By Austin Keating
As we walked through
the seemingly endless tunnel of refrigerator like black boxes, light pouring in
through a narrow opening ahead, our tour guide opened a hatch and showed us the
inner workings of the supercomputer; her words barely audible over the whirling
of the cooling fans. My jaw dropped to the floor when I saw the hardware,
unveiled in its full beauty as the door swung open. Just a few of the over
49,000 AMD processors blinked their bright green lights at me as I geeked out.
Early this semester, my
Journalism 199 class went to the Blue Waters Supercomputing Facility and went
on a tour with an NCSA spokesperson, Trish Barker. She showed us what, when it
goes into operational phase, will be one of the largest, most powerful
supercomputers in the country; a revolution in efficient cooling and computing
speed.
It was a fantastic
experience and, for me, the most interesting and rewarding section of the
class. I mean, we’ve covered elections, seen printing presses, visited a
Herbarium, etc.; but nothing we’ve done yet matches up to the amount of
excitement I had after seeing the facility and that told me something.
I decided on Journalism
as a major because I generally liked everything
and wanted to report on everything.
But what I took away from this phenomenal experience is that I shouldn’t report
on everything.
Professor Follis told
us that we should find our own specializations, and that day I think I found
the one I want to follow – technology and science reporting. Throughout high
school I spent more time fiddling with my computer tower than anyone should.
And after that field trip, I found out how I could apply that interest to my
career.
Austin,
ReplyDeleteYour blog in the beginning had almost a mystery element to it. I really enjoyed it! I'm actually so happy that through this class you were able to discover what kind of reporting it is that you want to do. The only this your blog is missing is a title!
-Abigail
Austin-
ReplyDeleteI thought you did a fantastic job with the intro. It truly read like a story. I also thought it was interesting how you wrote your blog from a first person perspective and made it about your personal experience. Most of the blogs I read are from a first person perspective, now that I think about it. Like Abigail said, you just forgot the title.
Gwen
Austin, I really enjoyed the fact that you incorporated your own perspective and really tied your personal account in with what you were reporting on. it made things so much more poignant. It's pretty awesome that you have some inclination as to where you want your journalism career to go, that's cool to hear. Good job!
ReplyDelete-Alyssa