Weekly Blog Posts
Week 1 & 2 (Jan 8 – 12 & Jan 15 – 19)
For these first two weeks, I was able to meet the other interns whom I’d be working with over the course of this semester. Dr. Sexton, Audrey and I discussed the possibility of a trip to NYC for the May mini-mester, which would involve us being able to meet with different publishing firms, as well as possibly interviewing one of our interviewees there. We also discussed how we will organize Five Points’ podcast and mostly decided on having me and Audrey working on it. I’m excited but a bit nervous; I’ve never had any sort of experience with podcasting or producing. However, with Audrey’s previous experience with a podcasting class and Dr. Sexton’s encouragement, I think that we’ll be able to properly record for Five Points’ podcast. I also have expressed interest in working on the editorial side of the magazine, and Dr. Sexton has provided me with helpful documents to help me get started with the process.
For this second week, we unfortunately did not meet due to the inclement weather on Wednesday morning. However, we have been communicating through email to determine a meeting time for next week so that we can continue discussing our episode with George Witte. For our next meeting, we plan on discussing possible formats for the interview, such as either doing a Q&A style interview, or let it be interviewee-led. We are hoping that our future in-person meetings will be on Wednesdays to fit into the schedule for everyone.
Week 3 (Jan 22 – 26)
This week, I started my Submittable account and began reading over submissions for Five Points. Because I am also working on resuming the podcast, Dr. Sexton and I agreed that I can focus on submissions every other week, and will adjust my schedule as needed as the semester continues. I still was not entirely confident in my personal judgements and opinions when reading new pieces, but Dr. Sexton helped ease the nerves by having me assign her as another reader for the pieces so that I can essentially get a confirmation whether a piece will get rejected or move on to the next phase. There was an interesting essay that I read that was, at first, sent to Dr. Sexton by Camille, then Dr. Sexton sent it to me to explain why she didn’t immediately accept the piece. Additionally, she gave Camille and I copies of a previous issue that had a similar style in the form of an essay. By giving us an example of an ultimately better piece, I feel like I have a better understanding of what Five Points is looking for.
For our podcast, we unfortunately were not able to meet in person. However, we are looking to have an online meeting soon in order to catch up and continue with our plans to contact George Witte and set up an interview time.
Week 4 (Jan 29 – Feb 2)
This week, Audrey and I were finally able to meet in person to create a rough schedule for the rest of the semester concerning the podcast. We created goals and set up deadlines for ourselves; goals included booking a tour with the GSU library so that we can better understand the technology that they offer, as we will be recording our podcast in the library. We will be doing this on Monday, so that by the end of the month, we will have completed our interview with Laurie Watel. We also plan on releasing one more episode by the end of the semester with George Witte, so we gave ourselves a mini homework assignment to read his book before we interview him, which should be around the middle of March. Another mini homework assignment was to read Laurie’s essay out loud just to see how long it takes to read it, as we will likely need to shorten it to fit within the time constraints for the podcast itself. By the end of next week, we decided we would need to finish our script, introduction, and outro, and with the help of the tour provided by the library, we will be comfortable with using the technology for the podcast recording.
Week 5 & 6 (Feb 5 – 9 & Feb 19 – 23)
On the week of 5th, we went to the library and tested out the equipment that we will be using to interview Laurie Watel and George Witte. There, we discussed the best possible recording times and how long we should reserve the recording studio for. Because students are only allowed to reserve a room for a maximum of three hours, once we got Laurie’s recording date, Audrey and I had to make separate reservations so we could have the studio for the entire day. Although we set a rough goal for us to finish the script this week, we realized that it would have been difficult to even start the script as we did not have any basis to actually write the script. The following week, I sent out an email to Laurie asking if she had any specific poems she would like to discuss on the podcast, but she has not followed up as of the 17th. However, we believe that once she follows up, we can easily finish the script, as well as the introduction and outro for her episode. This week, we also emailed George Witte asking for his availability in April to record his episode. Although April feels far away, we knew we needed to make sure to have a set date in mind so we can finish planning our schedule for the rest of this semester, as it will definitely finish a lot faster than we anticipated.
Week 7 & 8 (February 25 – March 1, March 4 – 8)
On the 25th, Audrey, Dr. Sexton and I met with Laurie at the library, where we had recorded our first podcast episode. We had initially planned on having Laurie read the entire essay, but ultimately decided against it as we all agreed it would have been too tiring for Laurie, and would rather have her save her energy for the actual insights and reflections of her essay. We started off the recording by having her read the first couple paragraphs of her essay. I think that listening to Laurie read her own work also helped me with getting into the emotional mindset of understanding her work. This took a while, and after we finished, we decided to take a short water break and also discussed what our next portion of recording would be. We had Laurie read two short poems, followed by a back-and-forth discussion with Dr. Sexton. Outside of recording, Audrey, Laurie, Dr. Sexton and I were able to discuss a lot of non-podcast related topics, especially school safety. It felt nice to hear that adults within the school and outside of school were listening to our concerns and our very informal rants. We had finished recording by around three, and after Audrey and I checked to make sure that the audio was saved, we were able to go home.
Week 9: Spring Break; nothing to report
Week 10 & 11 (March 18 – 22, March 25 – 29)
Before spring break, we decided to meet this week. However, the meetings were postponed to the Monday after break (March 21). However, due to the general hecticness of spring break, we had decided to move the meeting to March 25, the following Monday. Later in the week, Dr. Sexton had informed us that she will be unable to attend the meeting on Monday and that she would not be back on campus until the following Tuesday.
Audrey and I decided to meet virtually on Monday the 25th just to catch up and begin brainstorming for George’s episode. As Audrey had not yet read the book, we were facing difficulties with choosing which poems to choose and discuss in the episode. We then shifted focus to how the general episode should be structured, as well as catching up on how editing for Laurie’s episode has gone so far. We then decided to meet on the upcoming Wednesday with Dr. Sexton, but Audrey would be likely to miss this meeting due to work commitments.
On the 27th, Dr. Sexton and I met to discuss George’s episode. Here, we decided that it would be best to move George’s episode to the following week of April 14th as we still did not come up with a solid idea for the script, and Audrey had yet to finish the book. In this meeting, Dr. Sexton also voiced her concerns with recording the episode as it will be done over a call, which, compared to the previous episode having Laurie speaking directly into the microphone, will be done over Zoom or Skype. Dr. Sexton and I brainstormed with how we can record the audio so that we can have a high quality recording, and we thought that the best way was to somehow have the Zoom/Skype audio being put through the recorded soundboard. We also decided on having two poems from the Five Points magazine and two from George’s new book to be discussed in the episode, with a discussion facilitated by Dr. Sexton.
The next day, Audrey and I met up in the library to test how the audio can be recorded in the podcast room, when I realized my request to book the technology (recording) space that we used for Laurie’s episode never went through. As I was (very frantically) trying to submit another request so that we could quickly test it, my non-English major friend, whom I knew to have skills with audio recording and editing, found me, and we began to talk. I asked him if there was a way to directly input a Zoom/Skype audio into a file that can be edited, and he suggested that instead of trying to figure out the technology to input it into the soundboard, that we use the recording feature in the Zoom or Skype application. I don’t know how I didn’t think of this, as I have had countless lectures in Zoom that had literally started off with, “Okay class, let me start recording!” So in the end, we did not even need the podcasting room, as when I presented this idea to Audrey, we decided we could just test the audio then and there. We both joined a Zoom call and started recording it, and Audrey spoke into her phone from across the library. We ended it and saved the audio recording and listened to it to make sure it actually worked. It did! We both decided that it would be even better to have a high quality microphone on both ends to further increase the audio quality.
After our successful experiment, I drafted up an email to George with the general episode outline, our suggestions for recording, and a request to move the recording date. Because of the experiment, we also decided that we can record on weekdays as well; we thought that recording for Laurie’s episode can only be done on a weekend because even though the podcasting studio is soundproof, the second floor on the library is very loud and can still be caught on the recording. However, if both parties are speaking through a microphone, the recording can also be done in the Five Points office in 55 Park Place, making our schedules more flexible.
Week 12 & 13 (April 1 – 5, 8 – 12)
On the 1st, we had sent the email to George requesting to change the date of the recording to the 14th. By this point, Audrey had completed editing the first audio files, and we were still trying to figure out how to record the intro and outro for Laurie’s episode. George had requested the outline for the episode, so we had to decide on which poems to discuss for the episode. By the end of the week, Dr. Sexton had discussed and decided on a list of poems with George.
We were meant to meet Wednesday the 10th, but had to change to Friday morning the 12th due to unforeseen circumstances. In this meeting, we decided the best way to record was Zoom due to free WebEx accounts only recording up to 30 minutes of video and audio. We had tested to make sure the microphones and Audrey’s laptop recorded and properly saved the audio. The computers in the Five Points office did not allow us to use the camera, as it was an administration-owned device; my laptop does not even have a webcam, so Audrey’s laptop was the only option. We also decided that prior to starting the recording with George is that we’ll do a quick test run of the audio to make sure that the audio actually records and saves. Dr. Sexton had also confirmed that she knew which questions to ask George for the recording for the following Sunday.
Week 14 (April 14 – 19)
On Sunday the 14th, we were finally able to record George’s episode! It was a very smooth process, although one hiccup that scared me and Audrey was that we realized to be able to do the test run, we would have to start the meeting, record, end recording, then end the meeting, which would result in George having to leave the meeting; the audio would not save unless we ended the meeting. Because it also takes time for Zoom to turn the recording into a listenable/downloadable file, it would have taken around half an hour to complete the test and re-invite George into another meeting. So, we decided against it, and hoped that the interview would work. (it did!)
The process took a lot shorter than I expected, as we did not have to discuss the order of recording like we did with Laurie’s episode; because Dr. Sexton and George previously discussed what they wanted to do with the episode, all of the questions and responses seemed to already be prepared, and Audrey and I were just there to make sure the technology ran smoothly. The recording took about thirty minutes, with an additional fifteen minutes to make sure the audio was saved.
On the 17th, we had a quick catchup meeting, as Dr. Sexton was also still unable to access files that were shared to her. In this meeting, we realized that the audio files for the intro and outro for Laurie’s episode would need to be rerecorded as we chose a different order for the podcast itself, as we eliminated the need for the reading of her essay. We also realized that the entire length for both episodes would be around twenty minutes, so we have decided to combine both episodes into one episode to be released at the end of April to commemorate National Poetry Month. This also means that instead of an intro and outro for each guest, we would have an intro for the episode itself, a middle transition bit, and a final outro. Dr. Sexton chose to write these bits and record them herself.