Millennials: How the media has developed us

Back together at last

Last night marked the first night of my ski season 2012. I couldn't help but write a post on it, I am way too excited. This past Monday, Houghton received a few solid and quite dense inches of that glorious stuff called snow.

I was in the library all afternoon and night, just fidgeting at the flakes fell from the gray clouds, wondering if it's be worth it to strap on my rock skis and headlamp later on. I vetoed it, unsure of the conditions, and of course because I had an absurd amount to do before this upcoming break.

Then, in the middle of my shift at our Fitness Center on campus on Tuesday, one of my friends walked by and gave me some day-changing news. The trails were actually groomed. Of course, I worked till the sun went down, so he told me to grab a headlamp. I was thinking more and more about it, and that's when my dear mom texted me. A smile spread across my face as she told me about an e-mail she got about the trails being lit tonight. Well, there went all hope for getting anything done for the rest of the night...

Right after my shift, I caught some dinner with a few friends and my cousin, then husteld back up to my room where I set some priorities straight for my night...

Yup, dumped the books for some boots. Grabbed my skis and poles, gave em a "welcome back" kiss, then proceeded to change and fly out the door to the trails.

I didn't stop skiing or smiling once I hit the snow until I skied all the groomed and lit trails. I was amazed with the quality of the grooming, even with such little snow. Once finished, I called my parents to share with them my pure joy of skiing before Thanksgiving for the 3rd year in a row. 

That being said, it's safe to say I'm back in a relationship with my skis. It's been too long. 

More Peer Reviews!

Yo. Here's the last of those peer reviews!

Julia:
Arg: Horoscopes are not scientifically or astronomically correct.
Strengths: Visually appealing, good color scheme. Very informative.
Develop: There is a lot of text, maybe break it up with images or charts somehow?

Meredith:
Arg: Photo manipulation can alter what we think is "normal" in terms of appearance.
Strengths: Good photo editing!
Develop: Maybe put it in a context more, I know it's not finished yet, but add text.

Olivia:
Arg: Encouraging travel throughout America; every state has something unique about it.
Strength: Visually appealing, creative!
Develop: Add some borders to the state lines, it's a little hard to tell where one ends and one begins. Also, keep it uniform with every picture being of a landscape or text.

Kim:
Arg: Promoting UP Unique Creations and what they do/make.
Strengths: Cool layout, I like the color scheme and the photos.
Develop: Watch the white space/positioning

Katelyn:
Arg: Presidential Candidate's image and how it may influence the country's view of them.
Strengths: Very well organized, nice pictures and descriptions
Develop: Lots of text, maybe try to shorten it/separate it more. Think about the size as well, it seemed a little small, but there is a lot of info.

Courtney:
Arg: Promoting participation in writing a novel during November event.
Strengths: I liked the layout, the font and the colors
Develop: Vary the sentence length more, seems a tad choppy. Also, is there an organization that puts it on?

Devin:
Arg: Eating on campus vs off campus as a college student.
Strengths: Good photos/descriptions, well-supported plan overall
Develop: Layout, photo explanations

Hannah:
Arg: a blog for her sister
Strengths: Colors, layout, very personal feel to it.
Develop: Font - it's a tad illegible, but it does add personality.

Jana:
Arg: Promoting Halonen Landscaping services
Strengths: Good visual, I like the layout and the simplicity of the ad as a whole.
Develop: More contact info?

Peer Reviews!

Here's the peer reviews from today's class:

Sarah:
Argument: Promoting Vocal Achord, Tech's acapella group.
Strengths: Very visually appealing! I really like the fonts and the design as a whole.
                 Specifically, I really like how the second design you showed us has the combination of the
                 bass and the treble clefs, it's very easy to tell what kind of group it is.
Develop: Colors! keep it simple though.

Charlie:
Argument: Promoting Club Indigo
Strengths: Easy to read, good font/color. Very informative! Stands alone w/ no narration.
Develop: Maybe keep the transitions standardized. Also cut down the info on some slides.

James:
Argument: Music piracy
Strengths: Very visually appealing. Good color scheme! Well organized.
Develop: Maybe rearrange the key on the CD graphic, it took me a bit to figure out the statement next
               to it without looking at the graphic, but overall it's very good!

Cassandra:
Argument: Promoting Greek Life at Tech
Strength: Visually appealing, energetic
Develop: Watch the speed, I couldn't keep up for a few slides. Also, try to standardize the colors/font.

Good luck with the rest of your projects! Woohoo!
              

Complications

I think I just finished a rough draft of my media production for Major Assignment 3. Why do I say "think?" well, I'm sure there's stuff I'm missing and stuff that needs to be changed still. All I know is that I faced a few challenges, and I managed to overcome them. And now I'm addressing them here!

1. I chose to use iMovie to create a short video of who the Millennials are and what media has affected them and how it has affected them. Let's just say that iMovie is vastly different from what it used to be, oh 5 years ago. I had to use my computer and technology knowledge to explore the new set up. This provided challenges in itself.

• The timeline for iMovie hardly exists anymore. Now it seems like a continuous stream of movie, transition, and music all in one:

• That leads me to problem 2. The audio in this new iMovie is significantly more difficult to work with. Instead of being able to cut and arrange audio right in iMovie itself, I had to work between Garageband AND iMovie. This was a great source of frusteration. But I managed. Thank you, silly middle school years full of goofing around with Macs.

2. Garageband is also vastly different. Took me quite a bit of exploring around the new Garageband as well. More frusteration. But yet again, I managed, and finished my "rough draft," if you will.


I made sure to pay attention to the copyright laws, too. I credited each photo used and each song used. I even stuck to the time limit of all but one song. So I should be ok.

I forgot how much I love making movies and producing media like this. 2+ hours just flew by, and let's just say I'd much rather keep putting movies and songs together than study for Statistics. But hey, we can't have it all. And with that, time to get crackin' on that math. Guess that's another reason why I'm an STC major and not an engineer!

The generation of praise and excessive coddling

I've seen this video from 60 Minutes before, and just stumbled upon it when getting some research done. I thought it brought up an interesting point that I could tie into my project: The Millennials have been arguably overexposed to excessive praise, coddling and phrases similar to "you're special, and you can do anything and be anyone you want to be."

It is somewhat ridiculous how much I can attest to this. Every year of soccer I participated in from age 5 to 12 I got a trophy, just for participating. There were no winners and no losers. Everyone won. And looking at myself today, I sadly truly do expect rewards for good work, even in the smallest circumstances.

60 Minutes also sparked the thought of looking into children's TV shows of the 90's in me. Mister Rodgers is a prime example, like they said. I'm just writing this here so I can get my thoughts out, but TV shows are a good medium I can use in my project for additional research.

I'm still targeting my topic towards technology advances and how it had effected the Millennials as people today. From TV shows to computer games, the Internet, and eventually cell phones, we are a vastly unique generation. Well, back to work.