitely the most entertaining for me to write, and I enjoyed mimicking Mailer’s hypersensitivity.
I spent a lot of time trying to balance my own observations based on my surroundings, the actual material gathered through the interviews, as well as my own opinions on the event and the state of the election as a whole.
Writing the paper was a really great experience for me—I was able to get involved in the election by volunteering with an enthusiastic student organization while also fulfilling an academic assignment. The hardest part was trying to scale down the amount of material I had from interviews alone—enough to fill much more than 7 pages! I met some really inspiring people that I never would’ve encountered on a day-to-day basis, some who really wanted to stand up for issues that were important to them, and some that were more interested in a juicy story than anything else.
The first draft was based solely on a description of the event, before the interviews were added in.
My second draft needed more of a takeaway: a conclusion based on the feedback I received during interviews, my overall experience at the event, and my own ideas about the election. Once I had related everything to a common conclusion and reevaluated my own commitments, I found that the paper needed little more than some grammatical corrections.
At the end of it, I realized that the drive of young voters is unparalleled outside of a college campus, that even the quirkiest of us have something interesting to say, and that journalism might actually be fun!
Caroline L. S. 