Winter Semester Classes

This semester I have four classes; Print Publishing, International Communications, Accounting 200 and my Communications Capstone class.

Print Publishing is turning out to be my fun class. I get to be creative with Adobe CS5 InDesign. I had to learn it last semester for my Communications Writing and Production class. But here we are learning the principles of good design. OK, I will be a little snotty here - I already know the principles of good design, I am just learning to articulate and fine tune them better with this program. My instructor is only 22 yrs. old, and it is hard to keep up with her in class some days. Thank goodness for free tutoring sessions during her office times. Well worth it!

Anyway, the final assignment is a book project. My sister has written some history on my parents, so I will be using that text and pictures to put together something for my family. I thought of doing my cookbook, but having to reformat 150+ pages seems a little daunting to me at this time. That will be a project for over the summer - when I am through with school :)

For my International Comms. class we read this book consisting of academic papers on various international communication issues, and also have to read the NY Times about world news for our weekly quizzes. We have a group presentation once a week on different world problems, such as Emergence of China. Threat or promise?; International abuse of women; Propaganda, etc.. My week is coming up soon. I was assigned, "Illegal Immigration. What to do?" My classmate is from Japan. We decided to narrow our discussion because it is huge! I spoke with our professor yesterday about what we were planning, and he informed me that this was the hottest topic. He likes robust discussions!

I do like numbers, and I do like them to add up and balance. However, remembering what name to give a journal entry does confuse me most times. I thought this class would be a piece of cake. Not so. I am doing a little better in my quizzes - now it is a matter of remembering all that I have learned for my next exam. However, I do remember what a FIFO and LIFO are.

Then there is my capstone class. I love going to class. There are some students who have had the same teacher for four of the required classes for PR. She is an incredible teacher, and I am fortunate to have had her for one of them. But I like the variety of these instructors different teaching stylses. I think it adds balance to what you are learning. The client we have, Singular Humanitarian Experience is interesting. My group has a good idea as to how we are going to form and present our campaign. We have just finished our research, and now we will be working hard to finish up the campaign and collateral pieces - I can already tell it is going to be crunch work before the end of March.

I am phasing out of my job on campus these next few weeks. After 3 months, they finally were able to hire someone. It has been a bit stressful this past month, feeling guilty that I wasn't in the lab when I was needed. But they knew it would be a hit-and-a-miss with my schedule. I started doing some PR work with an agency this semester, to get experience, but because of my campus job I haven't been able to give the time needed to do the work they have for me. It has been frustrating. Next week will be better.