Hello everyone,
Long time no talk. Well, I would have had other blog posts up but there hasn't really been much to talk about. As you may have seen from our Facebooks, Mere and I have finished our first year in grad school and are gearing up for our second one. I would announce my grades, but I haven't gotten any of them in yet so I have no idea as to what they are. I'm thinking two As and a B though, as one class was actually pretty difficult. (Let me tell you, don't ever use SPSS unless you absolutely have to, it's a nightmare). I know the classes I'm going to be taking next semester: Sports Journalism, Sports and Recreation Marketing, and Television and Society. I'm really excited for the Sports Journalism class; not only is it something that will bring in my interests to work on, but it will also help me with my work at S4 as well as an internship I just started with Live Out: The Outdoor Social Network. I'm waiting for my project topic to be approved and because of the fact that I'm doing a project, I don't have to take a summer class. Which is great in case I ever need to/want to go home or if there's something that I need to help someone else with. However, as many knows that means I have to look for a job. I've already had a interview somewhere so far, and I'm setting up an interview at another place so I'm crossing my fingers that I get something. Though I have been told by both representatives that looked over it, that I have an impressive resume. *Pats self on the back*. What else can I tell you? I have more time to write now, so I'm going back and editing Two Pair one more time (let me tell you, editing is never finished) as well as getting started on a few more ideas that will work towards other book ideas that we've had for a while. It's just a matter of time of figuring out what I want to write and not losing motivation or inspiration for it. But with so many ideas, it'll be easy to jump around and get a multitude of projects started so that'll be fun. I hope everyone has a great end of the semester, graduation, and summer break! Peace. :)
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I meant to post this blog yesterday but I was too busy being excited for the new episode of Flash that I completely forgot. Seriously, if you don't watch that show then you're missing out. It's one of the better CW shows out now (including Arrow, which Flash is a spin-off from) and doesn't really fall under the 'villain of the week' thing like Smallville did.
Anyway, just some things that I wanted to update everyone with. If you've seen my last blog post you would have seen that I am working on a lot of writing projects, but most specifically on what is (for now) titled Reagan. Yes, it's a 'sub-story' off of our Quadruple of Nothing series that's all about Reagan. Well, not all about her as there are many other characters in it and it does shift POVs sometimes, though I may just keep it form hers in first person. I haven't written in first person in a while. I can't tell you a lot about it, but I will tell you that it is set between Four of a Kind and Royal Flush just so you have an idea of the timeline. That and I recently had been able to sit down and interview skateboarder/photographer Sierra Prescott for S4. Not only does she skateboard really well, but she also has a career in photography of the same field as well as for those that are living on the edge in some way. She's taken a lot of great shots and being able to interview her and get her ideas on the industry was fun. (*Ahem, shameless self-promotion - http://www.snowskatesurfstyle.com/q-a-sierra-prescott/). I've also been able to interview eight-year-old skateboard and surfing phenom, Sierra Kerr, daughter of surfing professional Josh Kerr. I'm currently working towards interviewing X Games Gold-medalist Tom Schaar, so fingers crossed for me. Now for the school front; the semester is almost over. Just have until April 28th and then one more year. This semester is flying as with the snow days we've had schedules had to be adjusted so that we can fit everything in to be completed by semester's end. Otherwise, things are going well. I've mostly decided on doing a project to complete my Masters as it seems it would be better for my topic and the opportunities I have with it. Not only that, but if I did a thesis, I'd be in school until--at the very latest--Fall of 2017 despite graduating in Spring 2016. Though that does bring up what I'm doing now. All I have left apart from doing my project requirements are electives and I just need to see which classes interest me enough to take. And while doing a project, I will not have to take a class over the summer, so now I'm looking even harder at jobs as I know I don't have a class to work around. On the front of getting another assitantship...I don't know what's happening with that. I'm getting ready to apply to be considered for one, however the places they'd put me in are not what I want to do. My first semester doing my assistantship I was a TA/assistant for a 100-level and a 300-level communications class. It was fun and I got a lot of experience. This semester I'm dong Media Commons which is also fun and gives me even more experience of running a website, something that I dabble in while working at S4. However, doing it again next year will have me be a TA again, but for larger classes and that's really what my advisor is pushing me to do. I don't want that because after my Masters I am not furthering my academic career in any way neither with a second Masters nor a PHD. While all of the teaching assistant positions will give me the ability to potentially teach communications classes in community colleges, that's not what I want to do, nor do I think I'll still be qualified as I only started taking communications classes last Fall. If I were to teach, I'd prefer lower level English or French. Apart from that, I don't believe those positions would help me achieve the career I want to have in the industry I want to be in, let alone being a journalist, a freelance writer, a content coordinator, or a Social Media/Digital Marketer (of course I'll still continue my writing, I'm not giving up my dream of being a NY Times Best Selling Author). Other than that I'm in a great mood as I've gotten a lot of writing done as of late, got good grades on my two mid-terms with positive feedback on both, am really looking forward to a paper/research I'm doing in one of my classes its warm, and my second class today was cancelled so I can get home early. :) I know it's been a while since I did a blog post (probably about since mid-November) but I have been busy.
Busy, busy, busy, me. Not only had my last few weeks been filled with getting papers done, finishing projects, and presentations. Not including the work that I had been doing for my assistantship has ended for the semester. Other than that I can say that I've finished my first semester. I actually finished on Thursday but I've had so much stuff to do that I haven't had time to even say it out loud really, other than a loud "I'm free!" yesterday morning when I woke up. Not saying that I didn't enjoy my semester, I actually liked it a lot, some classes I enjoyed more than others. One of my classes I always looked forward to because not only did we have actual discussions (rather than arguments) but we also laughed a lot and that mad it a very entertaining and warm class vibe that I really enjoyed being a part of. But I had also really enjoyed being able to sit in and help with COMM 100 and COMM 300 classes, getting to meet some of those students, talk to them, help them out a bit was really fun and after a while they started asking me questions to help make things clearer as well as really wanted to present some of their projects to me when the learning community had their poster presenatation days. Seeing all of the topics they had come up with in means of positive communication and relationships (be it Long-Distance, heavily filled with social media, etc.) and articulated through their presentations was great. However, I am a bit ticked with my assistantship because I was told at the beginning of the year I would be a research assistant that would help with three specific professors, the learning community, and doing research on positive communication and ESM in the means of researching articles about it, collecting data, and helping out with the creation/beta test of a research app. Now I've been told that I'm switching my job with another student that's doing an entirely differently different job for the next semester. It's very upsetting because I had, really, been blindsided by it, especially considering one of the professors I was working with was just telling me that he'd get my feedback on a paper that I had written for my research work as well as figure what would move along with it and what would be done in the next semester before finding out I'd be switched. I feel that all of the work that I had done for the project as well as being what could be done next semester has all been for nothing when I had been nothing but excited to know what the next semester would hold for that portion of my job. Now my excitement is completely gone and I'm just...upset. I had voiced these concerns to my supervisor, and simply got a quick response of "thanks for the note, but the changes are necessary". No room for discussion and that just made me feel worse, really. At this point I'm not excited to be going back next semester for my assitantship when before I was always happy to go. But I am excited for my next semester of classes because time is flying by, soon I'll know if I'm doing a thesis or a project at the end, and before any of us realize it, I'll be graduating. And there's no room for discussion on that one. :) It’s been a while since I’ve done a blog post but I’ve been really busy. Plus, there’s wasn’t anything particularly interesting to talk about. It’s school, you know? I wake up, eat breakfast, do leftover homework, pack up my backpack, workout, have lunch, go on campus, have a snack, go to class, go back to the apartment, eat dinner, watch TV, do some homework, go to sleep. Day in and day out. But this past weekend was Fall Break and boy did I need it! I mean the week goes by really slowly when you have three two and a half hour classes throughout the week and mix work in around that. It’s sort of frustrating, especially considering how much I have to do as a research assistant as well as working on S4. Plus there’s the fact that some of my teachers have openly admitted they forget that I’m a first semester grad student when everyone else around me (minus two other students) have been in grad school for a while. So, hopefully some things will get a bit easier. This week will be easy for sure. I only have class today. Whoop! Whoop! Monday and Tuesday were off for break, I have class today, and my class tomorrow was cancelled because my professor is going to be out of town. Thank God! I needed some time for things to be easy. Now I have another long weekend to look forward to, I just hope that today’s class doesn’t drag on because of the fact that it’s my only class for the week. Anyway, back to Fall Break. We got back home early Friday and my sisters and I went to have lunch with Mrs. O to catch up a bit. (Hope the day’s treating you well, Mrs. O!!). Then we went to the mall and stopped at a few stores, getting some new clothes. The best shirt I bought is a jersey style shirt with ‘U annoy me’ written on it, similar to the ‘U’ that represents universities. I can see myself wearing it a lot. Oh, and a tip, plaid is back in, you’re going to see it at basically every store. Then later that night I went to the gym. Saturday was a really relaxing day, not much happened then. Sunday was the same. And Monday we (minus Steph and Mom) went up to our grandparents’ house to catch up with them. It was a surprise because they didn’t expect us to go see them. And it was fun to be able to catch up and chat about school and everything. We wouldn’t have had been able to stay long if Mere and I didn't chance our plans to go back to school on Tuesday. Yesterday I had to get back on campus by ten thirty so I could decide on what one of my paper topics was going to be. I have three papers that I have due by the end of this semester. I have a 20 page paper for my first class (not including my final exam), a 18-25 page paper for my second class, and a 20 page paper for my third class, and this isn’t including the paper I have due for my research assistantship due right before Thanksgiving. I swear at some point I’m going to rip my hair out while writing them, and that’s only because I need to try and find something to ramble about for 20 pages as the topics are so vague and I can only do so much. (Not to self, remember to find really big, block quotes). Other than that, nothing’s going on. Not anything that particularly exciting anyway. But if anything does, I’ll let you know as soon as it happens. You’d probably see fireworks and confetti canons going off as well. Anyone that saw my post on Facebook earlier saw this blog post coming.
About what, probably not. You all were more than likely expecting a recap of our birthday weekend, but I'll save that for another day. *ahem ahem*. ;) This week is the fourth week of classes and for the first time in my life I'm not as confident with my classes as I usually am. It is definitely due o the fact that I haven't taken any communications classes before and I feel like I'm way behind whenever topics I'm not familiar with come up. Especially with the books that I've been reading for my classes. It seems like every single one of my classmates are familiar with them and I'm scrambling to make some sort of understanding of the hundreds of pages I have to read throughout the week and then participate in a class discussion where I don't say anything until I find the topic that I'm the most confident in answering. However, I am getting more confident with the way the classes and discussions work and having things explained to me. My graduate research work is going well, so far all I've done is search through a bunch of databases for ESM (Experience Sampling Method) and how it relates to positivity. Otherwise there's not much to go on there. Then there's the portion that I really wanted to talk about. A few days ago I applied for and have gotten a job as a contributor/writer at Sº4 Magazine. It is an action/extreme sports online magazine that primarily focuses on Surfing, Skateboarding, and Snowboarding for girls. (There is a portion of the site that is for guys). As a contributor I can write about whatever I want in the means of those topics and it is something that I'm really excited to be doing. Going into the action/extreme sports industry is my all-time dream and while it may be something that'd difficult to get into to start a career with, this is my first step. I didn't think I'd ever find something as this to get into it as I always thought you had to live on the West Coast and frequent competitions and expos before you could even get noticed enough to start networking. It will be a god way for me to ultimately get to my dream job at Vans, as one of the affiliates of the sites is Vans Girls and one of the compensations I'll get for writing for the mag is merch from the retailer. The experience that I'd be getting from my Research Assistant job as well as from working with Sº4 is going to make it easier for my dreams to become a reality and I can't wait to see what'll continue to unfold as time goes on. I never really liked to compete with my peers over anything, in fact I always found it stupid. Some compete over grades, some compete over being the best on a sports team, some compete over how many extracurricular activities they could join and I didn't particularly find the point in being so competitive about it. Now I under stand it a bit.
I'm so frustrated because it seems like everyone around me is able to get a job or some sort of internship or something. I can't get a interview to save me life. I've had phone interviews before, otherwise I've had people try to help me get something and after that, I heard nothing back. We had gotten into contact with Ellen Goldstein-Vein (our commencement speaker who is a Hollins alumn, owner of the Gotham Group production company in LA) about our books as well as some screenwriting we have done and sent off samples and have heard nothing back from that, though we have sent in a few follow up e-mails. And how long do you think you should try to contact a company for employment before you give up? I have been trying to work with Vans (the shoe and skate clothing brand out in California) ever since I heard about their summer internship opportunities. I applied to those and got rejected from each of them. I tried sending them messages explaining how much I know about the company and how my resume doesn't reflect why I'm a great person to work for them. Didn't get a response. I tried contacting their customer service and they gave me the number for HR. I called them twice to talk to someone about employment and got voicemail both times, left a message both times and still haven't gotten a response. I applies to work in the Vans stores (one in Tyson's the other down in Norfolk) and haven't heard anything from those either. I'm sure everyone has felt this way at some point or another, but it's really starting to get to me. So if anyone knows anyone in Screenwriting/Film/TV, Publishing/Editing, technical writing, extreme sports, fitness/running, or if anyone even needs a receptionist, please let me know. As much as I love my free time, I enjoy working as well. How many other people can say that? *Side note: thank you to everyone that has tried to help so far, even if it didn't work out. Just offering to be a connection is helpful. |
About Me
Loves anything red. Rock music, playing the guitar, drawing, writing, tattoos, and sports are some of my interests and hobbies. I like to laugh, I like to think I'm funny. I talk a lot...just a warning. Archives
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