I always thought that leaders had to be charismatic and assertive. When I first started college, I was neither of those things, and I had no intention of ever being in a leadership position. However, in my personal journey as a college student, I’ve discovered and embraced what I’m passionate about. I found myself leading, not because I’m impressive by any means, but because I care deeply about the people who are affected by the work we do in the communications field.

My senior class project involves putting together a kind of multimedia campaign for the Sexual Assault Resource Counseling Center (SARCC). There are divisions that handle various aspects of the campaign–social media engagement, a website re-design, multimedia content, and print collateral. Some of the multimedia content includes videos on the stories of sexual assault survivors.

After the first day of filming these stories, one of my classmates talked to me about his experience. To paraphrase, he said that as much as we talk in terms of deliverables and organizational structures, we shouldn’t forget about the human factor in what we do.

Not only do we have the opportunity to make a small effort to prevent sexual assault, but actually making that effort affected him for the better. The work we do is ultimately about people.

Marketing & Communications Internship

This semester, I’m interning at LVC’s Office of Marketing & Communications. One thing I’ve come to realize is that the work of this office is often taken for granted. I was sitting at my desk one day, wondering when I’d start to see information about the upcoming musical. I then realized that writing the press release for that was on my to-do list. Go figure. What would we do without the publicity people?

Major Projects

I’m taking two classes that focus on storytelling through digital media. One of those projects is called a “multimedia feature,” which is where I will get to write a narrative script, and shoot video and photos that will be the visual sequence for the script. The feature I’m working on has to be about someone who lives a creative life. My working story idea is a feature on homeschooling parents, most of whom I know are incredibly creative.

I’m also continuing to co-manage my senior class project, which involves developing a campaign for a client through digital media. I’ll probably take another entry to talk about that at some point.

Freelance Work

Being the nerd that I am, I spent some of my winter break learning some new CSS, Javascript, jQuery, and HTML 5 tricks. Within the next three months, I’ll be launching a more dynamic re-design for the Legends Cafe website, and an improved (and hopefully final) iteration of a website for Quesa Dee’as Southwestern Grille in Lebanon.