Medill accepts Lia Lehrer into journalism program–press release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 26, 2006

EVANSTON, Ill.—This Halloween, Northwestern University sophomore Lia Lehrer will have two reasons to be happy.

In addition to celebrating her 20th birthday, she’ll start a new chapter in her life as a journalism major: She was accepted today into Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism.

“It feels good to finally have a major,” she said. “I’m sick of being ‘undecided.’”

Lehrer, a student from the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, found out she was accepted into Medill in an e-mail from Michele Bitoun, Medill’s Assistant Dean for Undergraduate Studies.

“We have a limited number of spots in the undergraduate journalism program,” Bitoun wrote in her e-mail, “[but] it was [Lehrer’s] passion, [her] journalism experience at the Daily and other publications, and [her] performance in Medill and Northwestern classes so far that demonstrated to me [her] potential to succeed here at Medill.”

Lehrer didn’t expect to attend NU when she applied her senior year of high school.

“It was too close to my Lincolnwood home,” she said, “and with my brother at NU and my dad and grandmother as alumni, I didn’t want to be just another Lehrer at NU.”

But it was insistence from her brother, Michael Lehrer, a Weinberg junior at the time, and from her former high school editor in chief Dan Macsai, then a Medill freshman, that compelled her to apply to NU.

“I’ve always wanted to do journalism, so I’m not quite sure why I applied to Weinberg,” Lia said.

Lia quickly involved herself in The Daily Northwestern as a copy editor, lived with fellow journalists in the Communications Residential College and took the two first-year Medill courses. By the end of her freshman year, she knew it was time to pick a major.

“None of the Weinberg majors felt right to me,” Lia said. “I knew I loved journalism, so I decided Medill was where I needed to be.” She then met with Bitoun to apply for an inter-school transfer.

Medill junior and CRC president Matt Baker, who copy edited with Lia at The Daily Northwestern last year, said he’s known she’d transfer into Medill since he met her.

“I couldn’t be more proud of Lia,” Baker said. “I just wonder what took her so long.”

Lia already took many of the journalism requirements and Medill distribution requirements and will continue to fulfill both. Now, she needs to select a Medill faculty adviser and choose a medium track—newspaper, magazine or broadcast.

She said she’s excited to become a better journalist and looks forward to going on her Teaching Media internship one quarter junior year.

Lia said she wants to thank all her friends, family members and professors who helped her with this decision.

“It might have taken me a little while to figure out,” Lia said, “but I’m confident now Medill is where I’m supposed to be.”

Lia’s guide to writing and speaking good…er, well

The world is full of them, and they are all around me. When I see them, I wince with excruciating pain. Their perpetrators should be jailed.

What are they? They are mistakes in grammar, spelling and word usage. And they’re everywhere.

Since I can’t take a big red pen and correct every error in sight or strike from the record everything anyone has ever said, I’d like to help the world out a bit by explaining some aspects of the English language to all of you here.

Lia’s Top 10 Grammar/Spelling/Word Usage Tips:

1) To / too / two

To = preposition. Too = also. Two = one plus one.

I am going TO the store. Oh yeah? Me TOO. The TWO of us should go together.

2) You’re / your

You’re is a contraction of “you are.” The apostrophe replaces the space and the “a.” Your means “belonging to you.”

YOU’RE pretty, but not as pretty as YOUR sister is.

3) It’s / its

It’s is a contraction of “it is.” Its means belonging to “it.”

IT’S a shame the dog doesn’t even know ITS own name.

Do NOT do this:

4) Their / they’re / there

Their = belonging to them. They’re = they are. There = not here.

THEY’RE gone. Where did they go? They went over THERE. Too bad, because I wanted to eat THEIR food.

5) Than / then

Than is used to compare things. Then is what happens after now.

You are better THAN he is at basketball. If you teach him how to play, THEN maybe he’ll be a better player.

6) Good / well

Good is an adjective (describes a noun), well is an adverb (describes a verb).

She sings WELL, but she’s not a GOOD dancer.

7) Everyday / every day

Everyday (one word) = adjective. Every day (two words) = adverb.

She usually wears her EVERYDAY clothes EVERY DAY of the week, but on Saturday, she dressed up.

Apostrophes in years

When describing a decade, just add an “s” at the end of the four-digit year. When you’re just using the two-digit year, add an “s” at the end, and add an apostrophe at the beginning.

Remember: an apostrophe means something is missing.

I was born in the late 1980s, but I listen to music from the ‘60s and ‘70s.

9) Freshman / freshmen

Freshman is singular and freshmen is plural; however, freshman can also be used as an adjective.

When in doubt, replace the words with sophomore or sophomores and you’ll know what to do.

Hey FRESHMEN! Come to the FRESHMAN Bonding Night. All the cool FRESHMEN will be there. But don’t worry, Mark won’t be there because he’s not a FRESHMAN. He’s a sophomore.

(Replace with “sophomore”: Hey sophomores! Come to the Sophomore Bonding Night. All the cool sophomores will be there. But don’t worry, Mark won’t be there because he’s not a sophomore. He’s a junior.)

10) Fewer than / less than

Fewer than is used for individual items, and less than is used for bulk or quantity.

FEWER THAN 20 people visited the restaurant and those people spent LESS THAN $100, so the owner had to go out of business. I went to the supermarket and bought LESS food THAN I bought yesterday, and I paid for it in the “10 Items or FEWER” line.

And there you have it: 10 easy guidelines to speaking and writing English properly. THEY’RE very useful, and knowing grammar WELL is better THAN sounding like an idiot. Use these rules EVERY DAY!

Come into my room–it’s as easy as 123. (PLUS! My Fall Quarter schedule.)

I love the single life.

No, I’m not talking about my lack of a love life. I’m talking about my lack of a roommate.

This year, I’m in the same dorm as last year (across the hall from my old room, actually), but in a single. Room 123 is tiny, but it’s my own personal little space, and I love it.

Step into my office…

It looks a lot like my room from last year, but I’ve got more pictures and posters up. You can’t see all the posters in this picture, but I’ve got posters of The Wizard of Oz, the Beatles, RENT and Harry Potter, bordered by pictures of my friends and family.

Here’s my desk. I’ve got Post-It notes, a dry erase board schedule I update daily and a mirror, underneath my Disney Princesses and Simpsons posters (the latter parodying the painting “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of la Grande Jatte”).

The entryway: a Seinfeld/Wizard of Oz poster, and a poster of Altar Boyz, the musical I’m seeing in a few weeks. Outside my room is my class schedule, which I will summarize below.

My door–a collection of everything pop culture that defines who I am. It also includes a map of the “L” where the stations are all anagrams, a printer test page (my color does indeed work) and a dry erase board.

That’s my room!

Now, I’ll give you the quick, obligatory summary of my schedule for Fall Quarter:

Social Inequality, Monday 11-12:20, Wednesday 10-12:20
A sociology class measuring inequalities in race, gender and class.

Hebrew III, Monday/Wednesday 1-1:50
Focusing on the Torah and its commentaries.

Introduction to Statistics, Tuesday/Thursday 9:30-10:50
A large percentage of Northwestern students (including 100% of Medill students) are required to take this course to learn to measure and analyze statistics. Did you know that 48.7% of statistics are made up on the spot?

American Government and Politics, Tuesday/Thursday 3:30-4:50
An introduction to how our government functions.

Thanks for virtually visiting my room. Stop by sometime!

You, too, will want to be single.

An apple a day…

I’ve been eating approximately one apple per day.

Instead of doctors keeping away from me, though, I continue to be surrounded by professors with doctorates and students studying pre-med.

An open letter to taxi drivers

Dear taxi drivers,

I have a few suggestions on how you could improve your service just a bit.

First of all, please do not be 50 minutes late. I realize that finding me on Big Tree Lane must be difficult because there are many Lanes with Big Trees, but the synagogue is at the one near Glenview Road and Skokie Boulevard. Your company policy is that you’ll arrive within 15 minutes of the scheduled pickup time. Maybe you misheard that and came within 50 minutes.

Next, please learn where you are going. You’ve know. the pickup and drop-off addresses since 2 a.m. this morning when I scheduled you to pick me up. Maybe between then and tonight you could have used Google Maps or Mapquest. You’re lucky I knew how to get to my destination.

Please don’t send or receive text messages while you’re driving me. I value my life.

Finally, please do not play Jesus music in the cab. I’m pretty comfortable with my current religious choice, and I’m not planning on converting any time soon.

Thanks,
Lia