SPRING BREAK! wooooo.  I am spending it here in good old Indianapolis, and absolutely loving it.  Why stay? Well, 1) most of the people and places I love are in Indy 2) Butler is currently hosting the men's basketball tournament for the Horizon League and 3) I have some things to do in town for my FABULOUS internship.

I know I've mentioned my internship a few times, but I've never actually told you all about it, because it's such a cool story that I kind of wanted to tell it in all its glory.

So, as you may know, I am an English major, which in theory means I can do anything I want : ) But, the first stipulation to that freedom is that you have to know what you want! So, last fall I decided that I didn't want to waste another minute when I could be exploring careers and trying to figure out what I want to do with myself.  I had been thinking about journalism for a while, and then I got the idea to apply for NUVO.

NUVO is one of my favorite things about Indianapolis.  It is a weekly newspaper that covers the arts, culture and social justice in Indianapolis.  It is FREE and available every Wednesday at all the cool places in town - Yats, Qdoba, other yummy restaurants, and of course, Butler.  It's basically young, hip and tells you all the cool places to be and things to do in Indy (and NUVO's recommendations are definitely college student friendly, aka usually quite cheap).  I have been reading it religiously every week since I started picking it up on campus my freshman year, so I decided that I would love to work there.

The problem was, when I went on the NUVO website to get information about becoming an intern, it said they were seeking journalism students.  I am not a journalism major, nor did I have any experience in newspapers. But, I do like to write, and I have been the yearbook editor at BU... oh yeah, and I write for lots of people to read on the internet every week. So, I decided to email the editor anyway.  I mentioned all of those things and explained how passionate I was about NUVO and Indy.

His email back to me went something along these lines: You uttered the magic word - internet.  Go ahead and send me your resume and some clips.

From there, I directed Jim to read some of my blog posts from this fall in Spain.  Jim liked them, and hired me.

 Apparently, NUVO had just launched a new website and was in the market for a bunch of web-saavy interns to fill it with fun content. 

So, my dear go.butler.edu friends, this blog landed me my dream first internship.  Thanks for your help!!

The irony is that although I was hired for supposedly doing cool things on the web, I have spent almost all of my time doing old school interviewing and writing.  This is totally fine with me - I LOVE all the assignments I have had.

Jim, the managing editor, intern-overseer, photographer-directing, NUVO man-of-many-hats and my fabulous boss, somehow figured out that I might work well with the green beat, writing stories about all the efforts to make Indianapolis a more environmentally friendly place. 

So, my job has basically become an excuse to meet all the extremely innovative, passionate and cool people in this city.  The first full story I wrote was about celerystreet.com, which is an online shop full of earth-friendly gifts.  It can be a little pricey for a college student but they have some really cool stuff, and it makes me so happy to see all the cool products that can come from recycled items (Side note:I am a recycling nut.  Don't EVER throw out paper, aluminum cans or plastics 1 and 2 around me.  I will probably cry. Ok, not really, but I will give you a short lecture about how you are hurting my (and the earth's) soul and then dig through the trash and take said object out to recycle it.)  The couple who owns Celery Street, Evelyn and JD Guinn from Zionsville, are very very nice people and made my first interview so fun.

The story that's been taking up a LOT of my time lately is about the Indy Food Coop, which is an effort to put a grocery store in on the near east side of Indy that will sell organic and local food.  Currently there are 40,000 people and NO full-service grocery store in that area, and since many people in those neighborhoods don't have cars, they have to buy junk food from convenience stores or fast food.  Bad news bears. So, the Indy Food Coop is trying to put in a store that will basically be like a 7 days per week farmer's market.  It will be a great way to bring healthy food to the east side and support local farming.

I have gotten to attend some really interesting events for this story, including a documentary and discussion that was held in this downtown arts center.  All these people who are passionate about fresh, local food were in this room, talking with their friends and neighbors about how we can solve this problem in Indianapolis.  If any of you out there are Gilmore Girls fans, it totally reminded me of a town hall meeting in Stars Hollow (minus the crazy mayor)!

Last week, I went to a Food Security Summit at the Earth House, which is a very cool new coffeeshop/art gallery/community hangout.  The Summit was basically people from a whole bunch of groups interested in these topics who wanted to get together and share their different perspectives, pool resources and ideas and work on some concrete solutions to improving the local food situation in Indy.  I loved listening to all their ideas, and I got to introduce myself as a writer, and I even got a press pass once.  Those sort of things make me feel very grown up! haha.

So, why do I love this internship so much?

1 ) The more stories I work on, the more I fall in love with Indianapolis.  This truly is a city with SO many passionate, creative and interesting young people who are doing ridiculously cool things to change their community.  It is so inspiring and exciting, and I love being a part of it.  There is nothing like living in a city.

2) It is so great to see people of all ages and backgrounds coming together to talk.  We may live in a big city, but it's not too big for neighbors and communities to come together, and I love that.

3) I have learned so much! I have definitely become more concious about my eco-friendliness and eating habits since I've started working on these stories. 

4) I take what I learn from writing NUVO articles and bring it back to my English classes! Writing professionally definitely improves my literary writing... and the concepts transfer as well.  I came up with a great idea about how Moby can function as an environmentalist parable the other day in my American Novel class.  Yeah, my class laughed at me... but only because I had previously told them how nerdy I am about this internship!

In short, this is an amazing job, and it has already opened up so many opportunities and experiences for me.  There are so many cool things to do and places to work for in Indianapolis. What a precious resource - take advantage of it!