Typical Day
Here in Madrid my days are very different than they were in Barcelona. In Barcelona I woke up around 8:20, to leave my host home by 9, for Spanish class at 9:30. We would have class for 2 hours, and then journalism class for the rest of the day. Our journalism class is not a typical lecture style environment. In the beginning stages of our stories, we pitch our ideas to the class, get feedback and spend the first few days doing research and reaching out for interviews. It’s an open classroom, which means we can go and come as we please- however, even when we left the classroom we were working extremely hard on our stories. We would then have an afternoon activity, something like a walking tour of the city or a visit to a specific landmark. These were usually from 5-8, ending just in time for us to get back to our host families for dinner by 9 (although, in my host family, we usually didn’t eat dinner until 10.)
Our days are very different in Madrid. We aren’t taking Spanish classes, so our days don’t start until 11 with journalism. We are also living together in apartments, so we all wake up and take the metro together. Once in class, we all touch base with how our stories are going. The rest of the day we are all on our own schedules- some of us running around the city for interviews, others sitting in class working on our stories. There is no communal lunchtime, or group activity time, we are all functioning on individual schedules. Our afternoons have been a little less hectic too, with less afternoon activities planned. Which means more time for shopping, eating, and tourist walking.
By the time we get home, we are exhausted. Either we are proud that we accomplished what we did, or we are frustrated that we hit walls along the way. We are lucky to be living together now in Madrid, allowing us to eat dinner together, and relax at home. However, most of the time, when we get home our work has yet to end. We always have something we can be working on, and in the world of journalism we aren’t granted the luxury of waiting until tomorrow. We are busy, but excited. Our days are long, and really hot, but they are always different and exhilarating because we are out on the street, working on stories that we are passionate about.
