2012 Educational Year-in-Review

In 2012, I continued my pursuit of a bachelor's degree in journalism from Kent State.  It had its highlights and lowlights.

In January, I began the Spring 2012 semester taking Media Writing and Multimedia Techniques (three credit hours each).  Media Writing teaches journalism students the basics of Associated Press style journalism writing.  It was challenging to learn so many grammar rules, but it was a very helpful class.  The instructor was tough, but she was also fair and helpful.  Multimedia Techniques was definately my favorite class of the semester.  It was a "hybird" class, which means that we had to meet for two lectures a semester and the rest of the assignments were submitted online.  We could also meet with our section instructor on Tuesdays to help us with our major multimedia assignment for the class.  The first few weeks of the class, I was having trouble thinking of a topic, but one night I had a dream about going to old Rolling Acres Mall when I was a young child.  When I got up the next morning, I realized that was going to be my assignment for the project.  I went to the abandoned mall to make a three minute video of what the mall looks like now, completed three interviews, gathered narrative material, and old pictures of both the mall and my family being there to complete the project.  At the end it was a very fulfilling experience.

In May, I took a three credit hour, three week, intersession class, Principals of Microeconomics, which was much easier than I expected.  In June and July, I took a three credit hour, eight week, Newswriting class.  I got two articles published in the Daily Kent Stater from that class. 

At the end of August, I began the Fall 2012 semester taking Law of Mass Communication and Broadcast Beat Reporting.  Law of Mass Communication, a three credit hour class, was a very interesting and informative class, where I researched an interesting report on political advertising.  Much of the class was based on the 1st Amendment protections for freedom of speech.  Broadcast Beat Reporting was a much more eventful class, despite it only lasting one month before I had to drop it.  I never realized how much more demanding broadcast was that print journalism.  I had to constantly be on campus to complete assignments and with my status as a non-traditional student, it was too much to handle.  I plan to get caught up with the loss credit hours by taking Print Beat Reporting this summer, also a four credit hour class.  Once I complete that class, I will decide whether I want to focus on news or magazine journalism.