By Diane Lee, CQS ‘10

I rented an apartment in this building within walking distance of downtown Bend, Ore. It had a living room, kitchen area, two bathrooms and a king-size bed with more pillows than I needed. I felt at home.

I met a lot of transplants from Hawaii in Bend and even found two Hawaiian restaurants, which helped ease my homesickness. The ultimate comfort food was a Hawaiian plate lunch, which included teriyaki chicken, white rice and macaroni salad.

The news department occupies The Bulletin’s upper level, where I spent most of my time. The circulation and advertising departments are housed on the lower level. The printing press is in a building next door.

A Chips Quinn mouse pad greeted me at work each day. It was there when I arrived in February. Initially I relied on my audio recorder to capture quotes but soon was filling my yellow notepad with meticulous notes, which helped improve my writing.

Early in my internship, I started a list of “lessons learned” and added to it as the days passed. My first lesson: “Don’t panic.” Another important one: “Get people to spell their first and last name.”

The Bulletin covers a lot of ground as the major daily newspaper in Central Oregon. The area is gorgeous with snow-capped mountains, evergreens, deserts and rivers. I spent a lot of time on this stretch of road, U.S. Highway 97, which took me north to Redmond, Terrebonne and Madras, and south to Sunriver and La Pine.

Assigned to cover the weekly education feature (“ed feech”) for the Wednesday paper, I worked hard to include some of the more distant schools that weren’t routinely covered. I enjoyed these assignments. The challenge was getting the elementary and middle school students to respond to my questions with more than the typical “It was cool” or “I liked it.”

My 12 weeks on the city desk were followed by 12 more as a multimedia producer for the Web desk. It was an awesome opportunity to attend new events, including a rodeo, dog show and national moustache and beard competition. I produced a video story about my ride in a hot-air balloon during the Balloons Over Bend festival. The scariest part was signing my life away on a release form that included the words “death” and “injury.” But our balloon pilot got us back safely.

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Diane Lee (Spring 2010) is a multimedia intern for The Bulletin in Bend, Ore., where she was a Chips Quinn Scholar reporter intern for 12 weeks in the spring. Lee has a B.A. in communication with a concentration in journalism from Bradley University in Peoria, Ill., and an A.A. in liberal arts from Kapiolani Community College. Lee got her start as a contributing writer for her community-college newspaper, The Kapio Newspress, then became staff writer and later associate editor. She blogged about her experience transitioning from a two-year college to four-year university for ACT, Inc., the education organization known for its college-admission tests. She has held internships at the Honolulu Advertiser, WCBU Public Radio in Peoria, and NPR’s “Morning Edition” in Washington, D.C.