I was supposed to do a little video for the site today, being the first of the month and all. But I forgot, and will forever blame the jump from the 28th to the 1st. Sure, I’ve experienced this dozens of time in my life, always at the same time of year, arriving with rote predictability. That doesn’t mean I’ve accurately predicted it.
Take my watch, for example. It is from an American-owned company. It runs on kinetic energy. It is powered from Swiss components using Japanese machinery. I must still remind it to make the leap from 28 to 1.
So there’s no video to start off the month. Just as well. The purpose of those videos is to have a little fun and take about 10 minutes shooting the thing(s) that will characterize the new month. I’m not sure how to show studying, writing and fretting over proposals and defenses any differently than I did in January. (It was artful, go back and check it out.)
Here’s my month. Later I’ll defend the now legendary comprehensive exams. And then I’ll be writing on my dissertation proposal, which will hopefully be completed next month. There’s also work and teaching and grading and getting ready for the spring conference season and wonderful, glorious Spring Break. (Which will, no doubt, be filled with many of the preceding things.) And that’s March. Aside from calendars and stacks of notes and books … there’s just not a fun video there. On the other hand this will require something extra creative to shoot for April.
Today, then. My class visited Intermark Group, which is one of the public relations/advertising firms in town. I studied in the doctoral program with the wife of the CEO. Very nice people. This class takes a few trips — we’ve done a local television station and later we’ll do a magazine publisher — and it gives the young students an idea of what all is out there in the profession. They had a really nice visit today because the people at Intermark are so accommodating and enthusiastic about their work.
The students met one of their interactive guys, two of their media staffers (including a Samford graduate), a traditional PR practitioner, a social media expert, the senior creative guy and some of the nice folks in their video studios who walked them through how they produce commercials and things. It was a good tour.
Also, they have an Airstream inside.
And so it was that the first picture of the third month of the year of our Lord 2011 found on this site was a vintage restored recreational trailer which has been outfitted as a conference room. Our host said that whenever anyone wants to do a story on the place they want to talk about the Airstream. Whenever clients come they want to meet in the Airstream.
Wouldn’t you?
They also have a section of wooden bleachers where they do their large group work. She said they came from a local elementary school, but I could have sworn they were from my high school. Gave me a shiver just thinking about it.
And then it was back to the office as the student-journalists put together their newspaper. I started grading. I’m officially one-half caught up there, working my way through the mound of assignments that came in while I was off campus last week. I’ll make it through the rest tomorrow.
I could shoot a 30-second video of a red ink pen. No? April, then.
