I put this off long enough.
I promised in late August that I would continue to write entries as I studied at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism in Evanston, Illinois. I guess I didn’t realize how easily it is to get caught up in everyday life at campus and how busy I would become. If this first entry from college gets a good response, then I’ll try to write more regularly.
A lot has happened since I got back from Israel in August. The "war" as we called it this summer between Israel and Hizbullah ended, but for how long, no one knows. There was a fatal shooting at Dawson College CEGEP in Montreal, my former school. It was a surreal week moving to Evanston and starting a new school, while hearing about what many of my friends and former teachers were going through back in Montreal. Especially, walking by a USA Today newspaper dispenser and seeing DeMaissoneuve full of fleeing students on the front page.
On my hiking trip to Northern Pennsylvania in early September to meet new students, I was within a few miles of Ralph "Bucky" Phillips, the fugitive cop killer who was on the run since last April. Our hiking trail was rerouted to accommodate the manhunt and thankfully he was caught while I was in the area.
Then there that bad spinach scare which seemed to be gripping the US for a while as well as the story of the Rep. Mark Foley’s indecent behaviour with congressional pages.
November 7th’s congressional election has also had an impact on campus life. Students are "volunteering" to canvass for Tammy Duckworth, the Democrat Iraq war vet who is running for congress in one of the Chicago districts. For ten dollars an hour, some of my friends have been knocking on doors to try to get her votes.
My roommate at NU is interning for Dan Seals, another congressional democratic challenger in another Chicago district. "I’m a Dan Fan" placards litter my room here. I’m interested in the election even if I can’t vote or work in the States and jokingly answer when people call me "Canada."
The focus of my journalism has changed from the Middle East to less worldly issues. I have been covering men’s golf for the Daily Northwestern, a beat that I am excited about. Today’s latest article can be found at
I’m in contact with The Media Line and will look at different options for the summer. In late September, they published an article I wrote over the summer about the current conflict in Somalia between Islamist and moderate factions. It’s still the top story in the Facts in Context section (
While my freshman journalism class at Northwestern is still theoretical and not hands on, I’m learning a lot just being exposed to the resources at Medill. My academic advisor is David Protess, the journalism professor whose work with journalism students has helped place a moratorium on the death penalty in Illinois and freed eight men wrongfully convicted of murder on death row. I got pretty lucky with that one and I’ll definitely keep up to date on what I have to do to try to get into his class when I’m a senior.
I’ll be attending a journalism conference in Los Angeles next month which will feature a lot of media from the Middle East. I’ll report on that in mid-November.
That’s about it for now. If anyone has any questions or anything they want me to write about, feel free to comment.