It's now the Annual African American Heritage Festival where there is a week of events dedicated to Black culture awareness and celebration. This week is always fun beacuse there's always something to do. From a Poetry Slam, Talent Show, Gospel Fest, Step Showand more, the the list of events goes on and on. I wasn't able to attend the Gospel Fest this year since Buckeye TV taped our first news show that day, and I was the Entertainment correspondent.

On Friday we had the 1st African American Alumni Reunion where Black OSU graduates were asked to come back to reconnect and fellowship with other Black grads and students. I sang with the Gospel Choir for the Reunion Gospel concert. I can't imagine just yet how it will feel to be totally done with Undergrad and then coming back to OSU to get back together with old friends. That will be the day!

Before I went to the Step Show on Saturday, I served as a site leader for USG's Rock the Block Community Service project. I was a little doubtful about volunteering because it was raining hard and most of the projects consist of campus clean-ups outside. Thankfully, the rainfall subsided, and ironically, I got assigned the Phi Delta Theta Fraternity as my group to lead to do the community service. I didn't know how I was going to be able to lead a bunch of boys and let along frat boys. But these guys were actually pretty cool and respected me. We had to walk all the way down to 8th Ave and Hamlet Dr. to the Hucklebury House(Teen Runaway Shelter) where we painted 3 rooms.

The guys were really complaining a lot and even blaming me for having to paint, but they still completed the project, and I enjoyed helping out a bit since painting is kind of fun. They said they would have much rather picked up trash outside. But I would have hated just being stuck to trash pick-up because interaction with people is more exciting and rewarding for me, and plus it's indoors! We painted for about 3 hours, which the guys were a little mad at, but I tried to encourage them that they were making a difference, and I guess they appreciated the experience.

*I must comment on how I was able to get an exclusive interview with the R&B sensation, known as Ne-Yo!!! The Lantern editor set it up for me and gave me his publicist's number so I was able to ask him a couple of questions about his life and favorites. I didn't believe this was going to happen at first because everytime the editor tried to set up an interview with a celeb for me, it never happened. Like the publicist wouldn't contact me or the artist would be totally unavailable.

I really thought the same runaround was going to happen again since Ne-Yo's P.R. person rescheduled me twice and didn't even contact me till weeks later, but behold: I finally received a phone call from him, and he was so nice! Sure it was via phone and it sounded like he was eating something, but he still answered all my questions! We talked for about 15 minutes and I must've been slightly nervous since I did not ask him anything about his new album! In fact, I didn't even know he was coming out with something till I checked his website after. Note to Aspiring Journalists: Please do all you research of your interviewee prior to the interview, and make sure it's thorough!

Here's The Lantern article of our interview:http://media.www.thelantern.com/media/storage/paper333/news/2008/04/25/Arts/Rb.SingerSongwriter.Makes.His.Big.Move-3350343.shtml