Internal Affairs

We’ve opened up a lot of chat about today’s brown bag, but one question remains unanswered.

Deputy Managing Editor Mark Edgar said he buy us passports if we didn’t have one. Was he serious? I think it’s a legitimate question, especially since the majority of us didn’t have passports. I think he was joking. We’ve already had way too many perks with these internships – a blog, free swag, brown bag meetings, and now candy thanks to Matthew Haag – to include passports.

I was told in 2005, when I began graduate school, that I needed a passport. I filled out all the appropriate paperwork and even got a copy of my birth certificate from my local vital records office. My grandmother offered to pay. I just never turned it in. I even lived next to a Post Office in Oakland, Calif. that accepted the applications. And the Walgreen's across the street took passport pictures. I just never got around to it.

There are a lot of international reporting courses at UC Berkeley. I never took one. I supplemented with multimedia and long form print in subjects that didn’t require me to be a globetrotter.

I still have the application. I even took it with me to an internship in Colorado last summer telling myself I would eventually take it to the right office. I never did.

I probably should get around to doing it now, especially since we were encouraged to do so. I wouldn’t want to be the one left behind in the event of a big story.