BLOG POST #10 – Expert Interview Final Cut

Initially, I planned to interview the owner of the farm that I am working at for my internship this semester, but because of timing, I was unable to meet with her. Instead, I chose to interview my friend, Ben, who also goes to this school. Ben is currently in the masters program for athletic training here at the University of New England, and plans to finish his education here over the next two years. I thought that it would be a great idea to interview Ben for two reasons: the first is that I was in this major during my freshman year at this school, actually it was the reason I came to this school in the first place, and second, he is a very professional person and he is heavily invested in his studies. I believe that Ben proved to be the best candidate after considering all of my options.

It was a bit difficult to draft questions that aligned with the rubric of this assignment in that the whole “expert” part of the assignment seemed a little too open-ended. I think that I fit the criteria regardless. But, since my interviewee is not a certified expert in his field, it was challenging to dance around that with the quesitons. The solution that I came up with was to tell as much of his story as I could without going over the time limit. Again, I believe that I did that well enough.

Let me know what you think!

Journal #6

For this journal entry, I was asked to find a news article that assesses the current public opinion of the communications major. The article that I will be using for this disucssion is called “What You Need to Know About Becoming a Communication and Media Studies Major.” This article gives a summary of what the communications major entails in most universities in the United States. The author says that if you have a multitude of interests and if you like working with people, then the major might be for you. The studies within this major teach you how to communicate interpersonally, but also how to examine the many different ways that can occur in today’s world. Nowadays, compared to say, fifteen years ago, the major has evolved to include media arts in the same track, or a complimentary minor track.

So, that was the short summary of what the major is itself. The rest of the article is more or less a questionnaire to see if communications is right for you. However, the bottom of the article asks the question, “What Can I Do With a Communication and Media Studies Major?” This is a common question posed to aspiring communications majors, and students already involved in this area of study. The article gives responses like: lawyer, marketing manager, human resources specialist, producer and director, etcetera.

This article, unlike other mainstream pieces about majors in the arts and humanities, sells this field of study pretty well and does not refer to the common stigma that other articles and the mainstream opinion might. At the end of the article, there is a section of testimonies from communications and media studies majors that provide great information.

BLOG POST #11 – Audio Playground Four

The podcast above was made to highlight the short commute that I take everyday to school. The prompt for this assignment was to make a podcast for your current commute, which I decided to follow almost exactly. UNE is on the same road as my house, so coming up with a substantial amount of genuine audio during the short trip was a challenge. I did my best to include a couple of relatable and comedic moments in this episode, but it is definitely up to the audience to see if those bits land or not. I hope you enjoy this short episode!

Audio Journal #8

Below this week’s audio journal, you will see a few files from one of the tasks from my internship this week. The screenshots did not fully encapsulate the website updates that I did, but these are a couple of text updates that I did for the website. The edits have not been published as of this post, but keep an eye on blackrockfarm.net in the near future to see the full changes.

BLOG POST #10 – Expert Interview

For this interview assignment, I thought that I could interview the owner of Blackrock Farm about the company’s sustainability and eco-conscious practices and how important that is. I have heard the staff at Blackrock talk about various specific efforts around the farm with regard to sustainability, so I think that I would start there for my pre-research.

As a second option, I was thinking of interviewing my grandfather. He is what I would call an expert craftsman and carpenter. I think that it might be interesting to learn more from him about common mistakes people make, safety procedures that are commonly overlooked, and things of that sort. The internet would be the best place to get this kind of information before I conduct the interview.

UPDATE: I decided to interview my friend Ben from UNE. He is enrolled in the athletic training program here and he is what I would consider a professional, even without a certification. The conversation will mostly be about the life of an athletic training student, but also an athletic trainer as well because he has that level of expertise already. In my freshman year at UNE, I was enrolled in the athletic training program, so I had a lot of prior knowledge going into the interview, which means that I did not have to conduct extensive research.

Interview date/time: March 24- 3:30pm (COMPLETE)

Interview Questions:

  • Could you tell us a little bit about yourself?
  • What is the most satisfying aspect of being an athletic training student?
  • What is the biggest struggle or pain in your studies?
  • Why and how did you get into athletic training?
  • Do you prefer the field work you do at sports games and other events over the learning side of things?
  • When did you first become interested in this field?
  • Is there a particular case or injury that stands out from the rest that you can remember?
  • What kind of role have mentors played in your education overall progress in your field?
  • What is the next big step you need to take on your way to becoming a certified athletic trainer?
  • Could you describe the community of aspiring athletic trainers?

Intro/Outro Script:

Journal #5

I have to say that I am confused about what this journal is asking me to do exactly. My feeling is that this journal will be the same as the most previous revision projecct post that I made because I have not made much progress since then. With that being said, let’s see what we can do with this journal.

My relationship with peer-review with regard to college work has not been great. The feedback and commentary always seem to fall on either side of the spectrum of positivity and negativity. Either my work is “so good” or it is “not the way I would have done it.” Obviously, there have been a couple of moments in the midst of all of this where great feedback has been given to me, but that is, again, seldom the case. Hopefully I can receive some peer review feedback that allows me to further this revision project in ways that make sense, not to just reword things, or just simply subtract or add information.

The only commentary work that I have completed for my revision project has been done in my head and out loud with Dr. Smith, but I have a couple of ideas on how to drastically improve on the project, even with the limited commentary I have available. So, the original paper that I wrote in my junior year was about The Interface Problem that is presented by Bermudez in the book The Philosophy of Psychology, but only one common response out of the four to the problem itself. The response that I focused on was the autonomous conception of mind, but there is also the functional conception of mind, the neurocomputational conception of mind, and the representational mind. All of these theories/responses to this question posed by Bermudez react to the issue at question in different ways. So, the first big change I would make in my project would be to include this additional information. The example proposal from the bottom of the PDF that was shared with us will be great once I get to that part of my project, simply because it is written about the same professor that I am using for this project.

BLOG POST #9 – Audio Playground Three

For this project, my classmates and I were asked to tell a story in the form of a list that would ideally last around one minute. It did not take me long to figure out what avenue I wanted to pursue. I am constantly making lists to do all sorts of different tasks, so brainstorming on this one was rather easy. The idea was to take the audience through what my routine would be if I were to be applying for a job. In fact, I have done what I said in this podcast almost exactly a couple of times before.

As I wrote the script on a classroom chalkboard, I found that I was getting a little bored with the material that I came up with. Because of this, I decided to toss in a couple of lines that could be funny, an effort to make the episode less boring. As always, enjoy!

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