To Summarize, or not to Summarize

How does one summarize a summarizing exercise… I have no idea, and it is taking me an increasingly vast period of time to think of the best way to express the happenings of last week. Now logically this could be the conclusion as to why I, like many others in our class, was only capable of summarizing three articles in the time allotted to us. It is not a lack of motivation that limits my writing abilities but a slightly obsessive compulsive perfectionist issue I find myself faced with. I refuse to mark a piece of writing as completed unless it is something I am perfectly happy with. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, when you consider the horrific amount of assignments I did last year the day they were due, resulting in not so amazing marks as most of these were 3,000 page research essays. My thought process at the beginning of this year was that in an attempt to pull up my unsatisfying grades from last term I would actually commit myself to my studies, Maybe spending that extra time and effort this year would pay-off; Wrong. Putting in the extra effort will seemingly be useful, but I am finding that taking the extra time will not be a success, as in the newsroom deadlines jump out at you like a clown hiding in your closet. This particular exercise proved to be helpful in providing me with areas of interest that I need to work on, and helped me to discover that my ability to put out a 3,000 word essay in 30 minutes is indeed a useful trait in this industry. In the end I found the exercise to be an enjoyable experience, though it was somewhat frustrating that I didn’t get through more of the articles. I now have an idea in my head of what is expected of me; as previous to this I had no idea what to expect in Journalism school.