The School of Communication

I've never really thought about the name of my school before. The School of Communication, or the "Comm School," as it is more commonly referred to, has just always a term I was used to. Back when I was looking at and applying to colleges, I was always looking for a university with a good communication school. But I never really thought about why all of these majors are put under the umbrella of communication.

Now that I actually am thinking about it, it does make sense. Journalists, both broadcast and print, are communicating the news to the people, advertisers are communicating a product to the public, film makers are communicating a story on a screen, and so on. So yes, communication is a fitting title for all of these areas of study. And while I believe my school has done well teaching its students to communicate through the different media, something has been lost along the way. Sure, using technology is great, but what about the core of communication, communicating to one another?

You can't communicate over the airwaves without having a basic understanding of how to communicate with the people standing next to you. Good communication can be the reason a project soars and miscommunication could be the reason a project fails. In our recent experiment with convergence of the print and visual journalism students, our experience has been the latter.

While I've enjoyed our project, it's been brought to my attention that it has not been smooth sailing for everybody. Each class was told different things about different projects which led to misunderstanding all around. This could have been avoided through better communication.

So although we're succeeding in learning to communicate through the media, I think all of us at the School of Communication could take a lesson in learning how to communicate with each other.