I Finally Have a Job!

It has been awhile since my last blog post, but I've blogged every other education related milestone since the very beginning of this blog back in 2010, so I had to get on here to let you know that after all this time, four years since I finished school, and over a year since I finished my internship, I finally have a job in what I went to school for! My Bachelor's degree has finally paid off!

Last month I applied for a marketing position at a local utilities company. I tried not to expect much, after all, I've been applying for jobs since 2017, when I "Graduated" (finished my classes) all the way through to 2019, when I got the internship necessary to get the degree, you can read about that Here.

And then since the beginning of 2020, when I finally finished that internship and got the degree, I haven't stopped looking, and applying for all kinds of jobs. From ones only vaguely related to my advertising degree, like a car dealership lot photographer, weirdly enough, I applied for a bunch of those over the years, to actual positions in real advertising agencies, from Omaha to Des Moines. I almost never heard back from any of them.

So imagine my surprise when not even a few days after I applied in Harlan, I got a call for an interview. And that interview went great! But then I didn't hear from them in over a week, long after I expected to hear from anyone, and I assumed I didn't get the job. I went from trying not to expect too much, to fully expecting way too much, and completely defeated before I'd even been rejected. 😆

By this point in my life/career/whatever I am beyond tired of my job at the grocery store. I've been working in an online shopping position since I moved back to Harlan last year, and it has been getting more and more frustrating. From the "Upgraded" electronic shopping system, that has SO many bugs, to the fact that we just do not have enough help, not just in my department, but everywhere in the store, I was just ready to be done.

So Thursday, the week after I had the interview, I had fully given up on the job, and I started making plans. I was leaving. I was starting to plan a vacation, and I wanted to be gone at least three weeks. I'm pretty much broke, but I didn't care, I wanted to get away from the store ASAP.

So I talked to my friend Rachel, the one I did the internship with, started making very tentative plans to take a train from here to Colorado to visit my Aunt Ruth and Uncle Nathan, then from Colorado to Utah to visit Rachel, and then from Utah to California to visit another friend who could potentially get me into Disneyland for free, since she works there.

I had only disclosed these plans to Rachel, and then the next morning before I left for work, I found an email, asking me to call as soon as I got the message. I had a job offer. Never have I been so happy to have my vacation plans completely ruined. 😆

I tried to quit my job at the store that very day, but neither manager I talked to wanted me to leave, so I guess I'm technically still employed there, but I just told them I'd see how things went with the new job. Maybe I can be on call or something.

My last day there was Sunday, and that morning a few of the people at work put together a little going away gift for me. It was really sweet, and totally unexpected. But I really appreciated it. I will definitely miss a lot of the people I worked with, even if I won't miss the store that much. 😆

I post more on instagram than I do anywhere else these days, so here are some more pictures you can scroll through. :)

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I don't really have much to share by way of photographs of the new job. I did take a picture of some clouds over the building the other day, so I guess that will have to do. 😆

My new job is probably going to be mostly boring office stuff that I won't be able to photograph. Or won't want to photograph, 😆but there will probably eventually be things that I might be able to take pictures of.

Part of my job in the future will be to manage the content for the local cable channels, and film events around Harlan. Most of these events will be things like city council meetings, hospital board meetings, etc, but next month we'll be covering the Shelby County Fair, so I will probably be able to take some pictures to share there. But you might have to follow me on Instagram, if you want to see them in a relatively acceptable amount of time. 😆

I will try to do updates in the future, but I make no promises. This is literally my first post of the year, and we're over halfway through June. 😆

My Internship is Over!

Well, it has been a long road, but my time at ISU has finally come to an end! Last month I finished the final assignments for the internship, this month I finished the final projects due to my advisors to close out my internship, and today I finished the "paperwork" and filled out my graduation forms, so as far as I know, I am now officially done with school!

The internship took a little longer than I expected, I figured I'd be done by the end of last year, but it turns out that 400 hours is a LOT to finish if you're not working at it full time! But I kept working, slowly and steadily through the year, and I am now finished!

One of the final projects I was working on this month was a portfolio, to give my advisor an idea of the kind of work I did over the course of my internship. I asked if I could do a video instead of a regular boring portfolio, and he agreed! In fact, he loved the idea!

My advisor has been super on board with my non-traditional internship from the beginning. If you'll recall from my post last year when I started the internship, there was nothing normal about my particular situation, and he's totally helped make this happen for me.

To submit this final portfolio video, I uploaded it to YouTube, on my non-movie-reviews channel, and sent my advisor a link. And then I thought, why not just share it on my blog too. Maybe someone else might be interested in seeing the kinds of things I was working on all year.

So if you're interested, here is the video portfolio of some of my work during my internship for Rachel Wagner and the Hallmarkies Podcast Network.



I had a great time working with Rachel, and thankfully I still am! I started doing freelance work for her in 2018, and now that the internship is over, I've already gone back to doing some of that! I really like what I've been doing with Rachel, and I'm really glad that we can keep going.

Overheard 4

Wow. It has been a long time since I did one of these. Like, the last one I did was at the end of 2017! I said in that post that I had a few more to share, mostly examples of things I've overheard at church, and then somehow a year and a half passed, and I never wrote it. Oh well, I'm here now, so let's do it!

For those of you who have never seen one of these posts before, it's pretty self explanatory. All of these stories are things that I have overheard in real life, at church, work, out in public, etc. This is different than my newer, "Out of Context" series, in that I include the whole conversation, and everything that happened is very clear. If you would like to read the other three posts I made in this series, I will have them linked here.

Post 1 | Post 2 | Post 3

In the last post I said I still had conversations I'd overheard in church to share, so I will start with those. At least half of these I've probably had since then. Some are just random snippets of conversation that I have overheard, that really don't have anything to do with church, they just happened to take place there. Like this one, where I heard a little girl talking to her friend about a new culinary adventure she'd recently had.

"I ate clover! It's true! I promise it's true!"

Or this one, where a little old man started telling a story.

"When I was a small child, just before dirt was invented..."

Most of these overheard anecdotes happen between church and Sunday School. There's a fellowship/coffee time for people to visit and catch up, and a lot of random conversations can happen around me. Like when my grandma was discussing her favorite kinds of books with a group of elderly women.

Woman 1: “I like reading the Amish books.”
Woman 2: “Oh yes, me too.”
Woman 1: “I mean, they’re all the same story I guess, but I still like reading them.”

There was another time where another elderly woman was talking about her family when they were kids.

“My brother used to call me his ‘Little Muggin-Hose.’ I don’t know what that is, and maybe I should be insulted, but nobody could ever tell me what it was, and he’s gone to heaven now, so I guess I’ll never know.”

I actually googled that phrase, in a variety of spellings, and I never figured out what it was, so hopefully I haven't accidentally profaned my blog with some kind of old-fashioned swear. 😆


Once in a while there will be some kind of food served during the coffee time, and one of those days there were a bunch of tiny bowls of fresh fruit sitting on a table for people to help themselves to, which led to a very random and hilarious interaction between an elderly couple.

Elderly Gentleman: "Oh look at that! We have Jell-O today!"
His wife (looking at him like he was crazy): "No it's not, it's fruit!" 

He just looked at it and said, "Oh, okay." and went off to talk with someone else at a nearby table. He had missed church the previous Sunday, and this other person was wondering how he was feeling.

Elderly Gentleman (cheerfully): "Oh, I'm still not feeling the greatest, but I'm on drugs today!"

One Sunday before Sunday school started I overheard a Sunday school teacher who taught one of the younger classes, talking about her students.

“Every day I ask the little kids how their day is going. They think it’s because I’m trying to be nice and get to know them, but really it’s because I want to be amused.”

Last year the church completely restructured the way they did Sunday school, but up until that point, I had been attending class with my grandma, and at that time they had the whole church divided into age groups. So I got quite a few gems from going to Sunday school with the seniors.

Such as the day the teacher came in and said, "Good morning! How's everyone doing?"
Another elderly person in the class immediately came back with, "Well, we're here."

The teacher of the senior class was himself a senior, and he had a quite a few of his own, including this one, which to me, was one of the funniest things he ever said. And it was completely by accident.

"And then, that translation of the Bible was called the Septuagint! I had to learn that word from the microwa- I-I-I mean the World Wide Web."

He was completely serious, and it was all I could do not to just die laughing right there in class.

Another time he was talking about someone he heard on the radio.

"I was listening to a preacher on the radio, and he seemed to be pretty good, until he wanted to sell me a recipe for unleavened bread."

After the Sunday school classes were restructured, all the classes had a mix of people from all different age groups. In one of the first weeks of the new format, a woman greeted an elderly woman who entered the room.

Woman: "Good morning! Are you joining our class today?"
Elderly Woman: "Well, yes."
Woman: "Well then our class is going to get wiser!"
Elderly Woman: "Oh?"
Woman: "Because you’re here!"
Elderly Woman: "Okay, well, I hope that makes some difference."

I love dry humor, so this woman's delivery had me in stitches. Internally of course. Outwardly I was pretending I wasn't hearing anything.


Other than at church, most of my overheard conversations come from work, but I do have a couple of exceptions this time. One was from my nephew's birthday party, where a little kid I didn't know was wearing a party hat, but at the front of his head, like a horn, and he had to show it off to someone, who I am assuming was his mom.

“Look! I’m a unicorn! I’ve finally transformed! Aren’t you proud of me?”

Another anecdote was from a day I was at the zoo. We stopped in the gift shop, and as is pretty standard in zoo gift shops, there were plenty of children begging their parents for toys. I overheard this conversation between a pair of siblings who had just been turned down at the stuffed animal section, one of whom was significantly more pouty than the other.

Little Boy: "Our parents are so mean to us..."
Little Girl: "Not all the time..."

In the past, most of my overheard conversations have come from work, as I work at a grocery store, and I see a LOT of people. Since I got my job at the hotel I haven't worked nearly as much with the public as I used to, so this resource has mostly dried up, but I do still have a few examples from before my grocery hours went down. Such as this conversation between a little boy and a checker who must have known him.

Checker: "Did you have fun at pre-school?"
Little Boy: "Yeah! I was crying!"
Checker: "Oh no! Why were you crying?"
Little Boy: "I got in trouble."
Checker: "What?"
Little Boy: "I hit someone! But he hit me first!"
Checker: "Why didn't you tell a teacher instead?"
Little Boy: "I did!"
Checker: "Before or after you hit him back?"
Little Boy: *silence*

One day a very talkative, almost-but-not-quite hyperactive little boy came through my line with his mother and sister. He was rather energetic, and his sister seemed to be getting real fed up with his antics, and quipped:

"Jake, we're going to give you some night-night medicine!"

I don't know exactly what that means, but apparently it wasn't good, because her mom looked horrified and exclaimed her name in shock.

"Samara!!!"

The day after a snow storm, one of the baggers at the store, a teenage boy, came in from helping a customer out with groceries. As he took off his coat he exclaimed, "It's so slippery, I was doing a Bambi dance out there!"


Church isn't the only place I overhear conversation between elderly people. I heard this one at the store while I was bagging for another checker.

Checker: “Did you find your husband?”
Elderly Woman: “Yeah I found him.”

A moment later a little old man came up beside her.

Elderly Woman: “You said you’d be right back! I was about to ask them to call for you over the intercom. ‘Would little Davey please come to the front of the store?’”

Last year after I got the job at the hotel, I transferred to the grocery store's bakery to fit into my new overnight schedule a bit better. There are a lot fewer conversations to overhear back in the bakery, especially early in the morning, but I did get one. A small child was looking through a bakery display, in the middle of the summer.

“Mom! Look! They have Thanksgiving stuff already! See? It says pumpkin!”

At the hotel where I work now, we have a small, approximately foot-tall, bronze statue of the Iowa State University mascot, Cy, who is a buff cardinal, sitting on the desk/counter, by my computer, where we check in the guests. I just took a picture of it so you can see what I'm talking about.

One middle-aged guy seemed to like it a lot, and was commenting to his wife how they should get one. A minute later he called his teenage son over to show him the statue.

Dad: "William, look!"
Mom (To the son): "He's been rubbing it..."
Son (looking strangely at the dad): "That's weird, dad."

And that's all I have! I have no idea if I'll do another one of these posts, I haven't collected many of these since I started working at the hotel, I work overnights, so I don't see all that many people from which I can overhear hilarious conversations, but if I hear any, I'll keep collecting them just in case. If I get enough for another post in the future, I'll probably do another one, it is just unlikely to happen any time soon. :)

I FINALLY Have an Internship!

So, kind of big news, okay, who am I kidding, HUGE news! I finally have an internship! After almost two years of applications going nowhere, and (almost) never hearing back from anyone, I finally have an internship!

And now for the twist. This will not be a traditional internship. In fact, I am basically making it up as I go! I had to get special permission to do my internship this way, but it will count as the final credit I need to officially graduate and get my degree!

I've mentioned my YouTube channel here before, I don't talk about it a lot here, but if you follow me on my public social media pages, then you'll know I almost always make at least one video a week. Some of those videos I do with other people, and one of those people is Rachel Wagner.

I mentioned her in my last post, you may have seen the pictures from January when I made a scarf and hat for her for a late Christmas gift. Rachel lives in Utah, and she and I met through the Rotoscopers. We both write for the site, and she's the main reason I finally bit the bullet and started my own YouTube channel.

We've become pretty good friends over the past few years, and for the past few months I have been occasionally doing some freelance editing for her. Rachel has two blogs, two channels, and two podcasts, (In addition to a full time job, completely unrelated to YouTube) and sometimes, on weeks where she has too much to do, she'll have me edit an episode or two of her podcasts for her.

In mid-January I started thinking, I have been getting some decent experience with this, I wonder if there is a way I could expand on it and make it count as an internship. I didn't say anything right away, like I said, I have been applying for internships ever since I graduated, and I had just applied for some at the beginning of the year, so I was waiting to see if anything came from them. Shocker, nothing ever did. Story of my life for the last 22 months.

Finally in February, I proposed an idea to Rachel, if I came on as an unpaid intern, would she have enough work for me to do on a consistent basis? It was an immediate yes. Like I said, she's very busy.

So, as for the unpaid part, I know I've said since I graduated that I was not going to do an unpaid internship, since it would almost certainly mean quitting my job while working on it, and I have bills to pay. I can't afford to be without income for 3 months, or however long a full-time internship would last. I had a plan for that, but since this internship is very unconventional, having it be unpaid would only work out if everything came together perfectly.

So, Rachel has actually been paying me since I started working for her, but knowing that she requests my services only when she's really needing some extra help, I figured it would be best to propose it be unpaid. That, and at this point I really just want to get this thing over with. I figured this way it'd be a win-win for both of us, as long as everything worked out the way I wanted it to.

Since January I've actually been working full time at the hotel. At first it was because someone went on vacation, but then there have been, (and are still continuing to be) a bunch of schedule disruptions. People quitting, getting promoted, moving to a different parts of the hotel; it seems like every week a new person leaves or is hired. At the beginning of February, one of the night auditors was moved to days temporarily, so I've been working five nights a week until things can go back to normal. Even if I wasn't working full time at the hotel, I am still employed at Hy-Vee, so I have full time work either way.

With that in mind, I am definitely not interested in quitting for an unpaid internship, no matter how much I need to get this thing done. So my idea in proposing the unpaid internship to Rachel was to keep working at the hotel, but work on the internship on the side. Normally internships are ten, 40 hour weeks. Basically it becomes your full time job for around three months. The way I was planning this, it would take much longer to reach the required 400 hours, but at least I could still have a steady income, and do the internship at the same time. Any other internship, unpaid or not, would not have this kind of flexibility.

So obviously I had Rachel on board, now I just had to convince my faculty adviser and the school's internship adviser. My adviser was pretty easy. Once I told him what I wanted to do, he thought it sounded like a great idea, and a great opportunity. I couldn't believe it! I thought I was going to have to work so much harder to convince him! Rachel even wrote up a huge long list of her qualifications, education, and achievements, and he hadn't even seen that when he said he liked the idea!

But then I had to make another appointment with the internship adviser, and I was sent a whole long list of guidelines, and forms to fill out before our meeting. And one of those guidelines was that the internship had to take place at a physical location, and I could NOT work from home. There were no exceptions listed anywhere in these rules, just that students MUST go to an actual workplace environment.

Well, I figured that was the end of that. I still decided to keep the meeting with her, I figured I'd at least TRY to explain everything on the very off chance that she could bend the rules for me, but I was no longer hopeful at all. I wondered if maybe my adviser didn't understand that I had planned to work from home before he given me the green light to move forward. At that point I had basically accepted that this was not going to work out. So the rest of that week I was not in the best mood.

When we finally had the meeting she seemed very hesitant about the idea, but when she heard that I had already been freelancing for Rachel, and that we always keep in close contact when I'm working on something for her, she seemed a lot more open to the idea. Apparently the biggest reason for the no working from home rule is that the students typically have a hard time keeping in touch with the person who is supposed to be their supervisor. The fact that I am always in touch with Rachel, made it pretty clear that that wouldn't be an issue.

The other reason they don't allow students to work from home is that the school wants students to get the experience of working in a professional environment. However, when she realized that I already work full time for the Gateway, that pretty much sealed the deal. I may not be getting the "Professional Environment" from the internship, but the fact that I've already had an office job for almost a year now, is great experience in and of itself. So the fact that I'm getting that experience somewhere, paired with the fact that I already have a great working relationship with with the person who would be my internship supervisor, she thought that this could be one of the VERY rare instances where they actually approve a work from home internship.

Of course this wasn't the end of it though, I still had to write up a formal proposal, the school had to get in contact with Rachel, and I had to go through all the official steps to actually register for the internship as a class. And then I had to wait more than two weeks for my registration date to open up, so I could actually submit the paperwork and actually get officially registered. Which finally happened today! Or, yesterday. It happened on the 26th. I work overnights, I can't keep days straight.

Right now it still hardly feels real. Over two years of applying for internships and I finally have one! Not to mention, I'm practically creating it as I go! I'm still full time at the hotel with a very unpredictable schedule, so I haven't fully gotten into everything, but my internship adviser told me, back when she officially gave her approval, that I could go ahead and start counting hours. So I have been working on a few projects here and there since then, but hopefully work will get back to normal soon, so I can get into the internship work on a regular schedule.

So anyway, that's my news for now! I probably won't do too many updates here along the way unless something really interesting or exciting happens, but I'll definitely follow up when I finish. Right now that's looking to be around September, but like I said, since I'm already working full time, I'm just counting hours as I go, so I can't predict an exact timeline. Either way, things are finally moving forward, and I'm just excited that this is actually happening! Before the end of the year, I should finally have my Bachelor's Degree!

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!

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!

Life Update, etc.

So, it has been a long time since I blogged anything. Like, last December a long time. A lot has happened in the past couple of months, so I should probably blog about it for those who don't know, and for myself, for when I'm old and can't remember my own name. It's Jonathan, sir, your name is Jonathan.

First, I went back to school. I have 4 classes this semester, but with two of them having weekly labs, separate from the main classes, it feels more like 6. One class is kind of a continuation of a class from last semester, it's kind of a hands on graphic design course. I do know quite a few things being taught, but with the way the programs change so rapidly, it's good to have a refresher.

The next class is a video production/editing class. I kind of think this will be the class that keeps me busiest. By the end of the semester I will have need to have turned in at least 4 videos, with the footage from everything totaling at least 14 minutes. Only 4 videos doesn't sound like too much, but there's a lot that goes into each video, not the least of which is coming up with ideas, and I have to do them all myself. Yikes, I need to get busy on that.

The next class is more videos, but this time with a focus on television news, and writing for the web and television. There's not too many videos, I don't think, but there's a lot of writing. Hopefully this class won't be so hard, I don't have too many problems with writing.

Last but not least, is my favorite class this semester, Creative Writing. So far we haven't written too much more than our short writing prompts, but out of those I've got at least one, if not two poems, and I never would have guessed in a million years I could do that. I still think it's a fluke, and I doubt much more will come of it, but the TA told me I looked like a poet, so who knows. We'll see what happens. For our first big workshop I elected to turn in some previous work instead of coming up with something all new. We had been talking about creative non-fiction, and some of the examples we read were almost completely fiction, with elements of truth, and the way the teacher explained it sounded exactly like something I had written before, so I turned in three of my Twist Ending stories. They were actually a pretty big hit, with some people even wanting more! Well, I do have more... :)

Outside of class I have been pretty busy with photography for the paper. I've consistently had at least one assignment a week, with some weeks having two or three! I've photographed both the student government and city government meetings now, the latter of which was pretty boring, but the student government can get quite lively, especially on the night they voted to ban e-cigarettes. One guy I thought was going to cry, he did NOT want e-cigarettes banned! I have some pictures I can post that I've taken, but I think I'll save that for another post. I will TRY not to go too long without a post!

The last bit of news, for those of you who don't know, I am now a writer for the Rotoscopers animation blog! I write news and reviews of my favorite animated series. It's a pretty sweet job. It's not a paying job, but it's so much fun I don't care. It's good experience should I need writing experience in a professional setting someday.

So far I've done three articles. News is kind of slow this time of year, with new episodes being few and far between, but when something happens I'll be on it!
The first was a news release about the return of Gravity Falls.
http://www.rotoscopers.com/2015/01/22/season-2-of-gravity-falls-returns-on-february-16/
The second was a recap/review of the premiere episode of the new show, Star vs. the Forces of Evil.
http://www.rotoscopers.com/2015/01/23/recap-review-of-new-disney-channel-series-star-vs-the-forces-of-evil-s1e1/
The last is a review of the last episode of Gravity Falls.
(Do not read it if you don't want to be MAJORLY spoiled!)
http://www.rotoscopers.com/2015/02/23/recap-review-of-gravity-falls-northwest-mansion-mystery-s2e10/

That's all my news for now. Hopefully It won't be another two months before I post again!

Iowa State Daily Articles

As most of you know, I am now a photographer for the Daily instead of a reporter. I've had a few photography assignments, which I will eventually post, but for now I figured it was about time I made an archive of the stories I wrote last semester. I really should have done this a long time ago, but better late than never, right?

My first story was about some design students who had competed in a nationwide contest, and had won.
http://www.iowastatedaily.com/news/article_ddaa34ee-a19b-11e3-907f-0019bb2963f4.html

My second story was about some more design students who flew to France to study fabric.
http://www.iowastatedaily.com/news/article_d4007902-b399-11e3-b119-001a4bcf887a.html

My third story was about the "Campanile Challenge" which brought awareness to homelessness on campus.
http://www.iowastatedaily.com/news/article_32a6de78-bb7a-11e3-9334-0019bb2963f4.html

My fourth story was about four students who won a prestigious scholarship.
http://www.iowastatedaily.com/news/article_8a21990c-c013-11e3-a8e6-001a4bcf887a.html

My fifth story was about a professor in the design school who won a service award.
http://www.iowastatedaily.com/news/article_40f46e92-c5a1-11e3-ada3-0019bb2963f4.html

My last story was about a fasion show that created gowns out of garbage.
http://www.iowastatedaily.com/news/article_b946ddd0-cb23-11e3-baa8-0019bb2963f4.html

I did have two other stories, but one was never published, as it was written at the same time as the VEISHA riot, and was understandably pushed back again and again, and eventually scrapped. The other story was for a magazine handed out on campus for new students and was never published online.

Anyway, as far as I know, these are the only stories I'll be writing for the paper. From now on it will just be photography, and I'll get those up eventually.

Pics From Last Semester

I realized today, that it was halfway through the month and I had not posted anything at all yet. It has been so long since I posted anything that I'm surprised no one has come to revoke my blogging license. Oh, that's not a thing? Good to know.

Anyway, I have a few pictures I need to post from last semester. Nothing too exciting, just the buildings I frequented most.

Hamilton Hall. This is where I had my Magazine Publication class.

Troxel Hall. This is where I had my History of Multimedia class.

I just realized that I neglected to photograph Lagomarcino Hall where I had my intro to Journalism class. Instead, here's a picture of Central Campus.

I also had a history of Modern Art class at the Design Building, but I have posted a picture of that in the past. I never took a new one.

Here's the old one.

Hamilton Hall is also where the Iowa State Daily offices are held, and where I took all my reporter training classes.

And as I became a reporter too, this is where I spent most of my time last semester.

And that's all I've got for now. I'll try to update a few more times this month, but I will be heading for Colorado with my cousins on Friday, so I doubt there will be much in that span of time.

Life Update: ISU Year 1 done!

I decided to do a brief life update since I haven't done one in awhile. I haven't done much of anything on this blog in awhile. My computer actually is having problems at the moment, and I generally don't like using my iPad to blog. But since that's all I've got at the moment it will have to do. I bought a keyboard for it, so writing on it is not that bad anymore. I'm waiting for some stuff to fix my computer to be shipped to me. Hopefully that will take care of it. If not, I'll have to take it somewhere to be fixed.

In case you didn't know, I am now done with my first year at Iowa State. I am loving it so far. I got pretty good grades all around. One not-so-good grade, but also one very good one, so it kind of evens itself out. I took (a few) pictures and I plan to share them as soon as my computer is working properly again. Next semester I'll be taking a few more journalism classes, as well as introductory Spanish, and Photography. I'm hoping the photography class will start teaching me more about all the hundreds of settings on my camera that I have no idea what they do.

I also quit my job at the Ames Hy-Vee. I was getting barely any hours all semester. A couple of weeks I only got three hours. For the whole week. Which is not enough for anything. So I decided to cut my losses before going home for the summer and look elsewhere next semester. Right now I'm looking into getting a job at the campus bookstore. I've always loved the idea of working in a bookstore or library, so I hope it works out!

Tomorrow I turn into a saggy pile of wrinkles and begin using a walker, drinking prune juice, and going to bed at 7:30. I mean, it's my birthday. I turn 28. Get off my lawn kids.

In related, happier news, my uncle is taking me to a Lindsey Stirling concert for my birthday on Saturday! I can't wait! It will be my first ever "Real" concert, not just a classical performance at the local high school, or at college. I will be bringing my good camera and praying it makes it through security. I want good pictures!

Well, that's about it for now. I'm still working at the Harlan Hy-Vee. I'm getting way more hours than I was in Ames. Later this summer my cousins and I are tentatively planning a trip to somewhere. We're still ironing out the details, but there will be pictures. I've been going to a bunch of movies, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Godzilla, X-Men: Days of Future Past, but I haven't written any reviews. Maybe I'll do that later on. There's still a few coming up. I'll be seeing Maleficent tomorrow with my cousins for my birthday. It looks amazing. I love new twists on old stories.

Okay, that's enough rambling. Look for another True Facts post tomorrow!

I'm A Reporter!

Tuesday afternoon I have an intro to journalism class. This past week, one of the heads of the Iowa State Daily, our school newspaper, came to speak to the class, basically to recruit new writers. He explained that while the classes we're taking are important, they won't mean hardly anything compared to real work experience, and for those of us who want to be journalists in the future, it is in our own best interests to start getting some of that experience now.

I had known that there was a school newspaper, but I didn't know anything about it, and I didn't know anything about how to join. I had thought about looking into it later, after I'd been in journalism longer than just one week, but when he came into class looking for people to join, I decided not to wait. I applied the next day, and I had an interview this afternoon. There wasn't really even any question on will I or won't I get the job. He basically said that if we want the experience, they will find a place for us. Training starts on Monday and I am so excited! This is almost like a dream come true, but it's sort of like a dream I never knew I wanted.

As I've said before I have never really thought about being anything other than an artist. Until last semester I had never even thought about being a journalist myself, which is odd, because some of my favorite fictional characters have been journalists ever since I was a kid. My two favorite Superheros are journalists in their day-to-day lives, Superman, is a newspaper reporter as Clark Kent, and Spider-Man is a newspaper photographer as Peter Parker. When I was into the Left Behind series, my favorite character was Buck Williams, another newspaper reporter. When I was obsessed with Smallville, my favorite character was Chloe Sullivan, school newspaper, then later Daily Planet reporter. I always thought that being a reporter would be a fun job, but I also thought of it as something that other people did, not something I could ever do. Sort of like how I knew that cities like Chicago and New York were real, but not places I could ever visit. I was weird like that.

So anyway, I am now a reporter at the Iowa State Daily, and eventually this will lead to being a photographer as well. He told me that he'll have me talk to the photography department, and that being both a journalist and a photographer would be great, because I can shoot for all my own stories. I will keep you updated on how everything goes. This could be the first step toward something huge!

Quick Campus Tour: 1st Semester

I've been meaning to get a few pictures of school up for awhile, but I've had so much school to work on, that until this week, I've kind of neglected my blog. So today, about halfway through the semester, (Halfway? Really?) I'm FINALLY getting a few pictures up.

On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, my time is split between two buildings.

This is the design building. This is where all the art studios are, as well as a large auditorium where a lot of art lectures are held. This is where my Introduction to the Design program is held, as well as my theater class. This is also where the drawing class that I dropped was held.

So far, theater class is probably my favorite class. It is more than just theater, and actually, I don't know that Theater is a good name for the class. It's more of an overview of all the performing arts. It's an introduction to, and a history of, dance, music, theater, and movies. I really like the teacher, and I think that's one reason I like the class so much.

This is Curtis Hall. This is where my sociology class is held. I really enjoy this class too. It really helps you understand why people act the way that they do. I find the whole thing fascinating. It's classes like this that make me wish that everyone could go to college. If more people could understand why humans act the way they do, I think the world would be a much better place.

This is the class size as seen from up in the balcony. Most classes are like this. So many people.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I am in this building, Hoover Hall. Here I have a design history class.

This is how big the class is, I am in the back row here.

Looking to my right.

And to my left. As you can see, the class is huge.

Now I should probably tell you that this is the class I was telling you about in my last post. The one that it's going to be next to impossible to get a good grade in. But it is not a terrible class. I actually like it a lot, when I'm not trying to pass any assignments in it.

When I first got there and I heard my teacher speak for the first time, I thought the whole class was going to be unbearable. He sounds like a cross between Richard Simmons and Elmer Fudd. Not even kidding. I'm not trying to make fun of him in any way, I'm just stating a fact. But as soon as he started teaching, I got over it. His voice doesn't bother me at all anymore. I now can't imagine the class being taught by anyone else. He always has fascinating stories to tell about the history of design, like how Washington DC got to have some of the worst designed streets in the country, and how all the designs of our money came to be, and what they used to look like. I wish he'd write a book with all this information. I think it would be fascinating.

So, those are all my classes for this semester. Next semester I'll try to get some pictures up a lot sooner than halfway through. I have some other pictures of other places around campus as well, and when I get time, I'll make a post with them too.