Talking about the future/getting a job stresses me out.

Here at the Missouri School of Journalism we're big fans of the Missouri Method. Working in real newsrooms and getting our work published for all the world to see is part of our graded classwork. Pretty much ALL of this work is done outside scheduled class time during newsroom shifts, but all the journalism classes still insist upon holding class for about three hours every week.

So what do we do with all this class time since no real journalism work is produced during this time? We talk about jobs.

It's awful. I feel like screaming, "NO. I still have my youth, it's too early for this!" If you are thinking to yourself, "It's never too early to start thinking about jobs!" you need to stop reading this right now and go read this instead.

Double check cord lengths before you tape them down.

I was working with a team of four to live stream Mizzou's homecoming talent competition. We started set up several days before the competition to make sure everything worked and we had all the equipment we needed and all that technical stuff.

We had three cameras. One in the front left of the auditorium, one in the front right, and one up on the balcony to get the wide shot. Each of these cameras had to run a cord to the back center of the auditorium. This is like over 150 feet of cords strung up the aisles and over the balcony. Then we had to have an ethernet cable which was plugged in somewhere far away, I'm not even sure where.

The first day we set up we just practiced laying down all these cables to make sure they were long enough. The next day we laid them down and taped them all to the floor so they'd be ready to go during the actual live stream, reducing set up time before the show.

Well, after we did all that one of the auditorium tech guys was like, "we need about a foot more of the ethernet cable." So we had to rip up all three cables we had just taped down (the camera on the balcony and right side along with the ethernet) just to extend this one cable by a foot. That was annoying.

And then we had to tape them all back down, AGAIN. That was even more annoying. We got a little bit lazy so the end result was a little bit less then perfect.

The moral of the story: triple and even quadruple check that everything is the way you need it before you make it (semi)permanent.

Standing in the cold for hours is a health risk.

The best time of year is Mizzou homecoming. We started the homecoming tradition 101 years ago and have been celebrating ever since! My friend and I decided that the occasion made this football game great to get painted up for.

In order to get painted up, you have to be one of the first 60 people in line for Tiger's Lair (the super awesome student cheering section). Often, being in the first 60 requires camping out and securing your place in line hours and hours and hours and hours before the game actually starts. Last year, this same friend and I camped out for nearly 20 hours to get painted for the 100th homecoming game.

Homecoming 2011 camp out

Painted up for homecoming 2011

So this year, we packed up our tent, blankets and snacks around 10 p.m. and headed to the stadium to wait in line all night. The only problem was the temperature outside was somewhere around 32 degrees. There was no one else there. Last year by that time, we had been waiting for about five hours and there were at least 25 other people in line.