Would you get arrested for your job?

Last Friday, Alex and I almost did.

If you're an FGCU student odds are you spend your weekends at the (yes, Alex, THE) Gulf Coast Town Center. However, they just changed the hours of liquor sales from 2 a.m. to 1 a.m.

The rumor is that the goal is to make the Gulf Coast Town Center more "family friendly," but with establishments like BAR Louie, Miller's ALE house, and Cigar BAR, the bartenders are going to have to invest in a Chuckie Cheese costume to get those six-year-old birthday parties booked anytime soon.

Alex, his friend Jake and I met up in front of Border's without much of a plan. We had a camera and our makeshift press passes so we set off going bar to bar to ask for interviews.

An intern's rite of passage... high school football.

In any career, you've gotta start at the bottom and work your way up.

Most interns working at office jobs find an endless stream of faxing, brewing bitter coffee, and random monotonous tasks that would make even the Wal-Mart greeter's job look stimulating. But if you find yourself in the environment you love - going home every night with more paper cuts than decimal places on your paycheck (if you are lucky enough to be paid at all) is absolutely dandy.

The journalism world, I've discovered, requires less faxing but still has its own rite of passage: high school football.

Why high school football? Its relatively easy, there's usually more games than reporters, and if misspell the 3rd-chair trumpet player's last name, no one really notices.

Its usually pretty simple stuff, fan photos with a point-and-shoot camera or experimental projects.

When it comes to covering high school football games, I'm no rookie. This is my sophomore season; I spent the 2008 season shooting highlight videos for the Fort Myers News-Press and this year shooting video for the Naples Daily News. Regardless of newspaper or county, school or season, some things never change.

The notebook experiment

Being an intern, I'm not blessed with the universal media passport a.k.a. press pass, and until recently I didn't even have a name badge. So more often than not, I have to do a little convincing to get admitted into the games. After a while, I started to notice that when I carried my pink notebook under my arm, it was like my credentials skyrocketed.

Almost every time, the band booster parent taking tickets at the gate would knit their brow and purse their lips, but as soon as their eyes fell to the notebook under my arm, I could almost hear them think: "Oh, okay, she has a notebook. She's legit."

"Yearbook staff?"

I can admit it - I look really, really young (I'm 20). Wipe off the mascara, throw a Hollister t-shirt over my head and you'd probably ask to see my driving permit. Every Friday night, I always get at least one person - sometimes a student, sometimes a parent - thinking I'm on the yearbook staff. Usually the conversation goes as follows:

Fan: Can I see the picture?
Me: Uh, yeah, okay.
Fan: COOL! Are you gonna put this in the yearbook?
Me: Well... no.
Fan: Aw, why not?
Me: I work for the newspaper.
Fan: Really? They hire high school kids?
Me: I'm not in high school... I go to FGCU.
Fan: ...oh.

Everything aside, covering high school football does have its perks, and I actually really enjoy going to the games. I don't mind hot dogs for dinner every Friday (I really love hot dogs), and getting to make a trip to my alma matter is always interesting (and, thankfully, the one school I didn't have to argue my way into.)

I'm also a PR intern for the Florida Everblades... except that requires more faxing.

I'm really good at embarrassing myself in front of celebrities part 2

Having a birthday in the 1980s has thankfully lead me to avert the current frenzy of Disney’s factory-produced, long-haired, skinny-jeans-clad trio the Jonas Brothers. I assumed that my graduation from high school immediately excluded me from hyperventilating at one sight of a young(ish) male with a musical instrument... Until last August.

One night, I was hanging out at Derek’s house, when, between facebook chatting, I came across an ad on a local radio station’s website. The front banner read, “ SEE JOHN MAYER FRONT ROW!” Previously, I thought I had a better chance of my Macbook instantly transforming into solid gold and spitting Gucci handbags out of the CD drive than meeting John Mayer. I frantically clicked the link, wondering how quickly I was going to be able to make the doe eyed, tattooed, blues singing, guitar player my boyfriend. As the page loaded, I discovered the fine print. The lanky singer is featured on the gossip blogs as quite the Casanova, so it was no surprise the contest was advertised as a,“ John Mayer ex-girlfriend look-a-like contest.”

“Caity!” Derek exclaimed. “ You should so enter this!”