Now that I finally looked through this evaluation form I noticed something interesting. One of the about two dozen skills to be ranked on my upcoming evaluation is “Consistently breaks news online.”

I guess that makes it a priority (as if I didn’t know).

But it’s also funny because it’s in the section above deadlines for daily and enterprise stories. Isn’t the point the deadline is always now?

When I come across something unfamiliar and want a quick synopsis of something, I generally begin by typing it into Google. Usually, one of the top five or so results is a Wikipedia entry.

So when my friend pointed out this doll for sale on eBay going for $1,200 I was floored. Why the heck would anyone pay that, I wondered. Apparently, whoever Sasha is is a big deal.

I turned to Google to find out about these dolls. A bunch of collectors came up and a few eBay auctions, and this quick-hit synopsis of the craze on About.com was very helpful.

But where was Wikipedia in all this?

We often joke in the newsroom that Wikipedia is omniscient (hey I can’t use big words in the paper, so when I can sneak them in conversation, I do). That is to say, Wikipedia is all knowing.

My prior usage of Wikipedia as a quick-hit summary for things when I don’t particularly care about the authority of the information, when I’m just generally curious about something random, like say why an ugly doll would net $1,000+, has always netted decent results.

But I learned that apparently all the entries on Wikipedia haven’t been created yet, as I kind of assumed they had. Sasha Serie is not in their index. I was able to, after trying to think of several combinations including the creator’s name, find out that there is a listing for “Sasha dolls” that deals with this. But it still did not come up in my Google searches, and that entry could use some sprucing up.

Being that it is Wikipedia, I could try and fix it up (maybe add a photo or some annotations — where’s this information from?!). But I won’t because I don’t know much about it and would have to rely on Google to tell me, thus I’d find myself in that perpetual cycle. My favorite part of that entry is this: Those who Google ’sasha dolls’ or ‘Sasha Morgenthaler’ will find themselves offered a wealth of Sasha-related sites - some historically-oriented, some devoted to their owners’ Sasha collections, some selling dolls or dolls’ clothing. LOL. No links. Just tell them to Google it. Which is kind of ironic for my purposes, being I was trying to Google to find the Wikipedia entry, and now the entry is telling me to Google the topic. Here we go in that cycle again.

In the end it’s irrelevant anyway: I’m not interested in any doll that costs nearly as much as my computer. No thanks. But seriously. $1,200 for a doll?

“Think wrongly, if you please, but in all cases think for yourself.”
— Doris Lessing

Gulp.

That was the first thought I had when my boss handed me a form this morning and said, “Self-evaluation. It’s due Dec. 27. Just attach any narrative at the end.”

Um. OK. I can do that. Even though I’ve never done it before. Ever.

Gulp.

How do I do that? Narrative of what? What am I supposed to do with these pages? What do these questions mean? Where does this form go? Who sees it? What do my answers matter? What if I’d rather explain than rank? What if I really fall between two rankings? What if I don’t want to play along? What if I just fill in all 1s and set my expectations low? What if I overshoot, and he really thinks I’m terrible and will wonder WTH was going through my mind? What if I undershoot and he realizes I think I suck? What if I do suck? What if he regrets hiring me? What if he lets me go? What if… I’m blowing this all out of proportion? I know.

Gulp.

I knew this day was coming. A year ago this weekend, I graduated. A year ago next week, I was interviewing for this position. A year ago next month, I established residency in the Hoosier state.

• What have I learned over the past year? (Too much to put into words, and yet, never enough.)
• What have I accomplished with my rookie year? (A lot, but not as much as I hoped.)
• What have I to show for the first 52 weeks of my professional life? (More bylines than I thought possible — lessons attached to most. Connections I couldn’t have fathomed. Golden opportunities I lucked into. But too many questions unanswered, lessons unlearned, personal goals not met.)

But what’s more, or at least, all I can think of at this point:

• What haven’t I learned that I should have? (A lot, I’m sure.)
• What haven’t I accomplished with my rookie year? (Too much.)
• What haven’t I got to show for my first 52 weeks of my professional life? (More than I’d like to admit.)

I don’t like this feeling of uncertainty. It’s unbecoming. I am more a “pull off the band aid quickly” type of person. When I sit around and actually dwell on this, I grow less confident instead of more. I don’t like that.

Am I proud of what I have done here? Hell yes. I should be! I’m working way too hard not to be.

I stumbled my way through many difficult tasks/stories this year with gusto. I do feel like I am doing well overall, though certainly I have room to improve. (Hello, if I didn’t realize that I’d be delusional.) But just today, four different people on my beat commented to me — one through e-mail, one passing in the hall, one in an office as I was signing into a school and one in a phone conversation — on what a “great job” I have been doing on this beat. Three of the four have been part of less than positive coverage within the past month — so it’s not even me doing a great job making them look good! I don’t look to external validation, but I do feel like to the readers and to the members of the community I cover, I have proven myself and made a positive impact.

But that’s not the point of the self-evaluation. Is it? The real challenge is have I proven myself to my toughest critic: me.

And after the self-eval, have I proven myself to the powers that be?

And beyond that, to the entire point of an annual review: What can I take from all I have learned and how can I apply it to making me better?

I wish I could pull that band aid off right now. But ah las, maybe it’s best to leave it on a little while longer and let things fall as they may. Good, bad, indifferent.

Today, I learned a something I can’t believe nobody told me before.

I cover 26 public school corporations. (That’s what they call districts in Indiana.) There’s about 40,000 students among them. But while I do cover all those districts, I tend to stick mostly to the three districts in this county (admittedly, they account for more than half of the student population). So, I don’t get out to the “region” districts very frequently. Consequently, my contacts there are, shall we say, lacking.

When stories pop up that require me to find “real people” from those areas (i.e. impact sources, which we are all but mandated to include in EVERYTHING), it’s not always easy. Here, I usually know parent council members or a parent or two at the school or at least the principal well enough that he or she can help point me in the right direction, or I can always stop by a school at dismissal to grab someone. But, at schools an hour or more away from here, especially on stacked days like today where long-shot phone trees don’t work, this isn’t really an option. I struggle with it.

Last Friday, one of the five stories I wrote (Fridays are always my busiest day) was about a consolidation study being conducted in one of the counties. I talked to the people actually involved, and I talked to the group chosen to do the study (which will begin next year). I made a feeble attempt to find a “real person” through a contact or two, but by 7:30 p.m. after starting around 9 a.m., I ran out of time and motivation. My story was solid except impact sources.

My editor had the reporter on Saturday, who had a lighter schedule than typical, make some calls and write into my story with parents. Whatever. He easily found three parents. I reasoned that he’s older, wiser and better connected than I am (having worked at the paper almost 30 years, all of those are true statements), so it was easier for him to make those calls and find those people.

Turns out, I could have found them just as easily. I just didn’t know where to look.

Today, a state report was released that recommends schools do basically exactly what the study I wrote about is considering. I got pegged, rightly, to do a schools reaction piece to complement the news of the report.

I needed “real people” to comment, and though often I find myself grasping at straws for the usefulness of those sources in stories, this was one instance where there was no question that was a needed voice. But how to find them?

I mentioned to my editor I had the local professor who advised the commission and school officials, but I needed some parents. He made the off comment that the way the reporter found people on Saturday was looking for unique names on honor rolls and finding it in the phone book.

My reaction: “OMG are you serious?! Why didn’t I think of that?” That was non-verbal of course, because I felt like an idiot for not having thought of that before. Genius.

I mean, we run honor rolls for 26 school corporations, dozens of schools, etc. on the Communities page. We archive them all. Many have hundreds of names of students. Names that are tied to parents, who therefore obviously have a vested interest in the schools, who therefore might have something intelligent to say about the schools when topics requiring that opinion arise.

So this afternoon, it took a few attempts to call someone who answered. But all told, it took less than 15 minutes to find a “real person” who rounded out tomorrow’s story well. Way less effort was needed than I’d usually have to give. Duh!

It was “ding, ding, ding” in my brain. I can’t believe it’s been almost a year and nobody ever gave me this advice tip before.

I’m sure there are other old-hat tricks that nobody has thought to share with the rookie, but man, this just makes so much sense I really was dumb founded I didn’t think of it myself. So, anyone reading this with their own brilliant reporting tips, by all means, share the wealth.

For your amusement because it made me smile a little on a down day:

Courtesy of What The Duck, a very funny strip about life as a photographer.

“All progress depends on the unreasonable man. The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.”
— George Bernard Shaw

“Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion.”
— Jack Kerouac

(Stolen from Rachel, who apparently stole it from Google?)

Today I think was the first time I really knew my education reporting here had made an impact. Not just in an, “I appreciated your story,” or “You did a nice job covering that issue,” or even “Thank you for bringing X to light, too many people don’t know about it,” way. No, it made an institutional difference. And yet, when the man I was talking to told me, he apologized thinking I wouldn’t want to hear.

I’m working on a story about parental involvement in one local school corporation. This year they have made this a huge priority. I keep hearing it, left, right, center. Parents, principals, etc. They’re even paying to send teams from three of the schools to a parent leadership academy to develop more parent-focused programs for the schools. In short, the district is making, if not strides, an honest to God effort, and the teams are getting ready to begin implementing what they’ve been studying/planning this coming semester.

Insert me. I’m following up on this academy group. I talked to a few administrators, a counselor and a few parents. Another parent called me back tonight. I asked him how he got involved and why. His reply?

“You probably don’t want to hear this, but honestly it was all the bad press (the school) and (the school district) were getting in the J&C. I kept reading it and thought it was giving a bad impression about the schools. So I wanted to get more people involved. So I approached (the superintendent) and asked what I could do. …”

I could have chosen to take it the way I take many complaints about how negative the paper is regarding that school. I could point to the dozens of stories I alone have written this year about positive things happening there. I could point to the stories that are perceived as negative and, at the least, show they are balanced and fair. I could tell him, I can’t control the news that comes out of the school — if you have low graduation rates or high incidence of violence, you should be held accountable.

But I didn’t.

Instead, it dawned on me this man, having gotten sick of reading about negative things in the schools, took it upon himself to improve the schools. And the district has joined him to devote significant resources (that parent academy isn’t cheap, to say nothing of the cost of staff time to implement the programs they’re developing) to see its students have a better chance at success.

Holy crap, I thought. In a roundabout way, I did that. It feels good to make an impact, even if it’s not in the way I intended.

“I’d rather be a failure at something I love than a success at something I hate.”
— George Burns