Super Produca!

WOW!!! Today was quite interesting. Tell you the truth I felt a little overwhelmed at being producer for the first two weeks. I have zero (read: ZERO) experience in this department, and even after going over how to make a rundown felt very intimidated. I did my best to follow instructions from Professor Nicholson by keeping up with the news and staying in contact with everyone in my group, but was getting back emails of multiple rejected story ideas, so hoped things would be okay by Thursday. We had our producer meeting, it went well, but as I sat down to do the rundown I was again lost. I had to decide on more stories and realized that I would be writing, A LOT. Which is fine, but I hoped I could get it all done. To make things slightly more complicated, Lara's interview fell through; so we had to come up with a new foner-- someone who wasn't available until 3pm, which was cutting it a little close. As time loomed closer to Team B's time in the booth, I found that both of my reporters weren't back yet. Uh oh. I was getting updates on AJ's status from Matt; but I had a missed call from Noel and now she wasn't answering her phone. On top of all that, I was still having trouble writing some of the stories and was also waiting to borrow others' SOTs. Finally, the reporters get back and I'm feeling slightly confident that we're going to get things done. Then come the carts. Effing carts... Literally with five minutes to go before we're "on air," I still have to put Noel's wrap and Lara's foner on carts, and I still haven't printed out the scripts. CRAP. By the grace of God, SOMEHOW the carts work quickly (after a couple of tries as well as death threats to anyone who interferes with the machine I'm using), and AJ was quick to print out scripts. And suddenly I find myself in the booth listening to everything come together. Pretty dang well, if I do say so myself. After it all ended I was elated. Team B had a group hug, and in no way is that embarrassing. I like working under pressure (maybe a little less than today) and I like to think I'm quick on my feet, and when it all was over I felt very good! Now that I've had a week's experience I hope next time will go even smoother.