Graduation 2017

Well, it's finally over. Mostly. I still have to do an internship before it's official, but I am finished with my classes. Last Friday and Saturday were the graduation ceremonies. I didn't get many pictures myself, I was a but busy, but I gave my dad my camera, and my friend Rachel was there and took quite a few great pictures as well.

Friday night was the convocation ceremony for the graduates in the schools of LAS, Liberal Arts & Sciences.

We all got a medal from the school to wear during the ceremony.

Advertising was the first school into Hilton Coliseum, so I was one of the first ones in.

And since we were first onto the floor, we were also the first up.

The woman on the end in black, one of the people reading our names, was actually one of my favorite teachers from 4 years ago when I first started at Iowa State! Her name is Jane Cox, and she taught my History of Theater class, before I switched majors, when I was still going for the design degree. I actually even wrote a whole blog post about her, which you can find HERE. I'm sure she didn't recognize me, I was in a class of probably hundreds, but I recognized her immediately, and it was nice to see her again.

Afterwards we tried to get some pictures.

But the lighting was not very good, so this is the best we have. :)

That was convocation. The big one was the next day. To begin, every school went to a different location to line up. We were supposed to be there by 12, and the ceremony didn't start until 1:30, so there was a lot of sitting around.

My location was the Cyclone training arena.

I rarely take selfies but I did that day.

I took a picture as we walked out on the field of Jack Trice stadium. You can see just a fraction of the people graduating here. The ceremony was huge. I think there was almost 5000 people graduating here. Little did I know, I got my cousins Shaina and Sasha in this picture, as well as Rachel.

She texted me until I saw them. :p

She also got a picture of my family all the way on the other side of the stadium.

And Dad got a picture of them. :p

He also took a picture of Jackson. :)

Here's a game for you.

It's similar to Where's Waldo, but you're trying to find me. :p

Does this help?

I am there, but good luck finding me.

This was the picture published on the school newspaper's website the next day.

That's a lot of people.

Dennis Muilenburg, CEO of Boeing, and Iowa State Alumni, gave the commencement speech.

LAS was the second school to go, so I was up rather quickly, in comparison to the whole ceremony.

We all went through a photo tent to get our picture taken by a professional photographer before we went across the stage, but they didn't tell us what the tent was beforehand. My dark sense of humor imagined something nefarious going on in there. In particular I was thinking of a scene from an episode of Doctor Who were people were lined up to enter a building in order to be "upgraded" into a Cyberman. Yes, it would not have been very funny if it had been true, but I have a weird sense of humor. :p

No one got a very good picture of me actually getting the diploma (cover) but Rachel did get a great picture of me on the giant screen over the field.

The rest of the ceremony lasted until after 5, and by the end pretty much everyone had left. I didn't want to be one of THOSE people, I didn't want to seem rude and leave just because it was more convenient, so I stayed.

I suppose I should have just left; in the end, staying got me nothing but a sunburn. :p

But a girl gave me a streamer wand to shoot confetti, so I guess that was one good thing. :p

Afterwards I took another selfie while I waited for my family.

And then we went back to grandma's for a reception.

And Rachel insisted I pose for pictures with people. :)

Shaina

Rachel

 Sasha

Alex

Shaina and Alex

 Joel

Joel and Jared

Mom and Dad

That night, after everyone had left, I found this attached to my car.

Not sure who left it there, or why I didn't notice it earlier.

Mom thought it was Joel, but I never heard for sure. :p

And that was the day! I am glad that Rachel and Dad (and Sasha with my phone) were there to get pictures, because only like 5 of these were mine. There were of course official photographers there, and I should be getting a copy of those pictures, but I don't know when those will be coming. I'll probably do another post whenever I get those pictures.

As I said before, I won't have OFFICIALLY graduated until I've done an internship, and I am currently working toward that. I'm spending my first few weeks of summer building a portfolio/website. I'm making mostly a lot of new art and taking a lot of new photos for the site. I'll probably share some of the new stuff as I create it, and I'll of course share the website when it's finished. Stay tuned!

Vagabond Color War!

As I said in the last post, the Vagabonds got together over spring break. What I didn't mention, was the reason for the get together. A color war! I took a video of the whole thing. Well, most of it. the camera cut out right before the glitter, but I got most of it!



As a side note, I just started a YouTube channel! More videos to come this summer!

After we were done Rachel got some great shots of the carnage.

I'll have more of my own pictures in tomorrow's post.

Life Update Again

I know I just posted one of these a couple months ago. You wouldn't think that things would change enough that I'd feel the need to do one of these again so soon. But they have. I'm changing majors again. I'm going into advertising.

I have actually been thinking about this for a long time. When I first switched over to journalism, I was under the impression that advertising was something you went into with an art degree. I had no idea that journalism was part of the same school as advertising and PR. It wasn't until I'd gotten into the first journalism classes that it was clear that advertising was an option. But I stuck it out because I had just switched, I didn't want to do it again a few weeks later. Plus photojournalism was an option and I really did want to get into that.

Well, it's now been year and a half since I switched the first time.  I have had time to discover everything that is involved with journalism, and I have discovered that it isn't for me. I like being creative, and there isn't much there for that. I kind of figured that out in the first semester, but I stuck it out, hoping to get into photojournalism. Photojournalism is a little better, it is more fun, but there's still not much room for creativity. I was still pressing forward though. I was still working toward that goal until this semester.

This semester I took a video class. It covered both filming and editing. At first I was slightly overwhelmed. I didn't know what I was doing, and I didn't know what to film. I did like the editing though. For that class we have to have 14 minutes of content filmed and edited by the end of the semester. I didn't have a clue what I wanted to do. I put that out of my mind for the time being, and thought about the editing.

I decided that if I was going to get into journalism, I wanted to be in television news. I wanted to film and edit news packages. If I worked at a station I wouldn't have to fret over what to film, they'd just tell me. I thought this was a great idea until we had a guest speaker who showed us a reel of footage of himself and his fellow camera-persons being attacked, and people trying to smash their equipment. Even though that's not exactly the norm for them, I didn't want any of that. After that, in our next class, the teacher started talking about ad agencies hiring their own video editors instead of outsourcing. He said it was a quickly growing field. The seed was planted, and I started seriously thinking about changing, but this was right at spring break, so I decided to mull it over for a week.

Over spring break, my friends, we call ourselves the Vagabonds, got together, as we usually do when I come home. For the past few years, almost every time we get together, we've had a lip sync video contest. It stopped being an actual contest a long time ago, but we still do the videos every time just to entertain each other. I had never done a video before, I know, I'm terrible. This time, I was learning Adobe Premiere Pro, and I decided I could use the practice editing, so I got together with my cousin Shaina, and we decided to do two videos. We planned out the songs we were going to do and the clothes we were going to wear. I ordered an article of clothing for one of the videos, but it did not arrive on time, so we just did the one.

Making that video was so much fun. I really wanted to do another one, but our original idea was out until my item arrived. We were going to the zoo a couple days later, so we started brainstorming ideas for filming there, when Sasha had the brilliant idea of doing Katy Perry's Roar. We were going to the jungle, it was perfect. We shot there for two to three hours, going all over the jungle, getting all sorts of interesting shots, it was a blast. And the editing was really fun too, it was harder as you couldn't hear anything through the deafening jungle noises, but still fun.

I was going to be content with just the two videos, but two days before our Vagabond event, I hit upon the brilliant idea of filming the song Radioactive, over at the "Haunted" house across the road from home. It is a very run down property, and with the world just emerging from winter, the landscape looked very bleak. It was perfect for that apocalyptic song. Shaina was not around yet, so Jacob helped me film. We shot one long take before Shaina got there, and when she did, I had another great idea. I asked Jacob if he could be a dead body, and he happily agreed. It was awesome. Shaina was a bit weirded out by it, and did not like our suggestion that she play a body as well, but she was ok with filming it. The footage from that night turned out great, except the camera died before we had enough. We'd have to do a second shoot the next day.

The next day at work Sasha came through my line, and we were talking about the video. I jokingly asked her if she wanted to be another dead body, and she agreed immediately. No hesitation. I was thrilled. That night we all met over at the haunted house for another round of filming. Sasha was an excellent body. She kicked off one shoe for extra authenticity. It was amazing. As the sun was disappearing over the horizon we shot one last take, and, well, I won't tell you what happened with the last take, I do plan on getting these videos up on YouTube sometime, and you can see for yourselves what happened.

The videos all turned out really great for my first try. I had never done one before, so everyone was excited that I had even finished one. Then they were even more surprised that I'd done two. They were absolutely shocked to find out I'd done three! I was so happy with how the videos had turned out, and so happy with the response to them, that I realized I wanted this to continue. I started thinking about the class I was taking, and was convinced by my friends that I should submit the lip sync videos as part of my 14 minutes. The teacher had said no music videos, but he'd said that to avoid getting slideshows and rave footage. My work was so much more detailed than that, I decided it was worth a shot to ask. The worst he could say was no. But he didn't. He accepted all 12 minutes of video. I was ecstatic. I have almost nothing left to do for that class.

So, I said all that to bring it all back to creativity. I loved making those videos. I had more fun with those than I've had in a long time, and I want to keep doing it. Switching to advertising will let me flex my creative muscles, and get me a lot more experience with film and editing. Eventually I'd love to make commercials, and maybe do short films on the side. If advertising is half as much fun as making videos, I know I'm going to love it.

For those of you wondering, no, this won't mean extra time in school. I'm still on track for a fall 2016 graduation. I'm at the point in the classes where everything starts to branch out. Journalism, advertising, and PR, have, up until this point, all been using the same base classes. This semester was the first semester where things started really branching apart. I am dropping one class, but the rest of it is all very useful to me as an advertising student.

I have a lot of plans to continue working on videos in my spare time this summer, and not just lip sync videos, so stay tuned! I hope to get back into blogging more than just once a month!

Happy Weirdo Day!!!

At the end of July, my friends and family threw a going away party for me before I moved to Ames. At that party we came up with our own holiday and called it Weirdo Day. We set it to be some time in the future so that they could send me weird cards after I'd moved away. I chose the date of September 13th, because September is sort of an odd month, in that nothing really special happens for the most part, and the 13th because people always think that 13 is an unlucky number and I like to laugh in the face of superstition. As an added bonus, September 13th is a Friday! Friday the 13th!

So today, in celebration of our new holiday, I decided to detail the traditions and customs of the day.

The most basic tradition is that people exchange cards. But not just any old card will do. It must be a handmade card. You may use the computer if you like, but you must make it yourself, and it must be weird.

You may also use the Internet to send a weird message. But simply sending a message that says, "Happy Weirdo Day, Mildribeth!" is not enough! You must go all out in your well wishes of weirdness. For example, here is the message I sent to my cousin.

"Happy Weirdo Day! Now go outside and eat seven olives while reciting the alphabet backwards and swinging three rubber snakes around your head like a lasso! This will please the gods of weirdoness who will bless you with a bad hair day and buck teeth for a week! Yay!"

Another popular tradition is that instead of wishing your friends a Happy Weirdo Day, you invent your own holidays, even weirder than Weirdo Day, and send people good tidings of that holiday instead. Here are a few examples to give you some good ideas for your next Weirdo Day celebration.

"Happy Cheeseday, Maria! Don't get sick from eating all the Brie and Gruyere pot pies I sent you! Hope your day is Muensterous!"

(It is important to note here, that I do not know anyone named Maria. This was sent to my friend Alex.)

"Happy Normal Day, my fellow normal human being! I hope your day is filled with blandness and unoriginality! May Bill, Bob, Tom, Jane, and Sue, the Patron Saints of Boringness, smile upon thine ordinary brow. :/"

It is even permissible, and encouraged, to combine both the greetings of your made up holiday, with a weird message that has absolutely nothing to do with that holiday.

"Happy Triceratops Day! Go sit on an eggplant! Maybe it will appreciate the warmth!"

All good holidays need a signature food. Thanksgiving has turkey, Halloween has candy, and Valentine's Day has roast Cupid. The signature food of weirdo day is Jello. But it can not be any ordinary Jello. You have to add things to it. And it can't be just any ordinary Jello ingredient, it must be weird. No marshmallows and mandarin oranges here! Those are acceptable only as long as you have first included at least one ingredient that would make your Great Aunt look at you with disgust and ban you from her next potluck. Some great ideas would be spaghetti, mushrooms, tuna salad, or ranch dressing.

No holiday is complete without a benevolent mythological figure presiding over the events. Christmas has Santa, Easter has the Easter Bunny, and St. Patrick's Day has Hiccups, the drunken leprechaun. Weirdo Day is presided over by the Weird Clown Fairy. She watches over the good little boy and girls of the world, and on Weirdo Day Eve, he flies into their rooms and leaves weird presents underneath their pillows. I received a sausage and twelve raisins! I was so good this year!

However, much like Santa leaving coal for the naughty children, the Weird Clown Fairy also punishes misbehaving brats. To all naughty children he leaves an ugly sweater that the child is obligated by law to wear for the entire day. If the child is significantly weird enough that they actually LIKE the sweater, she will leave a full pound of steamed Brussels sprouts that must be eaten by sundown. Or else.

There is likely quite a lot more involved in Weirdo Day, but as it has only just been invented, its traditions are still in a state of flux. You can give weird gifts, put up weird decorations, and shout weird things at random strangers. You can pretty much do whatever you want. As long as it's weird.

Happy Weirdo Day! May all your toes be bedazzled with sunflower seeds!

Destination Iowa State

Finally! Pictures from Destination Iowa State!

The three day event started off with a huge showcase of a lot of the clubs and student organizations, all around the grounds of Hilton Colosseum. I didn't take all that many pictures, except for a few that I found interesting.

Like a live karate demonstration.

One club they had that I found hilarious was the "Medeival Combat Society." They had two teams, all armed with stuffed medieval weapons, and they would charge and just start wailing on each other with big plush maces, and trying to "Spear" each other with giant stuffed jousting sticks. It was so funny! Not that I'm trying to make fun of them or anything. They looked like they were having a blast. I just found it very entertaining. :) Unfortunately this is the best picture I got, so you can't really grasp how funny it was unless you saw it live.

They also had a club that was dancing to try to get people to join. They were actually really good! But no, this wasn't a dance club, though there are some of those around, this was the Ultimate Frisbee Club.

That night we went inside Hilton Colloseum for speeches by the faculty and a guest speaker, and some musical performances by some student groups. The whole place was PACKED. Thousands of students! The president said that this was the biggest group of student EVER to enroll at Iowa State!

One of the performances was by a group called Dance Marathon. This is one of the dance clubs, but they're more of a charity than a club. They dance to raise money for sick kids. They are not professionals by any means, but they look like they are having a lot of fun, and their energy is infectious. It was a lot of fun to watch them. One thing that would be of interest to my friends, the Frenches, is that one of the songs that they danced to was the theme from Arthur. The whole auditorium ERUPTED in cheers when it started. It was hilarious!

Then the marching band came out to play and the director made everybody learn the school fight song, and learn a dance. I'm glad no one I knew was there to see me. :p

That was all for the first day. The next two days was mainly attending various events to learn what to do in classes, how to find classes, and then our team leader showed us around the campus. I didn't take any pictures on these days, but GaLi, our team leader did, and she sent them to everyone who wanted them.

One of the things we did was go on a scavenger hunt that was designed to teach us about various historacle sites around campus, as well as get more familiar with the place. One of the things we had to find was a brick outside of Cat Hall with Oprah Winfrey's name on it. It was lost in a sea of other bricks with hundreds of other names, but one of us managed to find it. The picture was GaLi's idea, but I like it. I think it looks really cool. :)

As you can see the size of our group sort of fluctuated a lot. By the last day we were down to just four of us for the final activity.

This was our last thing on Saturday. Making blankets for Project Linus. A charity that gives sick children blankets when they are in the hospital.

Destination Iowa State was a lot of fun, and I learned a lot about the campus. When I get time I plan to do some more posts about the campus, maybe even do a tour of some of the buildings. There is a lot of history and a lot of interesting things to see there.