Soundcloud links

I just explored Classical 91.7's Soundcloud and made my own! If you explore the KUHA page, be sure to check out the Meta Radio postings made by my favorite librarian, Dacia Clay. Mine is currently blank but I'm hoping to upload some recordings of myself playing clarinet etc when I get back to my computer this evening.

http://soundcloud.com/classical917

http://soundcloud.com/alexloveslemons

I'm not the new guy anymore

All the interns for the upcoming year for KUHA! L-R: Princeton Miles, Brooklynn Adelman, Alexandra Doyle (me!), and Daniel Webbon. Can't wait to start working with these people!

Coming soon!

Here's a neat KUHF event that's coming up soon, be sure to check it out!
http://www.facebook.com/events/274991642604823/

Also rapidly approaching is the Theater District Open House, Sunday August 26, which is amazing and you should also go to that! Details can be found here.
http://www.downtownhouston.org/district/theater/

New podcast project

Aside from what I normally do at the office (research, organizing the audio library, and digitizing our program collection mostly) I've been given a new sample project-- a podcast! (It's a secret from St.John until we get one completely done to present to him, so don't tell ;) ) It was Dacia's idea (she's the audio librarian) and it's going to be a sort of "day in the life of a music major" thing. It might also include other arts students, I'm not sure yet. The idea is to give the average person who knows nothing about the strange world we classical musicians live in a glimpse into that world, with all the stress and practicing and auditions and stuff. My pilot episode is focusing on the Clarinetfest 2012 convention in Lincoln, Nebraska that just occurred last week. I'll be exploring what happens at these conventions and interviewing a few other people, such as performers and a mouthpiece maker, for their takes on convention and their respective roles in it.

A note about convention itself:
Clarinetfest was a blast! Musicians learn at a young age that convention is where the magic happens, from performances and masterclasses to networking and shopping at the booths of a thousand vendors who have things that are very specific to your needs.It's also great to see the friends that you made at the last convention. This year's Clarinetfest was on the campus of the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, which turned out to be very convenient; the campus is within the town, so everything important was within about 3 blocks, including the convention hotels. Unfortunately the lineups weren't as spectacular as last year (I guess famous clarinetists would rather be in Los Angeles, where last year's convention was, than Lincoln!) but it was still an awesome learning experience and lots of fun. Next year's is in Italy, so that will be absolutely incredible!

Anyway, if and when the podcast is up and running on the KUHA website, I'll post a link here so that you can see it. Also be ready for more articles from The Daily Cougar and possibly one from a more impressive paper! :)

It can be so incredibly difficult to decide whether or not to pursue a certain job- related project when it might be upsetting to some people. Even when that group has already stabbed you in the back on multiple occasions... what do you think, is it better to pursue your dreams or be scared into being quiet?

We will not be silent, no. Sorry if that's upsetting but I can't keep my mouth shut when people tell me not to talk. Isn't that what journalism is about? The people at the station agree-- even if real newpeople are a dying breed, we can do what we can to be them, right?

I hope I'm making the right choice.

Sweet new job!

So I got this excellent gig teaching masterclasses at Pearland High School. I get to teach a section of bass clarinet players (about 6 of them) for two hours a day for two weeks. It's going to be kind of scary because I've never taught anything before at all, but I've certainly got enough experience taking classes and lessons.... Of course, my professor walked me through everything I need to do. He is honestly the reason I've gotten half of my music related jobs; sometimes, when a teaching or playing job comes up that he is too busy for or just doesn't want, he gives people the name of one of his students and then we get called. He's the best teacher I could ever ask for and I can only hope that one day my students will have the same love and respect for me.
But yeah. Wish me luck! I'll have to find somewhere between aloof teacher and too- relatable student teacher (I'm only 19, so I'm not far in age from them). I'll be lots of fun and I'm sure I'll learn an incredible amount by trying to teach the same things to other people. Can't wait!

 Troy Schultze and St.John Flynn in the studio during The Front Row

 Soprano Stacey Weber and pianist Keith Weber on The Front Row

Breaking News!

Article on mind controlled robotics at The Daily Cougar

ICA Contest

I thought I'd share my latest update to my Youtube page... it's so strange, I only made this in April, but there are things I hear on it now that I know I can do better. Growth is so gradual that sometimes you don't notice until you take a step back. Hope you enjoy!

Being a writer SUCKS

I know this blog is mostly about my internship, but I thought I'd share a bit with you about my experience as a writer for the school newspaper, The Daily Cougar. For example, here is a link to what was published:


http://thedailycougar.com/2012/06/20/uc-renovations-brings-food-options/


And here's what I actually wrote and turned in.

Eat Out or Stay In? A look at campus dining options for Fall 2012

            With so many renovations and replacements occurring on our campus in the coming months, the thought of finding food in the construction wasteland can seem more than a little daunting. Dining Services was kind enough to provide your humble correspondent with a few answers to some burning questions whose heat can only be matched by the flames of heartburn after some delicious and ever- greasy on-campus edibles.

            As previously announced, the UC will soon be closed for a massive renovation project that will hopefully take eighteen months to complete. In response to the closed restaurants and such that will not be able to feed hungry mouths on campus, Dining Services have engaged the help of several food trucks, including Bernie’s Burger Bus, The Waffle Bus, and Bare Bowls Kitchen, which will all be parked on a patio area in front of the UC in a sort of food court setup. Not only that, but the business hours for these trucks will be on the Dining Services website, which eliminates the horrible element of the unexpectedly closed restaurant for students who check this site.

            And what of the eateries that were serving in the UC? Sushic has relocated to the Satellite for the summer semester in the space that Montague’s Deli previously was; the deli will reopen in the fall where Cranberry Farms used to be. Otherwise, the UC will be sporting many new logos when its renovation is completed, including those of Panda Express, McDonald’s, Starbucks Coffee, as well as some old friends, like Chick-fil-A and a Cougar Xpress Mini Market. After Phase Two of the renovations, a Freshii restaurant will also be opening in the UC.

            Across campus, there is a newly-opened Taco Cabana in the new parking lot near Robertson Stadium. As of now, the only other tenant of this structure that can satisfy the rumblies in your tummy is another Cougar Xpress Mini Market, which will carry a smaller selection than others because of space limitations.

            Meal plan options are also getting an upgrade, starting with the new dining hall on the corner of the Cullen and Wheeler intersection. This cafeteria is going to be modeled after Oberholtzer Hall in style and menu, and is simply meant to replace “the O.B.”. The older version will remain open through the summer semester, while the new edition will open in the fall. There is more good news for the very hungry or avid snackers: All- Access meal plans have been approved, and students who desire to swipe into an on-campus dining hall more than three times a day can now do so as many times a day as they wish, with unlimited swipes every day. Either 5- day or 7- day per week options are available, complete with a limited number of guest passes for treating your friends and some Cougar Cash. Senior Media Production manager Danny Rojas weighed in on these changes, saying  “After the renovations of the Fresh Food Co. in Moody Towers, it was only a matter of time before the O.B. got the same treatment, which is definitely an improvement. As for the unlimited swipes meal plans, I think it really gives students more freedom to go in and out of the cafeterias. And the guest passes are a great idea!”

For more information about both on- campus dining and cafeterias, including locations and hours, visit uh.edu/dining.


So yeah. That's kind of how that goes... All that time spent trying to make dining option changes sound interesting and fun and that's what I get. Excellent.

Free cookie Friday!

If there's one thing I love about my office, it's the sense of camaraderie. People are always saying hi to me, even if they're across the hallway from us (KUHF 88.7 is located on the other side of the office) and even if I've never seen them before in my life. Or take, for example, my experiences yesterday: not only was it Free Cookie Friday (and I mean, these cookies are so delicious. I have no idea where they get them from, but it's probably Mount Olympus or something) but I had my first experience trying to make tea. This is how that went:
FREE COOKIE FRIDAY
I saw the cookies arrive from my ever- convenient watchtower of The Copy Area, where interns should be if they aren't busy reshelving or repairing CDs or doing research or important things, which is a straight line from the open doorway of our kitchenette. Apparently an email went out (which I didn't get because I still don't have an email or login to our server, which is just some kind of bureaucratic nightmare designed to make my job more difficult still) because while there had been one lone soul in the kitchen, suddenly there were three, five, ten people absolutely flocking to those cookies! It's like a swarm of vultures or something. But then, when those eager beavers started heading back down the hallway and had to pass me at my central location, many of them, including people I have literally never seen before started passing by, they would pause and gesture at me with those delicious cookies in their hands and speaking funny to hold all the crumbs in with a, "free cookies" that sounded more like a "shfreeeh chookiez". And then, when I abandoned my fortress of office supplies and printing machines, there were still a few stragglers in the kitchen who happily exclaimed over the cookies to me, which I agreed with entirely because as I said these are divine cookies made with the ambrosia of the gods. I mean, maybe I'm antisocial or something, but I don't think you talk to strangers unless you feel some kind of connection with them, and everybody is always saying things to me. Which is so nice! Maybe I'm overreacting, but I do enjoy a nice kitchen conversation over cookies.

Baby steps

Today, I finally got to do something other than the usual library maintenance or research for The Front Row-- I got to design my own sample show! There's an intern- run program on Sunday evenings called Music in the Making which showcases music from the Moores and Shepherd schools of music at UH and Rice, respectively. I did my very own programming and script for an episode! It was actually kind of fun, but I'm honestly afraid to run the show myself. Speaking on the air doesn't worry me, but running the board is very complicated and I feel like I'll make at least a few mistakes every now and again, especially when I first start at it. Hopefully nothing major goes amiss, though! Soon, I'll be a real radio DJ and announcer. I have the coolest job!!

Professionalism: where do YOU stand?

My least favorite thing about work is this: never quite knowing what is appropriate. This is my first job of any kind, let alone an office job, and I have no idea what to call people. I've stuck with first names so far and that seems ok; everyone else calls each other by first name, so this makes sense.And then what can I wear? I'm decently attractive and female, so my heels can't be too tall, not too much makeup, not too much jewelry, absolutely no cleavage, or suddenly I'm not being "profesh". Or am I just oversensitive? Being afraid of being negatively judged makes every glance seem like a condemnation.
Then, there's the worst thing of all- what can I say? I know these people decently well; or, at least, the people they are at work. They ask about my weekend, and where do I draw the line? How much can they stand to hear about me sitting at home watching movie after movie with my parents? If we talk about tattoos, can I talk about my ideas for new ones? Too personal? Is that even more personal than the ink I actually have?
It's so frustrating to be learning a new professional situation and have to be simultaneously feeling out an entirely new social climate. I want to be friendly, because I genuinely like my coworkers, and I want them to like me. However, I don't want to be overly personal; but then, I don't want to be some kind of ice queen. Why does the line have to be metaphorical?? Can't there be a physical line for office etiquette? I'm a good kinesthetic learner, so if I had to actually go stand across the line whenever I commit a faux pas, I think I'd understand this much better and much more quickly.
Advice appreciated on this one! Remember, I work for NPR; they don't keep us too caged up around here.

Backstage at the 5/30/2012 Houston Symphony Orchestra Sounds Like Fun! concert at Seven Lakes High School.

I said I was a musician, so I thought I'd share a bit of my music- making with you. This is a recent recording of me playing Rhapsody by Wilson Osborne, which is originally a bassoon piece. It was transcribed for clarinet, and is played on the bass clarinet pretty often because that puts it in the original octave. Enjoy!

It's these moments that I live in

 Adam Golka, Sophie Shao, and Frank Huang on The Front Row (live session)

A shot of the main broadcasting studio

And so the curtain rises

Hello, hopefully soon-to-be loyal readership. This is my first post about my glorious life as an intern! I suppose, in some ways, it's been a pretty classy unpaid job-- I haven't had to fetch coffee or refreshments yet, and I've been treated like part of the team by the actual employees. So far, so good!
I have, of course, been delegated to the grunt work-- what else would you expect, volunteers always get the crap gigs. I spend lots of time with my good friend D in the music library (She went to library school and has her own Library of Congress reference number, and I want to be her when I grow up. The first day I met her, I saw that she had a Beirut CD and several cat sculptures on her desk, and I knew we'd get along just fine.) I take the first half hour of every morning to organize and then, as of recently, reshelf the CD's that our radio programmers have pulled from the stacks in the last 24 hours. Honestly, it's alright though, because the people I work with and for are actually super awesome (and I'm not just saying that because they could be reading this, which I hope to God they never do). I mean, it's NPR... there's quite a few of us with a little more piercing or ink than are perhaps considered "professional", but we're just the liberal media anyway, right?

But anyway. Sometimes I do things that make me feel like Cinderella, or Psyche doing Aphrodite's impossible tasks for the love of Cupid. Such as dusting and vacuuming the entire music library-- in a skirt and heels, no less! I also get to do things that seem important, such as putting together the information packets for The Front Row, a show that we air from 12 to 1 every weekday, and is aired on our sister station, 88.7 (KUHF), at 11 pm. If you listen closely to the end, some days I even get a mention as a "production intern". My job truly is so much more than that, though; throughout the summer and probably though my paid internship in the fall, I'll keep posting all kinds of media to help you understand what it is that I do behind the scenes to keep my station running smoothly, and also to help you understand more about me as a person and not as a scurrying intern.

So take my hand, and we'll be off to Never- Never Land!