Ken Burns... You Better Watch Your Ass!

Well, as it so happens, my semester is finally winding down. I have just completed three finals one day. First, a cultural theory course followed by a journalism course where I had to turn in the project at 2:30 -- the only problem being that I had not done any interviews or done all of my research. I finished it at 2:25, ran to turn it in, and then took another exam on the history of the American city -- a slide show written exam -- fifteen minutes later.

Long story short, I am just about done.

Fun fact: last Sunday I stayed up all night working on the baseball project, making sure everything ended up going well. Around six or seven in the morning, I discovered another piece of information that was undocumented by other baseball books -- thus helping my research paper. Anyway, I stayed up all night working on it. When it finally came time to turn it in on Tuesday, me and about ten of my classmates arrived early with nothing left to do. It is quite common for us to show up early and joke around, but this was different; we had just accomplished something.

To celebrate, we decided to go to Sidebar, a popular bar (voted seventh best after-work bar in Atlanta) about 100 feet away from the Aderhold Building -- where our class is located -- we stayed, had drink or two, and then turned in our paper. After turning in our paper, we were done for the evening. Normally, we would have had a class presentation or rehersal for our final presentations of our papers, but because the professor was absent we were allowed to leave. The second I turned in my paper I turned to my classmates and said, "To the Sidebar!!!" and sure enough, about a third of us (and the cool third at that) decided to join us. Nothing like drinking when you should be in school.

I've been drinking with a couple of them throughout the semester, but I've never been a Pied Piper of alcohol, I liked it.

Oh, and in case why you're wondering what Ken Burns has to do with this, my research paper was on baseball. I covered the rise, operation, and downfall of the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players (NA), covering the years 1869-1876 to include the first professional baseball team. I plan on releasing this in a nine part series, hoping to make the articles fit a specific aspect of the era.