At 2:30 a.m. I lay awake, restlessly tossing and turning on my narrow mattress. With my diploma in my grasp, it was now time for the big trip to the Big Easy, N’Awlins.

Jamming to the “The Light” by Common with my Jamaican-inspired Skullcandy headphones and my first born child, my MacBook Pro named Bobby, I was hoping to find some kind of light on the location of this “nonexistent” jewelry maker, Dr. Foots, in New Orleans.

Avid, the video editing program, is my sworn enemy. It enjoys taking a significantly long time to capture videos, forces me to use its color-coded, strange-looking keyboard and thrives off erasing my work when I take bathroom breaks.

If a newspaper was strictly words on a piece of paper, readers would eventually lose interest. A session on design, editing and photos helped Institute participants understand the importance of the presentation desks in capturing the writer’s work.

With stomachs full and sweaters unpacked to help endure an intensely air-conditioned classroom, 18 NYT Institute students attended a workshop about using the Internet to integrate multimedia and interactive material into news reports.

“If you act like you don’t belong here, they’ll know you don’t belong here.” And let’s face it, most 2010 institute fellows act as if they don’t belong in New Orleans. Northerners saunter by local residents, taken aback and bewildered when met with a warm “Good morning,” myself included. Midwesterners stress over the humidity and [...]

Who knew that 8:30 p.m. could ever qualify as the middle of the day? Well, at the Student Journalism Institute, all 24 of us are learning this lesson well and fast. Our midday session, the last one before the ceremonial opening of the newsroom, was all about video.

Sitting in the Duicef Building’s smart room, awaiting the next workshop panel, I looked down at my phone with excitement. It was Monday and in approximately three hours, the season finale of “Gossip Girl” would air on CW.
But then I realized I was here in New Orleans and, unless a television magically appeared, there [...]