A fine mess of contradictions

So as many of you do or don't know, I'm going back to London to start my Master's in May. Yes, I am going back to Western. I'm so happy that I got into a Master's program that I'm interested in but not so thrilled to be back in London. BUT it is only a year and I'm making plans to escape Canada already. (With my invisible money so potentially should get a job before leaving again.) I am doing my Master of Journalism and it is a twelve month program starting May 4th. AHHH! I know. Must find a place to live and figure out what one needs to do before starting another degree. Actually, I'm really not that stressed out. Yeah I have a lot of stuff to do, but it is also not a huge deal that I have to get a loan and make a budget and blah blah blah.

Also, on another superficial note or professional note or whatever this is constituted as- I got some of my work published! Now, its nothing academic or groundbreaking, but I was pretty excited. In the April issue of Wish Magazine my name is published 3 times! (I'm such a nerd but come on, its hard to do!) I got a big blurb published about paying your bills online with my name beside it in big letters, and my buzzword on lucite shoes for spring was published right above the editor's note on the Fashion page! I spent weeks mailing and packaging expensive Tod's shoes and Chanel purses with little credit and a lot of stress so I'm pretty excited that I got some of my very small ideas published! As a fashion intern I know not to expect much, but I also worked on an organic fashion list and I just found it on the website! AHHH.

http://www.wish.ca/fashion/regulararticle/176/ (This took me soo long to do!)

Wish has over a million readers so I was really pumped! I read it in Italy because my mom managed to shove it into her suitcase and I was jumping up and down with excitement. Okay, enough shameless self-promotion, its totally not a big deal, I was just excited. And for anyone that was lucky enough to experience my extreme stress there (Adam, Bethany, Aileen) you'll know how important this was to me.

Now to completely swing the other way, one of the projects I really want to do is a journalism- related internship in Rwanda. Leaving Ghana, I had already decided that this wasn't it for me. I wanted to come back to this amazing continent and there were so many options. I would love to work for an NGO or maybe freelance and write from abroad. Journalists for Human Rights (JHR) has a lot of programs that I might apply for when I graduate. It would enable me to travel, work and potentially even go back to Ghana if they are hosting another program there. But Rwanda is next on my list. There is an internship there that works on cataloguing the genocide, writing for a local newspaper and teaching journalist classes so I really want to do it if I can get in. It was started by a Prof that works in Carleton's journalism school that I met with in January who seems really amazing. He just wrote a book that covers one of the topics I want to basically write a book on when I have some sort of established career in the future. His book covers the influence of the media on the Rwandan genocide and I need to find it (it just came out). http://www.idrc.ca/rwandagenocide/- check out his book online! I wrote an essay on the media's impact on genocide and world conflict in 4th year and my research really didn't find enough resources on this extremely interesting topic. I'm hoping to someday contribute to some scholarly work on this topic, because I've become a little obsessed about it.

So, that's life with me. Random, all over the place, and yet somehow organized. I'll be in Toronto for the next month so hopefully I will get to see all of you who I have missed for the past few months and then don't worry I'm sure I'll be road tripping back for visits.