Here's an e-mail I sent to my news director from TV-10 who helped me get the internship, and I feel it pretty much sums up everything I did today, and I don't feel like typing it out again:

Hi! I thought you might like to know how my first "official" day at the station went.

IT WAS AWESOME! For the first half of the day, they did pair me with (ISU alum who is a friend of the person I'm sending this to), like you hoped. He was really nice and mellow and learning-friendly, and taught me lots of stuff. We went to the "Gone Fishin' Gun and Knife Show." So now knives, guns, and fishing will always remind me of my first time working at a network affiliate. We both shot some stuff, and mostly his footage went on the newscast, but I got 2 shots on the air! An old guy looking at a rack of guns, and a low angle shot of a rack of fishing poles! I called my parents up so they could watch for both of those, and they said they actually saw it. Very exciting.

The rest of the day, I spent with So and So, who is both a sports photog and a sports reporter depending on what's needed at the time. We went to shoot a basketball game at Pekin and another one at Tremont. I admitted to him I wasn't very good at shooting sports and didn't have a whole lot of experience, but he was cool about it and says that we can work on it together and I'll probably be decent by the time the high school basketball playoffs get started. He actually mentioned working on it with (a guy from TV-10 I knew who used to have an internship with the station) too back in the day. My biggest problem right now is probably that I need to beef up my shoulder so I can handle one of the cameras up there for as long as I'm going to need to get a couple of highlights.

I'm still a little scared because of the various stories I've heard about people, but by in large everyone I've met has been incredibly nice. Thanks again for helping me get this internship, I really think I'm going to learn a lot.

The bits not included in the e-mail:

1) I did feel really stupid when I met a guy and he asked where I was from and I was like, "From here! ...the station you work at!" and the answer he actually wanted was "ISU." Especially bad: apparently this particular guy is a perfectionist and kind of a jerk about it, and is already negatively inclined towards me anyway because he doesn't think females can shoot sports as good as guys. So I didn't want to look like an idiot in front of him right from the beginning.

2) I got free dinner! The second guy I hung out with apparently knows where all the freebies are (he mentioned some others in conversation) and we ended up getting free dinner from the press area at the local hockey game even though the guy in 1) was the guy actually covering the game, we were just in there to eat for free.

3) I went home early because my supervisor guy (who is technically my boss, but I've only seen for 2 minutes or less each time I come in there) heard the roads were getting icy and came and told me I could go home. This worries me a little, in that I don't want to be thought of as the lightweight who leaves when the weather's a little bit crappy, but also makes me a little happy because I secretly AM the lightweight who wants to leave when the weather's moderately crappy, and if they're okay with me leaving, it makes it a whole lot easier on both my nerves and those of my mother.

That's about it.