What’s Next?

{ April 14, 2008 @ 8:59 pm } · { Uncategorized }
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It’s coming down to the final days of school now and I guess I’m coming to another turning point or fork in the road. These points come every so often in life and it means that things are about to change. For the past two years of my life I’ve been driving to Hamilton from Cambridge everyday to go to school. Working hard to hand stories and assignments on time and pass all of my classes. Stress, school and my life all went hand-in-hand.

I’m graduating in June [ assuming I successfully complete a 140 hour internship] and I’m starting to feel displaced. I felt like this after graduating high school too. I’ve been a student for almost my entire life [aside from the two years I took off after high school] and now I’m to embark on an entirely new journey. I’ll always feel like a have a deadline to make, or that I have homework to get done even though I don’t. I’ll just feel like there’s something I should be doing but have no idea what it is.

I guess these voids will eventually be filled with different responsibilities and duties. I might have an internship at a news radio station in Kitchener. I went for an interview last week and I thought I had made a complete ass of myself, but I was called today to come back and meet some more people at the station. I guess that’s a good sign. For now, I’m just going to leave everything up to fate and possibly luck. Hopefully the winds of change will blow me in the right direction. [ I know that was a cheesy line but I couldn't resist]

Learning How to Drive

{ March 11, 2008 @ 1:38 pm } · { Uncategorized }
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Winter VS Summer

{ March 4, 2008 @ 6:02 pm } · { Uncategorized }
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Blog Introduction Video

{ February 19, 2008 @ 8:02 pm } · { Uncategorized }
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Social Networking OR Anti-Social Networking? That is the Question

{ February 11, 2008 @ 3:37 am } · { Uncategorized }
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Social networks in my opinion are becoming the way of the future. Being able to connect with people from all around the world has never been easier as it is today. We seem to use these sites such as Facebook to communicate on a daily basis. Instead of just checking our e-mail, we check our Facebook page, or our MySpace page, or even Twitter. All of these sites we can get on our cell phones and we can literally be able to contact almost everyone we know while we’re absolutely anywhere. Plus you can let all these people know what your doing at any point in the day.

There are good things and bad things about this in my opinion. Social networks are great if you want to get your work noticed especially in the journalism industry. Sites like Digg can be helpful tools in the hunt for a job. Blogging has become so popular that people like Perez Hilton are well known celebrities for it. He was able to launch his own career. He doesn’t have a boss and he didn’t have to wait for promotions to get to where he is now.

At the same time though, I think these tools take a lot of patience to understand how they work and to build up a following. I also think that social networks are making people un-social! People are becoming so used to just typing and only talking to people via Facebook or MSN they are slowly forgetting how to talk to someone face-to-face. I think it’s becoming more and more prevalent in society today. There are people who don’t understand social cues. They’re uncomfortable making eye contact or they just don’t talk to anyone at all. Maybe it’s just me who thinks this, but I think the typed word has become more popular than the spoken word. Who knows what kind of problems this will lead to in the next 10 years? We learn a lot of small but important behavious from the people that surround us. Behaviours such as manners, courtesy, patience, and how to act in different environments Etc. If the only way the next generation knows how to communicate is via the Internet then the REAL society will change, and in my opinion, it will be for the worse.

http://channel8.msdn.com/Posts/Social-Networking-is-it-making-you-anti-social/

Enviro Taboo

{ January 28, 2008 @ 8:42 pm } · { Uncategorized }
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Lately, all I hear about is the environment. Hybrid cars, saving electricity with new and improved technologies, small things the individual can do to reduce our “carbon footprints” Etc. I find it funny that practices such as buying hybrid cars, energy efficient appliances, turning off lights when you leave a room, and bringing your own re-usable bags to the grocery store have become such popular ones just within the last six months. After the Live Earth concert in the summer that was broadcast around the world, and An Inconvenient Truth everyone seems to be jumping on the ban wagon one-by-one, little-by-little.
I work at a grocery store, and the latest trend is bring your own re-usable bags that are sold at the store for $1. I think this is a great idea! We do still sell plastic bags for a few cents, but the number of people who are bringing their own bags have increased dramatically! There used to be a very small percentage of people who brought their own bags to the grocery store. Probably about every 10-15 customers if that. They would either use the boxes available or buy the plastic bags. Now, just about every other customer has their own bags with them. Just this past weekend I saw all kinds of re-usable, decomposable bags bought from at least a dozen different stores. It almost seems taboo to use plastic bags now a days!
Eliminating plastic bags from our everyday life would be amazing for the environment, and for the wild life that choke and die from them. This article I found says that Europe, Australia, and Asia are all ready to rule out plastic bags, Canada seems to be well on its way, but America is years behind.
www.theage.com.au
All of these environmental issues have existed for decades, and even centuries, but it took an international concert and tons of media coverage to get the message through to the public! Another example of how the media are helping to save the world!

Social Journalism Class

{ January 22, 2008 @ 6:30 pm } · { Uncategorized }
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I think the social journalism class is interesting because it has opened my eyes to a whole new platform to show case my work as a journalist. Knowing that I can utilize the Internet in more ways than just a research tool is important in today’s world. Blogging, social networks, and posting videos online are all excellent tools that can jump- start, or advance anyone’s career.

Knowing how to use these tools will be a major advantage coming out of college, and going into the real world. It will give us more to offer potential employers, not to mention it can also make us more independent. If we have the right equipment such as cameras, recorders, editing software, and a laptop we can post our material on our own website, or make money selling our work to news organizations. Some employers may even expect their employees to have these skills in the future. The journalism industry is constantly changing and we have to keep up.

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