And so it ends...

As the semester comes to a close, I only feel that it's necessary to look back on my four months in CNJ442, Online Journalism. It's driven me absolutely insane, made me cry on a few occasions, and caused me more stress than I ever imagined. Yet, it's also opened up new doors for me and helped me discover what I want to do with the rest of my life.

Online Journalism has taught me that design could not only be a hobby, but a career. With skills in both journalism and design, I will be an asset to any news company, and I will have Online Journalism to thank for that. When I look back on college in ten years, I will remember that it was this class that helped me choose a career path and define my goals.

Online Journalism has also taught me the importance of communication and deadlines. If you don't communicate with people you are working with, your project is going to fail. Similarly, if you don't meet your deadlines, your partners can't meet theirs, and the project may also fail. We faced both of these problems this semester and I'm optimistic that these lessons I learned will help me in the future.

While I despised this class at times, and even thought about dropping it more than once, looking back, I'm extremely happy that I stuck it out. What I've gained from this class is worth the aggravation and the stress I went through. Since this is the only online journalism class offered at the University of Miami (as I've talked about before), I bid you adieu OJ, until we meet again...

Prisual Journalism

As I've mentioned before, I've been confused about my future lately. Really for the first time in my entire life. I just switched my major for the second time and while I've had a week to think about it, I'm still freaking out about the switch. I love writing, I want to be a journalist, what am I doing switching my major away from print journalism?

I think what I fear most is that potential employers will look at my resume, see "visual journalism" and assume I'm not a writer. Hopefully this won't happen. Hopefully they'll see that I can write and I can design. Hopefully this will put me ahead of my competition.

You could imagine my surprise on Thursday morning, in the midst of this dilemma, when I opened the Miami Hurricane and saw the article "Some students face mid-college crisis." I'm not alone! Of course I knew I wasn't, but it was still reassuring to read about other students going through the same thing I am. It makes me feel even better when I read about students switching from sciences to motion pictures - and I thought switching journalism fields was bad!

Despite my doubts, I know I made the right choice. And rather than taking biology and chemistry for no reason, I took news reporting and mass media law. One day, when I'm sitting at my desk at my dream job (that I know I'll get), I'll look back on college and the diverse education I've gotten here. I'm not graduating as a Visual Journalism major. I'm graduating as a Prisual Journalism and Political Science major, and that's pretty sweet.

From Broadcast to Print to Visual

So today I was rather spontaneous, which is unlike me. I officially changed my major from print journalism to visual journalism. I'll be honest, I'm a little apprehensive about the switch. It's not that I don't like journalism anymore, completely the opposite actually. I still want to be a journalist, but I feel that I already have writing skills. Visual journalism will allow me to gain skills in other areas that will be beneficial in the future.

At least three people I told about the switch asked me if it was because of online journalism, but they asked it in an "online journalism turned you off of journalism" kind of way. And yes, it was because of online journalism, but not because it scared me away from writing. Online journalism this semester has opened up doors for me. I love this new media stuff. It's what I want to do with my life. Ever since I began learning graphics, web design, and video production in high school, I've been interested in visual media, but it wasn't until this semester that I realized this is something I could spend my life doing.

Last time I changed my major (from broadcast to print), I thought about it for an entire summer. This has been in the back of my mind for a few weeks, but when I woke up Monday morning, I had no intention of doing this. I never thought I'd be a person confused about what I want to study, yet here I find myself, confused. It would be wonderful if I could do both visual and print, but I don't want to be here for five years. So visual it is. I hope.

I've hit a fork in the road... Or have I?

I remember a time, back in high school looking at colleges, when all of my friends had no idea what they wanted to study. They had trouble looking for a school because they didn't know what they were looking for. I knew what I wanted: communications, school spirit, and a mid-to-large-sized student body.

From the time I was ten years old, I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a broadcaster for the New York Yankees. I entered UM as a broadcast journalism major certain that I wanted to broadcast baseball games. I looked around at my peers jumping from major to major and was grateful knowing that would never be me. Yeah, that lasted a semester and a half.

Last spring I took my first news writing course and a philosophy class that was one of those "show up to class, get an A" type of deals. I had no idea when I took that class that it would change my life. We had to give a debate, on what I have no clue, and I remember being so nervous to speak in front of the class that I sped through my entire speech. Meanwhile, other than the fact it was at 8 a.m., I loved news writing. It was after this debate that I decided to change my major from broadcast to print journalism.

A year later, I find myself stuck again. Online journalism has opened up new doors for me. Over the course of this semester, I've realized how much I love graphic design, videography, web design, etc. As I was putting together my multimedia package, it occurred to me that I enjoyed designing the banner and making the video more than I enjoyed reporting and writing the story. So now what?

I still love writing. Words seem to flow off of my fingertips and into my Word document effortlessly. But part of me wishes I could dive more deeply into the design side of journalism. I've been thinking about this conflict for the past month or so and it seems to me, that if this convergence thing is really true, this is probably the best position for me to be in. If I not only love to write, but I can design as well, then I should have a leg up on the competition. Everybody watch out.

Can we make the internet disappear for a while?

I hate the internet. Okay, that's a lie, I love it. But it's really annoying when I'm sitting here in the computer lab trying to write a term paper with the little Firefox icon staring at me out of the corner of my eye.

I established this a few blogs back; I have an addiction. Everyday: food, oxygen, sleep, internet. While it can be a good thing in so many ways, it's really reached the point where I find it difficult to focus without taking a five minute break here and there to check a few websites. Apparently I'm not the only one. As I glance around the computer lab, about half the people in here can be seen on some website rather than doing their work.

The easiest solution would be to just keep my internet browser closed or go somewhere with my computer and turn the wireless off. Yeah, that's great until I face an assignment in which I need the internet and, let's face it, that's most of my assignments. Example A? The one I'm working on right now.

Example B would be the term paper and I am trying to finish. While it's a paper that I write in Microsoft Word, I need to search LexisNexis for all of my resources. The trend seems to be every time I find a resource, I take a break to check my email, Facebook, etc. Well after finding 15 resources, this obviously adds up.

So how do I stop this? How do I limit my internet addiction while trying to complete work? The only solution for me seems to be waiting until the last minute. See, right now I know I have all night, but tomorrow at 1 p.m. I'll only have two hours. And that's when that tiny Firefox icon in the corner of my screen seems to disappear.

Thank you Tim Berners-Lee, wherever you are, for making my work take three times as long as it should.

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.

The Wonders of Video

It occurred to me yesterday what is so great about the internet. Finding any information at a click of a button, communicating with people instantaneously anywhere in the world, and my favorite element, video streaming.

Yes, I love Youtube. I'm ashamed to admit I have spent hours at a time on that site. I love watching videos put together by videographers on news websites. I love putting together my own videos. But what I really, really love is MLBTV.

Two years after coming to Miami, I still get homesick daily. I love New York and not by being there for months at a time, it feels like a huge part of me is missing. I see events happening in New York and get sad that I can't be there. I see pictures of my friends going to concerts up North and feel like I should be there with them. What I miss most though, is baseball, and the Yankees.

MLBTV allows me, for a fee, to watch every Yankee game from my computer. What an amazing invention! I don't know how I would survive here in Miami if I could not watch the first pitch of opening day and the last pitch of the final game of the season. Every time I watch a game on my computer, I am amazed by what technology does for me.

If we can stream any video over the web, does this mean television will one day be obsolete? Probably not. The same way the internet will not completely kill the newspaper, it won't completely kill the TV either. I still enjoy the comfort of my print newspaper and I still enjoy lying in bed and watching baseball on my 30" TV. But for when I can't enjoy those luxuries, the internet will have to do.