There is a certain buzz of excitement as the crowd begins to rise from their seats like zombies looking for brains. A young man takes to the ice with the black drawstring bag. The zombie crowd knows what time it is.It’s time for the Castleton State College students interning for the Adirondack Phantoms hockey team to hand T-shirts to the mascot to be hucked into the crowd.

An internship with the Philadelphia Flyers minor league hockey team that you would think to be clawed at by every upstate New York college and even local high school students is dominated by Castleton students.

“I used to be nervous, but not anymore, I’m over it. I could care less about falling in front of a sellout crowd,” said Ryan Piluski a junior and triple major at Castleton.

Fellow intern and Castleton student Jared Haskins agrees.

“It is just kind of like you forget that everyone is out in the crowd and focus on what you are doing,” Haskins, is a senior majoring in communications.

There are only four total game-night crewmembers and three are Castleton students. There is room for a few more interns, but the crew works so well together that their boss, Brenna Temple, doesn’t need to hire anyone else.

“I feel like I got lucky with the guys. Ya’ll are so dependable compared to past interns,” said Temple in her Texan accent.

Although the interns say they’re having fun, the two-hour round trip to the Glens Falls Civic Center is a bit of a drag. And because it’s an unpaid internship, the drive requires shelling out gas money.

While most other internships are during the weekday or after school, most of the Phantoms games are on weekends and sometimes back-to-back nights. So weekends for these students are consumed by games. But the experience -tion that it was going to begin with full frontal nudity, and end with profanity – and it did. It started with a picture of naked protestor’s and ended with a scene from Pulp Fiction.

“If it’s gonna be my presentation, then damnit there’s gonna be pubic hair!” Koretsky exclaimed.

It was Koretzky’s fifth year at the convention and he said that he gets more and more bitter and profane as time goes on.

The next day hosted a keynote speaker from ABC Nightline’s, Terry Moran. Moran spoke about all the new and instant sources of media such as blogs, news outlets, web outlets, and tweets. All the new sources, Moran said, are the cause to journalism’s struggle.

“What counts as fact is what they prefer,” Moran said.

Then Moran spoke the words that many of the students were thinking.

“Journalism is dying,” Moran said as he explained that ABC is cutting 400 jobs.

But Moran would inspire the students with a challenge.

“Resist temptations of shouters and go discover a world as it is,” said Moran. “Discover the facts.

We’re living in a republic of noise that thrives on absolutist shouting and name-calling.”

Moran closed his inspiring speech with a statement that rang in the students’ ears.

“I greet you at the beginning of a great career,” Moran said.