I got a job as a videographer for the Moorestown School of Music in New Jersey. They want me to do a 30 minute documentary for them, about their business which tutors children in classical music instrument training. I’m getting paid this time, and I’ll probably be putting in about 20-40 hours of work on the project. GOTTA MAKE THAT MONEY! Maybe I won’t have to be so stressed out about food money now lol. I’m down my last $500 for the next two months, so if I stop submitting journal entries, you know why.

Yes, I’ve got an apartment. It’s in the Chancellor on 13 and Locust. That’s only a block from Terra, and a block from the 12th st. Gym. I’ve got a cool roommate named Tae-won An, and he does Graphic Design here. I met him at the 12th st gym actually, and we’ve been working out at boxing, and sparring a lot to keep our skills sharp. He was a boxer in Korea for three years, and he’s got fast hands. He also seems like a responsible guy, really clean and everything, so he’ll be a good roommate. My Dad is cosigning for me, and I’m really happy he’s helping me out. I’ll still be picking up food, electric, and other expenses, as well as paying back the loans for tuition, but he’ll help me out with my rent. The room is on the 15th story of the building, and it’s got a great room. I’m moving in on May 10th. I’m psyched!

A bunch of my friends Ben and John decided to come down to Philly Recently. They wanted to party, but they at about 1 in the afternoon, so we went to the Art Museum, and saw a Lee Miller Photography exhibit. We ate dinner chilled, and then went out partying later. This is Ben(left), and John.

When we got to the Party, we had a lot of fun. We also met up with a few other friends there, including Erin(yellow sunglasses) and Alex.

Here’s a shot of me, John, and my friend Alex Hernandez far left, and Natalie Hojell(bottom). If you look close you’ll see Ben at the far right.

After we left the party we went back to my dorm(Alex Hernadez, Ben, John, and Me) and we cooked up some food. That must have been about 1 or 2 o clock in the morning. We heard a knock at the door. I thought it was strange, but I got up to answer it. When I opened the door I heard footsteps echoing down the hallway as someone ran away.

“Jay, who was that?” John asked.

“I don’t know, it was some chick.”

There was a pause and then John and Alex both said, “Was she hot?”

I smiled. “Yeah, kinda. I didn’t get a good look at her though.”

We went back to eating our craft macaroni and chicken tenders. Gourmet college food.

There was another knock. This time all the guys jumped up. We sprinted out of the door I almost forget my keys(lucky that didn’t happen). We started chasing after these mystery girls. I figured they were drunk or something. We blasted through Furness’s hallway and out onto the staircase. We caught them there, laughing their asses off.

It was Erin and Alex.

John immediately said, “Jason said you were hot, Erin.”

“That’s right,” she nodded.

I laughed.

The girls came back to the room, and joined in on our microwaveable feast. We talked for about an hour, about random stuff. Then we got an idea. John and Ben said they would go against me in boxing matches, if I wasn’t allowed to hit them back. Here is a picture of John as he’s

putting on his gloves. We did that for a couple of minutes before he fell over in exhaustion(literally). Then I went against Ben. Alex Hernandez was our ring announcer.

After that we just sat around talking some more. We talked about all kinds of stuff, and eventually the sun came up. It was around then that we realized that sleep might be a good idea. The girls left, and Alex and John got into bed. I talked with Ben for about another hour before we were both tired enough to sleep. And that was it. It as a good day. I’ll rephrase that. It was an awesome day. It was really great seeing my friends from elementary school thru high school again. It was cool introducing them to some of my new friends at Uarts, and I had a lot of fun and (almost) laughed too much for one day.

This is a letter I emailed to my Dad a few minutes ago. It appears exactly as it did when I sent it. It was a response to a letter he sent me.

Good to hear from you - I wish I had more time to spend with you guys! I’ve been too busy lately. I’ve been trying to get this website off the ground and get my business started, but I never imagined how much work it would take. I still haven’t made a design for my business cards and I’ve only completed about half of my website. I want to include a resume section on my website that talks about Family Fun Day, and my recent internship at GIC. The problem is that I have too many classes to work everyday on my website.

Making a website is a lot like writing a book. If you don’t do it everyday, you sort of lose momentum and cohesion. I’ve been struggling along with mine because I keep getting interrupted with homework and other stuff.

Speaking of GIC and Ian, I spoke with him recently and he’s very happy with my work. I have an attachment on here of a letter he wrote for me, I think you’ll enjoy it. I’m probably going to be doing work for him in the future, and I have a feeling that doors might open. Even if they don’t it looks great on my resume, and will look great on my website!

I like your Long and Foster website. It’s informative, and I’m guessing that you chose the earthy greens and browns on purpose. Definitely professional and concise. How do you update and use that website? Is it a template site(did you get the design or make it)? How are you hosting it? I plan on using GoDaddy.com to host my site.

The reason it’s taking me so long to make the site is because I’m designing each page by hand, in Dreamweaver. Uarts gave me the program on my laptop, so I’ve been learning how to use it. I want to do it this way so I have control over the pages and how I update them. I also want it too look really good, and the pages to feature my photography. I think that will entice customers to use my services.

Taking 18 credits is a serious challenge - I’m always working!! I’m happy though, and I find my classes interesting.

My group finished shooting the documentary for Video Production class. My partners were Ray and Marlena(she was a friend of mine last semester in Multimedia). We got some really interesting footage of an Indian worker named Ram in the Dunkin Donuts. He is an immigrant, and can barely speak English. The part of Philly we were in was far South of Uarts, and the customers that came in spoke a plethora of languages. I heard multiple African dialects, a lot of Indian, some Spanish and a bunch I couldn’t pick out. It’s amazing how much diversity this city has. In center city the people are varied, but not nearly as ethnic as South Philly. A lot of them were night workers and cab drivers, because we shot the footage at 10 o clock at night.

The documentary is supposed to be a comment on Ram’s story as an immigrant working and living in America for the first time. It’s my job to edit the footage now, and I’ll have to show you it when I’m done. I’ll probably post it online actually, on my the Mediapulse website.

Last night I made my first photographic film print in the darkroom. I am not a big fan of the dark room, mainly because digital is so much easier and better. It gives you more artistic control as well. I do like the quality of film prints though, the clarity of the black and white shots is stunning.

I made another website - it should be online by tomorrow actually, I just bought web hosting from GoDaddy for it. The website is a digital scrapbook of my ongoing work in my Storytelling class. Storytelling has been quite interesting, and I am very good at it. I’ve written a few things, and you can check out my stuff online. I still have to work out a couple kinks in the programming for the site, I’ll tell you when it’s ready to go.

Writing for Film has been VERY interesting for me. I love telling stories, and this class is a very profound examination of the art of evoking emotion through storytelling devices. The teacher is excellent, and is a professional and successful screenwriter and director. He has a lot of good insights on writing. We’ve done a few assignments, my favorite of which was a character profile. We had to invent a character and try to bring them to life. Mine was a Russian girl named Amaljii. I’ll have to show you the profile sometime. We also had to write a short story about the character, a story with 4 events that elucidated the character and described them vicariously through the actions they did in the scenes. I enjoyed writing that, and I turned it in a week early(using the patented Harvey Howard technique).

My regular writing class has been easy. We did an essay on Stephen King’s, Carrie(the movie version), which I enjoyed. We also did an essay on the Myspace hoax, if you haven’t heard about it, a teenage girl committed suicide because of a middle aged Mom that posed as her boyfriend and ‘broke up’ with her. Right now we are actually writing an essay about a photography gallery in Uarts. Coincidentally, I’ve also been assigned and essay in my Photography class - it’s about a photo gallery in the Art Museum. I’m going to rollerblade down there as soon as it stops snowing and raining so much!

I felt like coming down to the house a few times, but every time it seems like I’m either have to do work, or I have to recover from doing work and get some sleep! I’m really happy though, and I feel that I’m getting a lot out of this school. I just hope I can get this business off the ground soon - Photography class is costing me a fortune! I spent $100 on film and photo paper yesterday. We’ll definitely catch up soon though, and I’ll show you some of the work I’ve been doing. I miss you guys, especially my brothers. Hope those guys are getting through school relatively smoothly - I remember it being a warzone lol. Tell everyone I said hi. Love you guys - eventually we’ll have a little time to actually talk, I promise.