Midterms have passed, and I think I came through them relatively unscathed – I’m actually doing well in all my classes. Which is great, because the lures of New York City entertainment are keeping me incredibly busy. It’s somewhat of a relief that I’ve got away with juggling everything. So far.

One good thing that SBU does to encourage participation in on-campus clubs is to have Campus Life Time. It’s a block of time on Wednesday afternoons when no classes are scheduled, and all the clubs tend to have their meetings during that time. I’ve joined SBU-TV, the on-campus cable TV channel. It looks like production is about to begin on a couple of shows. I’m really looking forward to be able to get some kind of experience in making TV. The pre-production phases have definitely been interesting so far.

It was so cool to see some real seasonal change. The fall colours here were incredibly pretty for a couple of weeks, before some heavy rains came and sent all the leaves to the ground. I overheard someone from Massachusetts saying that the Long Island fall didn’t quite live up to what they’re used to. But coming from Brisbane, I have a very low baseline for this kind of thing. I was really impressed.

As I mentioned, New York has been keeping me busy. The wonder and amazement of just getting on a train and then being thrown into the middle of midtown still hasn’t quite worn off. This weekend was the New York Comedy Festival, and there were some amazing events put on in conjunction with The Paley Center for Media. I was able to go to a panel on “Television Writing in the Internet Age”, which featured the writer/producers of some of my favourite shows (including The Daily Show, Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons) basically saying that television-internet convergence hasn’t influenced the way they make their shows all that much. The moderator didn’t believe them, there was some awkwardly combative arguing going on, and it was all incredibly educational since it’s a topic I’ve gotten interested in while doing Media Studies at UQ. There was also a panel featuring the writers of The Colbert Report, and since I spent some of last weekend back in Red Bank, New Jersey seeing Stephen Colbert give a two-hour long out-of-character interview as part of a benefit for the Two River Theatre Company, I’ve become blissfully overloaded on hearing about how that show is made. It’s been so much fun.

Thanksgiving break is coming up in a few weeks. I’m planning on going to Washington DC, so despite how much I’m loving being so close to New York City and everything it has to offer, it’s going to be really great to get some travelling done!