Time Flies When Your Having Fun!

I can't believe I've been taking classes for two weeks already! Instead of going through each day and saying what we did, I'll just give an overview of what we've done in class because I'm in class all day. The first day of class was on Monday, June 1 and it's already the 12th! Classes typically go from 9am to 5pm, but that changes from day to day, some days classes start at 8:30am and other days they start at 9:30am. Most days we leave later than 5pm because we stay after to meet with our groups. For the first three weeks we are learning about magazine publishing and during that time we were assigned groups to make our own magazine brand. My group is men's magazine and I am the publisher/advertising sales director. There are about 100 students in the program; some people are right out of undergrad, some have their masters, some are getting their masters, some graduated a few years ago and didn't go to grad school. Only about 10 of the students are guys, so to anyone hoping I would find someone: sorry the odds are not in my favor. The first week of classes we had a variety of speakers from companies like Esquire, Yahoo!, Elle, The Oprah Magazine, Epicurious.com, Galmour.com, Condé Nast, The New York Times Magazine, InStyle, Buzzfeed, Time Inc., etc. Sometimes we have individual speakers talking about editorial, marketing, budgeting, digital, social media, etc. and sometimes they are panels of people. On Tuesday, June 4 after class, we went to Time Inc. for a seminar and cocktail reception. The speaker was Will Lee the digital editorial director of People & Entertainment Weekly. He was a great speaker and his passion for journalism intimidated me a little and almost turned me off from wanting to go into magazine publishing, which wasn't what I came here for anyways. Then we got to talk to some people from HR afterwards, and I received some advice for applying and other things. After the reception, a few of us from the program walked over to Times Square because it wasn't very far. It was really cool seeing all of the billboards and lights especially since it was around 8:00pm. We just took some pictures and then returned to Gramercy Green (the dorm).

Radio City is right across the street from the Time Inc. building

The sculpture outside Time Inc.

That's us!

Times Square!

Panorama of Times Square

Friday, June 5, I left class a little early because I had a flight to catch at 6:25pm to go to St. Louis for my cousin's wedding. The weekend went by fast but it was a fun time of swimming, eating, glass-blowing,  and a LOT of dancing! I can't believe Kathleen is married, but I am so happy for her and Jonathan as they start their new life together! The wedding was on Saturday and then I came back to New York Sunday night. I got back to the dorm around 11:30pm. Here are a few pictures from the wedding...

Mr. and Mrs. Jonathan Smith!

Cousins hanging after the ceremony. Luckily it wasn't too hot

Me and the beautiful bride

Tobey cousins forever!

The weekend went by fast, but it was so much fun!

It was hard getting up on Monday for class but we had some interesting subjects this week with some great speakers. For example we had a presentation on editing, copy editing, fact checking, marketing to millennials, and blogging. We had speakers from Vogue, Elle, Vanity Fair, Seventeen, National Geographic, Food & Wine, Huffington Post, The Paris Review. We also had a panel of speakers from companies outside of New York City. Throughout the week, we had different "launch reviews", which were for our final projects. So we had different people from different companies come and review the work we've done for our magazine; for example, we had an editorial launch review, a digital launch review, an advertising and circulation launch review. Often times the reviewers asked us questions as if we were actually launching the magazine brand, but they did help us consider things about magazine publishing that we wouldn't have known if we weren't making the magazine.

On Tuesday, June 9 we went to the Kimmel Center on Washington Square for a social media panel and networking with alumni of SPI. Before it started, a few of us in the program went to a Vietnamese restaurant and then sat in Washington Square Park. The panel was interesting and the networking was...fine. I met some interesting people, but I don't know that I would want to work for any of them.

A few of the lovely SPI ladies in Washington Square Park

View from Kimmel Center (where we were networking)

The rest of the week as described above. Friday after class, my roommates Giana, Sam, and I walked around China Town for a little while before returning to Gramercy.

Walking down the streets of China Town

Today, Saturday, I had to go for a Photoshop workshop and an InDesign workshop from 9am to 1pm and we had a few breaks. Afterwards, I walked over to the 9/11 Memorial since it isn't far from where classes are. It was amazing and heartbreaking to see all of the names listed of the people who died. 

9/11 Memorial

World Trade Center

Some people put flags or roses in the memorial

Sorry if this post is confusing. I just tried to sum up everything from the past two weeks, so if you want me to explain something more fully, just comment. Hopefully I will have many more exciting things to write about and share with you in this last month.