November 15, 2001
Hello all--as you can see, I've been extremely remiss in giving any updates on how school has been treating me so far this semester. The last update I did was the measly summer one...where I promised to update this damn site more. Ugh. That ought to teach me to say things like that prematurely.... Anyhoo, as you can guess, I've been busier than hell. I've got tons of stuff going on so I'm always on the run. The plan is to give a Turkey Break update to get things up to speed. Next semester is going to be worse, I'm sure, so I'm just going to apologize NOW for the lack of updates. :-)
Stay tuned... there will be more added in a few days....
Roses & Balloons,
Jennifer
:-)
November 24, 2001
You all can thank my absent mindedness for this update... I went to my website to check out how it looks on a different computer and found out the home page wasn't working. How irritating! I fixed the problem, and since I'm here, figured I might as well write something while I had a chance. :-)
Fall Semester 2001 has been a blur since day one. I've been soooo busy, I honestly don't know how I've found time to get everything done and still stay relatively sane. Unlike last Spring when I was pulling my hair out over papers and class-related-stress, this semester has been stress of a different breed, leaving me much calmer and less inclined to break things. HA HA. Seriously, it has been a much better semester compared to last Spring's HELL schedule. For those who don't know, I took 1 communications class, 1 sociology class, and three lit classes--needless to say the latter three killed me with all the papers I had to write on a weekly basis. Not to mention the reading. It would have been easier to tolerate with a different prof in one of the three classes as well. My Shakespeare prof was GREAT. He made both Shakespeare classes well worth attending every day--the papers in there weren't nearly as scary as in my other class: Love in the Arts. What is that you ask? Basically an excuse to read and write about dirty love poetry from all periods of history. I'm not kidding. Have you ever read Ovid? He was a total sex-crazed maniac! (He was smooth though... he'd probably make me swoon if I were around back in the day....) Regardless of all that, Spring sucked serious ass and I was only too happy to see it end last May.
This semester differs mainly in that my classload is swapped: instead of mostly lit classes, I have mostly com classes and only ONE English class. (English is my minor--needed one more class to finish it up.) My com classes are as follows: Radio News, Intro to Advertising, Media Ethics, and Broadcast Management. All but the Advertising class are very very cool. The advertising class sucks only because the instructor tends to play martyr most of the time, taking it upon himself to punish those students who aren't taking their college education seriously while the rest of us who DO pay attention suffer the consequences. The content is very interesting and I am learning a lot--I just wish that the prof would forget about the idiots of the class and concentrate on teaching us the material, rather than a lesson--if ya know what I mean.
I think my favorite class is my Radio News class with Glenn Johnson. He's a GREAT professor! I didn't know what to expect as he does expect a lot from his students, but so far, I've been doing great in the class. I have to read/write the news for KUGR twice a week, which is also a challenge. This means that I'm spending a TON of time at KUGR because in addition to that, I've got two radio shows AND I'm the Sales Director for KUGR now. Radio has become my life. :)
Last summer I decided that I wanted to go into Sales right after college so I could actually make some money, rather than struggling for another 3-4 years post-graduation trying to make it as a hot-shot DJ. If I'm in Sales, I could possibly do the DJ gig on the side, making a name for myself on the air while I sell the station to potential advertisers. To help implement this plan, I decided to take as many advertising classes as I could since the Com school doesn't really have a "sales" degree to speak of. These advertising classes will give me an extra boost in knowledge and experience, hopefully. Further moving myself towards my future career goal was my move to become KUGR's Sales Director. I wanted to be on the KUGR Board of Directors this year, no matter what, so I had two choices: Program Director and Sales Director. I was the only person who applied for SD, and besides, it would look good on my resume, so I took it on. So far I've been trying to organize everything since the previous few SDs have done NOTHING for the station. Bastards. I finally got the rate card figured out and have actually made a couple sales. Next semester will be better as I hope to add a couple sales people to help me get new/old clients, etc. We shall see how that goes... I also got some FANTASTIC help from Tom Morris at KHTR FM in Pullman. Glenn Johnson directed me to him and Tom was VERY helpful in getting me started in the right direction. I hope to be meeting with him again in the future very soon. (Thanks Tom!)
In other significant KUGR news, the current BOD decided we'd had enough of being orphans--we wanted to be included officially in the Edward R. Murrow School of Communication dammit!!! So... myself, Gail, and Rachel (GM and Traffic, respectively) created a proposal and presented it to the Com Faculty at a meeting a few weeks ago. Not to toot my own horn, but it went BEYOND GREAT!!! Alex Tan, the Com School Director, came up to us BEFORE the meeting and told us how impressed he was with our proposal!!! This was the first time I met this man, so this was a VERY VERY GOOD THING!!! We were very excited, needless to say. The presentation went so well that as of last week, we got word that the faculty unanimously decided to adopt us into the Com school! That is SUPER news because now we'll have the resources to get new equipment and maybe even (gasp!) get on FM!!! Special thanks do need to go out to Glenn Johnson, Val Limburg and Neal Robison for backing us 200% and saying so many wonderful things about the current BOD during their meeting. Without their support, we would still be begging for help from anyone willing to listen. The final step in this huge trek forward is to officially be released from under the wings of the NW Public Radio people. Technically, we belong to them, but they aren't really interested in us, so we don't anticipate they will argue with us about leaving. That meeting is Monday, 11/26, so after that, we'll know if we can celebrate or if we have to declare war. :-S Let's hope for the former!
I can't talk about this semester without mentioning one of the MAIN reasons for my improved mood so far... My Cats. Unless you've been living under a rock, you know that last June, I got a couple cats. They are brothers and are now over a year old. Maynard and Sebastian are their names and you can read more about them on their page... (click on their names to go there now...) Having these two furry little friends around has helped me to deal with being on the far side of the state much more than I ever could have imagined. Frankly, I'm not sure how I survived without them! While they do get into their fair share of trouble (I could dedicate an entire website to their blunders and adventures...), they do keep me company, which is the point. I can't tell you how nice it is to come home every day and have two little furry faces looking up at me, happy to see me. They truly are a joy in my life now. They have a ton of kitty toys all over my house and they rule the roost, so to speak. They are both very smart and have tons of personality. Anyone who has met them will confirm that fact. They are hilarious! I've taken at least three rolls of film of them playing and getting into trouble already, so be sure to check back to see the latest funny kitty pix. I'll be adding them as I can.
Well, I know this isn't the greatest update, but that's going to have to do for now. I'll try to update more soon--before Christmas, hopefully! Until then, thanks for stopping by!
Roses & Balloons,
Jen
:-)
all material by jennifer r. © jetcityrayne 2000-2001