Breakfast for Champions!

Veteran Jason Braase accepting SAAC donation

This morning, Fordham hosted its 12^th annual Breakfast for Champions in the McGinley Center Ballroom and Lounge. This event was created by the university to recognize the student-athletes that perform, not only on the field, but in the classroom as well.  This year, about 67% of Fordham’s student-athletes were honored for having a cumulative GPA of 3.0 or higher.

During the breakfast, Jason Braase was invited to speak on behalf of the Wounded Warrior Project.  His story of his deployment and recovery touched the hearts of everyone in the room.  One of the messages stressed at Fordham is the Jesuit tradition of, “Men and women for others.”  It is one of the things that every student will take away with them from Fordham, the idea that we must be available and willing to offer assistance to others.  The Fordham Student Athletic Advisory Council (SAAC) fulfilled this message today by providing Mr. Braase with a generous donation to support the Wounded Warrior Project.  The event came to an end, following the closing remarks of President, Father McShane, with the singing of the Fordham Fight Song, “The Ram” by all in attendance.  

The honorees from my team!

At Fordham, there is tremendous support for the students.  We are pushed to be the best person we can in all ways whether it's through athletics or charity, but particularly in the classroom.  In addition to this, there is an overwhelming feeling of community among the students and this event is just one of the many times that it is shown.  It is always fun to get together with your teammates and fellow Rams, especially while taking the time to congratulate each other on our hard work and making a difference in the lives of others. 



The Ram: One Year Later

Last year, one of my blog entries was about working for The Ram, Fordham's weekly "journal of record." I still work for the newspaper; in fact, this semester I am a member of the Editorial Staff, in a position called the Copy Chief.

I applied to be the Copy Chief because I hope to one day become an editor for a publishing company, so the experience gained through my work on the newspaper will definitely be helpful down the road. Being the Copy Chief means that I’m the go-to grammar girl for everyone in the office. The Ram follows Associated Press style (for example, no oxford commas are used in Ram articles), so I'm expected to know all the different AP conventions.

photo source

I’m also responsible for reading each article twice. First, the articles are printed as Word documents, and then once they get read by three copy editors (myself included), the articles go back to their respective sections, where the section editors makes the changes and format the articles into a full newspaper page. The pages come back to the copy team for another round of reads, get returned to their sections again, and then I finally do another read of each page, along with the Managing Editor, Co-Executive Editors, and the Editor-in-Chief.

Something else new this year is that I've started writing for The Ram! My first article covered the recent debate between the College Democrats and Republicans. You can read it online here!

This week, The Ram is putting out its April Fools' Day issue, which means that most of the articles are complete lies. Last year, one of our front page news stories claimed that Fordham was cutting library hours, which made my roommate, who works at the library, extremely upset...until she realized it was a joke! Read the issue this coming Wednesday, March 28, here.

Learning Outside the Classroom

What do you want to be when you grow up?

We’ve all been asked this question before, and along with all my fellow seniors, it’s what’s on my mind. What are my plans for my life after Fordham?

The education that Fordham has provided has prepared me to tackle challenges outside of my coursework and in the form of various internships.

Right now I’m interning with CNN’s newest show, Erin Burnett OutFront (shameless plug: tune in 7pm EST!). This past summer I began my experience at CNN’s New York bureau (conveniently located two blocks from our Lincoln Center campus) interning full-time before they extended an offer for me to continue through the Fall semester.

Aside from being co-workers with some world-renowned journalist (Anderson Cooper and Wolf Blitzer to name a few), I have had the most real, hands-on experience of what it means to be in the industry. The unpredictable and very real nature of following the news is what keeps me going when balancing late shifts at the office, schoolwork and extra-curricular activities becomes difficult. My time during the day can be spent pursuing a contact, doing story research, sitting with editors or pulling videos. The work I do for the show is real, and it is hard, but I love it.

Lessons I learn from my professors in my Communications and Journalism classes can be directly applied to the work that I have to do for CNN. In any given week I can see my education in the classroom working in hand with my education outside of it. My writing started in the classrooms, and eventually made it to the front page of our school newspaper The Ram, thanks to the encouragement of a professor. I started writing regularly for The Ram, where I eventually became a Staff Writer, and now, I have an article on CNN.com and a package that aired four times on television.

Being in New York City puts all Fordham students at an advantage. We are in the epicenter of news, business, economics, art and so much more. The wide variety of internships that city has to offer covers even the most specific of interests.

My work at CNN will hopefully land me a job, but at the very least, I’ve gotten a few good memories out of it:

Field Access when CNN covered the Yankee's HOPE Week:

The first shoot I ever went on, an ostrich farm in New Jersey:

UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon making a statement on Syria:

The CNN control room where I work now:

Working at The Ram!

As a copy editor for Fordham's The Ram newspaper, Tuesday nights are the highlight of my week. Tuesday is The Ram's production night, which means pizza for everyone on staff! It also means close to 12 hours of non-stop editing, formatting, caffeine and inter-staff banter.

Let me rewind for a second and talk a little bit more about the basics of The Ram. It's just one of Fordham's three newspapers; the other two are the paper, a more free-style paper that publishes critical analysis and commentary, and Lincoln's Center's The Observer. The Ram is Fordham's "journal of record," publishing four sections of stories: news, sports, culture and opinions about things that are going on at Fordham as well as local and national stories that are relevant to the college audience to which we cater. It is student run: we have a student editor-in-chief, student writers, student photographers and of course, student copy editors! We put out the newspaper weekly, which is delivered, free of charge, to Fordham's Rose Hill, Lincoln Center and Westchester Campuses. The picture below is from one of our top stories this week: Alex's Trebek's visit to Fordham (taken from The Ram online)

I became involved with The Ram because, as an English major, my goals for the future include an editing job at a publishing company, and I wanted to try my hand at copy editing to see if it was actually something I would enjoy. Basically, what this job entails is dedicating a few hours to The Ram on Monday and Tuesday, during which I read through all the articles for that week's issue to check for grammatical errors. Working for The Ram is so much fun. The hours are really flexible; although the section editors and the editor-in-chief have to stay at The Ram office for the full 12 hours on Tuesday night until the paper is finished, I can drop in whenever I have a few free hours to copy edit. Also, even though I joined the staff halfway through the year, they really welcomed me with open arms. I look forward to my nights at The Ram, not only for the pizza on Tuesday night, but also for the stress relief that copy editing offers me, and the great laughs and conversations I get from my fellow staff members.

For more information, visit The Ram online or feel free to email me!