Please Log in or Register

The Upstart

Covering the MIPA Summer Journalism Workshop

  • Home
  • Narratives
  • News Briefs
    • Announcements
  • Trends
  • Profiles
  • Commentary
  • Visuals
    • Photography
    • Design
    • Video
    • Data Visualizations
  • About
  • Resources
  • Submitted Work
    • Design & Graphics
    • Multimedia
    • Photography
    • Writing
  • Contribute
  • Home
  • Narratives
  • Q & A with (a very pregnant) Sara-Beth O'Connor
  • Narratives, Profiles, Writing

Q & A with (a very pregnant) Sara-Beth O’Connor

  • August 1, 2012
  • by SamanthaVanHoef
  • 0 Comments
  • Share
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Digg
  • Tags
  • MIPA 2012
  • oconnor
  • pregnancy
  • Q&A
  • Sara-Beth

Sara-Beth O’Connor is the advisor of  The Comets’ Tale from Grand Ledge High School and now the yearbook advisor as well. Students would recognize her as the pregnant woman showing up throughout the MIPA days-but only on the main floors, because at five days OVERDUE to have her first child, she is still at MIPA 2012 and avoiding challenge of climbing a flight of stairs.

Q: What is it like being very pregnant at this MIPA conference?
A: It is disappointing that I can’t walk to my students classes because I get too hot. I obviously have them coming down to me as opposed to going up to their dorms so I can work on any projects with them. I don’t like that I’m not spending the night either…I enjoy hanging out with all the instructors. My old newspaper teacher instructs here so we co-teach an InDesign class, but I didn’t do that this year because I thought i was having my baby this week, but he’s staying up there.But I feel like everyone is staring at me, like I’m some sort of “Sixteen and Pregnant” even though I do not look like I’m 16. I actually went to camp here when I was 17, I was in the Editors-In-Chief class for newspaper. but there were a lot of the same instructors here, so I remember like Julie Price, Pam Bunka, and Bobby Hawthorne. It used to be that you took a class and you got to take an elective class, so I took Bobby’s column writing elective class.

Q: Is there one thing you hope your students take away from MIPA 2012?
A: Besides being fired up for scholastic journalism? I hope they all take this into use in their future endeavors whether it be journalism or not, so that this wasn’t a complete waste of their summer.

Q: How many days overdue are you?
A: 5 days.

Q: Are you scared every waking moment that you’re going to go into labor?
A: I wish every waking moment I was in labor. I don’t know why they even give you a due date…they should just say, ‘oh, sometime at the end of the summer you’ll have a baby.’ That’s what they should say.

Q: What was the biggest change as an advisor you had to adjust to from being pregnant?
A: The hardest part was not telling the kids when I first found out. I was fortunate enough to have a student teacher, so she was teaching at times I could hide things better. But towards the end I really did not want to stand up anymore, so I ended up sitting down. That was the hardest part. And my belly would hit people and that’s gross. Like I’d always hit students when I was trying to use the board to highlight stuff.

And then I broke up a fight..and I went into labor. But then I had to take a week off of school, it was really stressful. But we got a lot of work done via Google Docs.

Q: And you’re having a boy…so do you have a name picked out?
A: Yes we are. But we can’t tell.

Q: How has your relationship changed because of pregnancy?
A: We can’t just go play tennis or go for runs or ride bikes. We usually play tennis all summer and are really active, but we do go for walks three times a day to try to get the baby out. 

Q: What are you most excited about for after you have the baby?
A: I’m excited to see who he looks like. I hope he looks like me. 

The most disappointing part of our life right now, is we based part of our day around a sale on diapers (Buy 3 packs get $10 back on purchase).

I’m really excited to see what he says to me. And to wear regular clothes again.

SAMANTHA VANHOEF / THE UPSTART

Members of Grand Ledge High School’s “The Comets’ Tale” sit around advisor Sara-Beth O’Connor. O’Connor is now 5 days overdue to have her first child and still attending the MIPA workshop.

About SamanthaVanHoef

See the 13 posts that SamanthaVanHoef has written.

No Responses to “Q & A with (a very pregnant) Sara-Beth O’Connor” »

No comments yet. But, you can start a conversation of your own on this topic.

What do you think?

Let us know what you think of Q & A with (a very pregnant) Sara-Beth O’Connor. Please only provide constructive feedback, and be nice! You can use Gravatar to upload an avatar that will appear next to your comment.





Related Posts

  • July 31, 2019
    MIPA staff members share words of wisdom for students
  • July 31, 2019
    Sara-Beth Badalamente takes over as MIPA director

Recent Posts

  • August 1, 2019
    MIPA Day 4 features more volleyball, variety show
  • August 1, 2019
    Volleyball 2019: highlight reel
  • July 31, 2019
    What MIPA means to MIPA-goers
  • July 31, 2019
    MIPA staff members share words of wisdom for students

Archives

  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • August 2016
  • July 2015
  • August 2014
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010

Categories

  • Commentary
  • Narratives
  • News Briefs
    • Announcements
  • Profiles
  • Submitted Work
    • Design & Graphics
    • Multimedia
    • Photography
    • Writing
  • Trends
  • Visuals
    • Data Visualizations
    • Design
    • Photography
    • Video
MIPA School of Journalism Michigan State University

Contact Us

MIPA
404 Wilson Road, Rm 305
East Lansing, MI 48824
Phone: (517) 353-6761
Fax: (517) 355-7710

Copyright

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Elsewhere

  • Twitter

    Follow us on Twitter

  • Facebook

    Fan us on Facebook

  • Flickr

    See our photos on Flickr

Links

  • MIPA
  • School of Journalism
  • MSU