Fire, Brimstone, Lightening Bolts, Special Brownies, and, of course, a little bit of work

Each month, all the editors in my office (that means all the ones from Dressage Today, Practical Horseman, Equus, and the design staff) have an office lunch, and each month they pick a different theme. This month, they decided the theme would be the end of the world, in recognition of the end of the world on May 21. Now, it might seem a little bizarre to have an "end of the world" party scheduled for AFTER when the world was going to end, but the editors felt pretty confident that we would all still be around after May 21, so it was really no problem. Everyone in the office brought something that they would like to eat at the end of the world. I brought the most incredible brownies that have a bag and a half of Rolos, one cup of dark chocolate chips, and a chopped up Ghiardelli bar inside of them. And yes, when the world ends, I want those to be the last brownies I eat. We had everything from maraschino cherries to hot dogs and sauerkraut. Needless to say, it was a very interesting combination for lunch. But my favorite part was that Hilary (DT's Senior Editor) decided that she would decorate by hanging paper lightening bolts from the ceiling and taping them to the table and chairs. She chose lightening bolts because she didn't know what brimstone looked like (so we decided to Google fire and brimstone so that's the phrase that still appears in my google search bar at the top of my computer screen...). They were some pretty ghetto decorations, but they made me laugh. We had a great hour eating, chatting, and laughing. I got some especially good laughs when I said that the brownies had a TON of special things in them, which obviously translated to mean "special" brownies, not brownies with tons of chocolate (and if you don't know what I mean by "special" brownies, well, then you should probably repeat public high school).

I also made a lot of progress today on my feature article! I've been working furiously on finding people to interview and going through information from the interviews I've already completed. I spent half of my day just in my email. The rest of my time in the office was spent researching people on the internet, compiling and transcribing interviews, and discussing the direction and details of the article with Hilary. She is very good at what she does and I get a lot of ideas and information during our brainstorming sessions together. I hope to be as savvy as her someday with coming up with ideas for articles. I've been so eager to learn and master everything about working on the magazine in one fell swoop, but I'm starting to realize that even as hard as I try, it's a skill that can only learned with time and practice and a lot of mistakes. Again, this is where patience would be a very useful virtue, one that I struggle with above all else. I always want results NOW, and I'm willing to work ridiculously hard to get them. However, somethings just take time and I'm not going to be the perfect editor all at once, even if I do get pretty close... Just joking ;) I promise, I'm still far from it. I think this is one of the things that makes spanning the gap between college and the real world so difficult. See, I've mastered college. I finally understand how to be a student, I've gotten the 4.0, and I've mastered the system. As a result, I'm feeling pretty confident in my abilities. But the truth is, I know I've got to humble myself a bit if I am going to learn more and make the transition to the real world, because the real world is different and I just don't fully understand how it works yet. But I'm certainly trying to learn! And tomorrow, I'm going to keep on learning.