This week Trevor and Giana elaborate on the incredible pressure of deadline. As crazy as it looked on last night’s Paper episode, well, the drama can usually be traced back to one specific person…

He Said: Ah, yes, deadline. When it comes to deadline for me, I always just try to stay out of all the drama (which means just ignoring Adam). I usually spend the majority of deadline laying out my double truck (the center spread of the issue), fixing the infamous printer (that always needs fixing), or helping others out with laying out the pages.

This was the first deadline with our new jobs and it was, as you saw, one that looked very stressful. As drama-filled as it may have been, it all came back to one source: Adam. After overestimating how many pages we had to do, Adam freaked out. Cutting down our issue by four pages didn’t have to be that big of a deal. Hell, the job of determining how many pages we run each issue was not specifically left with the business manager… Adam gave himself that job. If it were up to me, we would have gone 32 pages from the start. Adam is one of my best friends, but it was just too much.

I would have love to seen Amanda step up during this first deadline, I really would have. Adam’s failures left a wide open opportunity for everyone, including myself, and Alex was the one to come through with some deadline magic, along with his trusty sidekick and sports editor, Reed. Again I stand correct in my previously made assertions regarding the leadership of the paper.

She Said: While you were all able to see our three-day deadline contrived into a mere 21 minutes, for those who have experienced it, you know it feels more like 21 days. The pressures and stress that go into staring into a dimly lit computer screen for three days and nights straight while trying to block out the 70 other students in the room scrambling around with their own problems can put almost anyone on edge.

This deadline was just like any other one. Adam has and always will be the loudest in the room and the one tries to take control over things that he doesn’t really have control over. After Adam finishes laying out the ads (which takes up about the first hour of deadline) he likes to find problems in the issue, whether or not they actually exist, and specifically likes to focus on my section. Adam is the one person that I will never be able to block out during deadline and since we’ve been close since middle school, I’m probably the only person who he allows to talk to him the way I do without him running out crying. I was always opposed to the 36-page issue and when my section was looking bad because Adam refused to stack ads I refused to let it go.

Amanda may have been able to prove her leadership during deadline had she finished her editorial on time. It’s happened to all of us at one point, when you get so behind on your stories because you spend so much time editing others’ stories. However, because of the turmoil in the class it was especially important for Amanda to step up, and since she couldn’t, the tensions within the classroom did not subside.

Nevertheless, whatever problems occur during deadline does not hurt the finishing product, and our first issue played a role in receiving an All-Florida award at the Florida Scholastic Press Association’s conference for the third year in a row.