bridget

I'm just so stressed and tired. I really feel as though I'm running myself ragged, between school and work. Part of me just wants to give up, go back east and return to my silly wasted days. I can go back to getting by with my three crappy jobs and late nights of chaos.

The career I'm working towards is high stress. So it is not as though things are just going to "get easy again" when I (hopefully) finish grad school and get a job. Am I going to "lose it" by the time I turn 40? Is this really worth it?



But, then things happen that remind me why I'm doing this. I'll get really passionate about a story I'm editing, or hear awesome stories from professors who have been in the field for years. That happened, to a degree, today. My professor was telling me about his first interview with Pinochet and then traveling with his entourage.

Plus, I screened a story I just finished. It was a hard story to edit, and I can't say I was 100% satisfied with the final product. Some of my shots were less than perfect, to say the least. Plus the story was complicated, because of society's general understanding of certain queer issues. My professor was really into the piece and said I handled all of those things perfectly. Everyone understood the piece and I got one of the best compliments from a guest professor, someone very important in the field. He didn't like the closing shot, which I was not thrilled with either, but that can be fixed.

I think there are rocks in my neck and back. Somebody should sponsor me for a massage. Let's not even go into what all of this is doing to my skin.

Check out the photographs that won Pulitzers this year.
David Leeson and Cheryl Diaz Meyer for the Dallas Morning News in Iraq.
Carolyn Cole for the Los Angeles Times in Liberia.