Journalists in New York City

What do you do when you put 15 graduate students together into one hotel and herd them around a snow-filled New York City for a week and a half?

Well, if you were are part of the Goldring Program at Syracuse University, then you get a germ-filled group as two were struck down with stomach flu, one with a chronic cold, another with an ear infection, and by the end three were developing cold-like symptoms. The rest fearfully stayed away though you can hear the germs beating down and crackling evilly outside of the immune system doors.

But joking about "Oregon Trail"-like bouts of sickness aside (whoops! Someone just died of dysentery), the trip was both awe-inspiring and almost frightening. It was an exercise on how little sleep you can get and how much you can force yourself to write invigorating, analytical prose despite it. All while meeting established writers and networking like your life depended on it (and for those whose career will become our lives, this applied).

It will forever become the week where I drank my weight in coffee (I recall one day where I had about three cups of black coffee in succession), where down-time was spent not exploring the wonderful Manhattan but napping, and where I fell asleep for about two seconds standing up at the MOMA (don't tell my adviser that). Then again, I lived there part-time last semester so I don't feel too guilty.

And within that, there was copious amounts of starchy, meat-based food (vegetables optional and need not apply) and shows! So many shows! Like two or three a day shows! Art shows, theater shows, jazz shows, an modernist classical music show!

Of which I will attempt to write about a small number of them in the upcoming days (and I already have, check the last two posts), as well as other thoughts I discovered during the trip. So watch for that.

Now back to reviewing...