The view out my hotel window in Phoenix, Arizona.
At the end of February I was fortunate enough to attend the Associated Collegiate Press spring convention in beautiful Phoenix, Arizona. The idea is to bring college journalists together for seminars, and also to judge the best of the best in college journalism. Turns out, Excalibur stacks up pretty well against the Yanks. They merged a bunch of categories together this year, putting broadsheet and tabloid formats together (Excalibur is a tabloid…. no, not like the National Enquirer… we don’t write about who Jon Gosselin is dating… ever… thank GOD), but we still managed to come in 5th place! Here are the results.
You Can't tell from this photo, but downtown Phoenix has a vibrant art community filled with lots of talented artists and lots of really odd characters.
I went to a lot of pretty cool seminars, and learned a lot of random things that I never would have otherwise figured out… like how to optimize your search results to bring people to your website. In fact, that’s probably how I sucked you into finding this page on Google. I also learned about newsroom management, front page layout, how to teach the basics of news writing, and more on the first amendment then I will ever care to know.
We reached the summit of the "mountain" without any oxygen tanks. Badass, I know.
Phoenix is weird. It is the definition of backwards America. The downtown is a ghost-town; a 9-5 downtown and that is all. I mean, it has some tall buildings and even a university campus with 10,000 students… but there’s still no one there. We had to go to a suburb called Tempe to find any drinking establishments populated with more than three 40-year-olds and the bartender. Tempe is where the main Arizona State University campus is located. On the bright side, that side of town is pretty damn cool.
I also got to see some old friends from New Jersey (with awesome accents) and met some new ones from Central Washington state. It’s funny I always have this idea in my mind about what Americans are like, and every time I go there I’m always impressed by just how friendly and cool these people are. As an added bonus I met a whole ton of awesome Americans from Minnesota, and boy was it fun to brag about our hockey team to people who actually know what hockey is.
The only time I had ever seen a cactus before this trip was in a pot in my mother's living room. It's weird seeing their massive trunks planted in the rocky ground right beside the pathway.
On the last day we went to the edge of town and hiked up the dessert mountains. The scenery was just gorgeous. It’s the strangest thing seeing cactus growing in the actual earth beside the path.
On a quick side note, I bought a CD from the singer/guitarist who was performing outside of the restaurant one morning during breakfast. I bought his CD for five American dollars out of his guitar case, and it was the best purchase I’ve made in a long time.
His name is Blaine Long. Check him out, spread the word!
