Alabama Rural Ministry
I've finally finished my last assignment as a college student. I wrote my last article for my Magazine and Feature Writing class on Alabama Rural Ministry, which is a faith-based organization that seeks to put an end to substandard housing.
I actually met one of the leaders of this organization at the Auburn University Communications career fair. I was seeking a job or internship in Birmingham for after graduation, and I met Joe Davis. He was seeking a summer intern for ARM. I didn't plan on staying in the Auburn/Opelika area, so I declined, but I stayed and talked to him for a while.
It goes to show how important it is to make connections, because it was only one month later that I decided to write an article on ARM, and it was helpful to already have talked to him for a bit.
This was a difficult assignment for me to write because of how busy I was for my final semester. On top of my 15-hours-a-week internship with Auburn Villager, I had an editor position at The Plainsman. This meant that I was writing nonstop outside of my classes. It was nearly impossible to schedule interviews with people for my assignment, because I felt that I needed to make a good impression on the people who supervised me outside of class.
I was able to get most of the meat of my story done during finals week and a few days before finals week. I wish I was able to do more of it sooner, because then I would have had more timely feedback and been able to correct mistakes better. However, finals week was the first time I had felt relaxed all semester, so I'm glad I was at least able to focus on this story instead of writing it with 10 other things on my mind.
I had a terrible experience during my reporting process, though. I went to one of their construction sites to get quotes from some of the volunteers and to take photos of the action. One volunteer was cutting wood with a saw, and I got close to him for photos. As I was walking away, I felt an excruciating pain in my left eye. I rubbed it to try to get the sawdust out of my eye, which may have scratched my cornea. I'm not sure exactly when the sawdust finally made its way out of my eye, but after buckets of tears and hours of having a puffy, red eye, I decided I would be more careful the next time I was at a construction site.
My favorite part about reporting for this article was talking to Bernice Sistrunk. She was the kind of person who you wanted to call grandma. I think I could have sat and talked to her all day, but I finally made myself leave, knowing that it was going to be hard listening back on my recording.
I'm angry at myself for not getting a photo of Sistrunk. Usually I am more confident, but for some reason, I didn't want to embarrass her by asking to take a photo.
Overall, I'm glad I picked ARM for my topic. I enjoyed reading the end product and hope other people also get a chance to read it.
