MNO Boot Camp 2013: Nick Canedo

MNO Boot Camp 2013
“There’s a reason we refer to it as boot camp!"
by Nick Canedo '14

 

This line had to be in every email sent from Newhouse staff in the months leading up to the first day of class in July—maybe to scare us, or maybe to remind us of what we had gotten ourselves into.

 

Still, orientation on July 1 wasn’t bad.  After all, we received free iPad minis!

 

Then came news writing class the next day, and the first thing Prof. Emile Davis said was, “Do you know who I am?”

 

One student lost her voice and couldn’t answer the question, but the next student said, “You wrote the book.” Because she did—Prof. Emilie co-wrote the “Think Like An Editor” required textbook with her husband, Steve Davis (just make sure to say she wrote the book, not her husband).

 

And the rest of the first day of class wasn’t tough and it seemed like just maybe boot camp wasn’t going to be so bad. Until the last five minutes when our first assignment was given to us: a classmate profile due the next morning, complete with three sources. While it didn’t seem too tough, a good amount of students were forced to stay up past their bedtime to complete the story.

 

And the next six weeks were, well, boot camp-like. Every class consisted of an AP style quiz and a news quiz. The AP style quizzes weren’t bad, because the answers were in the AP Stylebook (which we were able to use). The news quizzes were harder because the answers were on the Internet (which we weren’t able to use, even though the Internet is much larger than the AP Stylebook).

 

Many students received at least one “F” on a story for committing a fact error. Emile Davis’ students said when she found a fact error she highlighted the error with two different colored highlighters, then drew an arrow to the side margins and wrote, “FACT ERROR.”

 

We also had to balance reporting on a major story with completing a Twitter Scavenger Hunt, filling out a Syracuse city questionnaire, contacting people about a possible multimedia video, all while reading Syracuse.com and The New York Times.

 

So, yeah, it did feel like a boot camp at times. And that was only half the week.

 

The other half of the week was graphic design class, which a few MNOers have no interest in pursuing. For some, clicking on the Adobe InDesign icon was the first time opening up any of the Adobe Creative Suite applications. The good thing about this class was not too much work had to be done outside of lab. The bad thing was the in-class work was quite a lot, and the race to finish it and turn the work in three different ways before 5 p.m. on Friday was always a struggle.

 

Still, nothing was as bad as walking in late during lecture through the front door, especially when Professor Soo was lecturing.

 

Now that it’s over and looking back, boot camp was what it lived up to be. Sure, it was frustrating to see students from other programs talk about how tough their schedule was when they didn’t have class eight hours a day or even have class on Friday, and you felt their summer was more like “girl scout camp” than “boot camp.” But the nature of our program didn’t give us time to dwell on it too much.

 

We were too busy playing phone tag with a source who said he would call us back three hours ago; too busy verifying every fact in our story; too busy walking around downtown Syracuse taking pictures and video; too busy trying to figure out how SoundCloud works; too busy calling Jon Glass or Joe Blum because our video camera wouldn’t work right when you needed it; too busy thinking of the perfect lede; too busy picking the right typeface in Adobe InDesign; too busy waiting for those damn printers in the lab to cool down.

 

Even though we were too busy, classes did have fun moments. Whether it was a spontaneous visit from a former garbage collector, or an overly intense graphic design star competition, or watching homemade commercials that showed what a comedic genius Joe Blum is, boot camp was definitely one thing: memorable.

 

But the best part of it was experiencing it with the only people who knew exactly what you were going through: the fellow MNOers. Unlike most programs where students work in groups, everything we turned in was individual. Even then, there was a sense of teamwork among us, and a hope for everyone to succeed.

 

So boot camp was more than just a way to double your follower count on Twitter. Boot camp initiated a beautiful relationship among the cohort that’s going to extend past our final month in June (when hopefully we can hook each other up with sweet jobs).

 

So for those thinking about applying for the MNO program in the future but are intimidated by “boot camp,” don’t be. If storytelling is your passion, then Newhouse is the best place to be, and boot camp is where it begins.

 

Who knows, maybe at the end you’ll get your own dog tags.