In between my Beef-a-roni and "Star Trek: the Next Generation" I got a call from Eric Engman, one of the photographers at the News-Miner.

"Here's the scoop," he said, beginning to give me assignments, listing off the shoots I was to do on my own.

"By myself, Eric?" I asked.

"Well, we can't hold your hand the whole time," he answered.

Every Thursday from about 2 to 10:30 p.m., I work as an intern photojournalist at the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. I have to complete 120 hours worth of internship credits to graduate with my photojournalism degree this May. It all rides on these 120 hours and this would be my third full day at the paper.

My first assignment was to meet up with the communications coordinator for the museum and get pictures of the inside of the construction. Then I was supposed to get an overall picture of how the outside of the building is looking.

"You're meeting the P.R. person at 2 p.m.," Engman said. "Good luck."

It was 1:45 p.m. I said good-bye to Chef Boyardee and Capt. Jean-Luc Picard; I was on a mission of my own.

I arrived at the museum just in time. The woman I was to meet was waiting for me at the door. She handed me a blue hardhat and off we went.

I imagine almost everyone has seen the new Museum on West Ridge and knows that the new building is full of weird curvatures, a blinding white reflective shell and an ungodly amount of viewing windows. I was dressed to kill in my fleece jacket and down vest. Here's the equation: enormous amount of windows plus direct sunshine plus overdressed Ginny equals HEAT STROKE, or at least that's what it felt like.

In between my hard hat flying off every time I went to take a picture, my profuse sweating, construction workers catcalling and accidentally having my camera metered completely wrong for the first 20 shots or so, the mission was a success. I handed the woman my hardhat and bid adieu. Once I got back to my car, I stripped down to a T-shirt and realized that the last 20 shots were all overexposed. Damn light meter! Those were my "outside building mug" pictures. Don't panic, not to worry, I'm fully capable of getting the shots again from outside of the fence.

I drove my car to the front of the building pulled out my weapon of choice, a Canon Digital Rebel, and began firing. The museum assignment was successfully executed. On to assignment number two.

Walking into the West Valley auditorium, a barrage of singing and dancing from 1940s Broadway musicals hit my ears. I approached the woman at the piano and introduced myself.

"Hi, I'm Ginny Tschanz and I'm with the News-miner," (god, that felt good) and began to get ready to begin the shoot. Hearing all of the choirgirls running around saying "We're going to be in the newspaper! We're going to be in the newspaper!" put a little twinkle in my eye and a warm feeling in my heart, but it may have been just been heat stroke symptoms.

Each number they practiced was better than the last one. I used my short lens, my long lens, moved closer then moved farther, and wove in between the seats from the left side of the auditorium to the right. I stayed for about an hour, mainly because I was enjoying the rehearsal so much. In the middle of "I'm going to wash that man right outta my hair," my gigantic boot, my elf boot as I call it, got caught on one of the seats and down I went.

Save the lens! Save the lens! I imagined the $1,500 lens that belonged to the UAF Journalism Department shattering into a million pieces. Thank god those kids were running around with towels and didn't see me fall. Besides a nice goose egg on my forehead with a dash of embarrassment, my lens and my ego were saved.

By then it was nearing 4 p.m. I only had two hours until the basketball game started and I knew that two shoots worth of pictures would take a while to edit.

Back at the News-Miner, I processed my pictures, wrote cut lines and gave them to the copy editor. For the rest of the evening I had the luxury and comfort of riding with John Hagen, a News-Miner staff photographer, to the girl's basketball game, a shoot for a restaurant review and the boys basketball game with enough time to come back and process our shots before the 11 p.m. deadline. By the end of the night it was hard to believe that five photo shoots and eight and a half hours had past.

Exhausted and hungry, counting down the minutes till I would be reunited with Chef Boyardee, I thought to myself, "Tomorrow, I will have three pictures on the front page of the Local section of the Fairbanks Daily News-miner!"

Every Thursday night I go to bed feeling excited, accomplished and lucky to have the opportunity to have this internship.

The moral of the story: Don't overdress when entering greenhouse conditions, don't wear boots that are too big and, most of all, appreciate UAF and all the school has to offer. The programs and degrees offered here open hundreds of doors and allow you to experience things that you'd probably never get a chance to experience at any other college. And that's why we're all here, isn't it?

Editor's Note: Ginny Tschanz is spending part of her spring semester as an intern at the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. For graduation, journalism majors must complete a semester of a professional-level internship.

This article is the third in a month-long series on "real-life" experiences students get here at UAF. Because, after all, college isn't always real life.

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