The Current Sauce

The Current Sauce is the organization that I have been the most involved with since entering Northwestern in the Fall of 2007. At first, I was trying to find a job somewhere on campus that would allow me to take pictures. I did find that job. I still work with my journalism job quite often, but now I have something else to do as well. The Current Sauce has become something that provides hours of work, fun and, at the end, a sense of achievement. I started out in the Fall taking photos as a photographer for both the yearbook and the newspaper, but as the semester went on began covering events mainly for the paper. I have nothing against the yearbook and suggest that any new students coming in taking pictures take for both organizations, but I just liked the setup of the paper better than that of the yearbook. I liked the sense of achievement at the end of each week. In the Spring of this year, I became the Photo Editor of the paper. It changed my job by adding the responsibility of finding people to take pictures, cover events and reminding them to turn in the pictures. I am glad that in Fall 2008 I will assume a new role that I will talk about during a later post, but I do like the experience I was able to gain this semester. I feel as if I am rambling, but it doesn't matter because it is a blog. It is also important to point out that the other editors of the paper also made my job much easier by tracking down photographers themselves or in some cases even covering the event by themselves. I thought I would enter college and have trouble finding a way to become involved in publications or student media since I was not a journalism major, but I did not. I encourage people from all majors to consider joining a student media organization for at least one semester in some capacity. The people that you meet will help you in more ways than you can imagine, and the staff that you will be a part of will provide friendship, knowledge and memories that will last a lifetime.

Final Speech

Today is the day that I give my final speech for Communication 1010. It is an entry level class, but one that I think should be the first of a series of required courses to graduate from college. I can not tell you how many events I have been to or seen over my lifetime that have made me want to know how did this person make it so far without being able to speak publically. I will not say that I am great at it, but rather I am above average. I like speaking and it is much better than writing most of the time. One place in particular that I have noticed the lack of public speaking skills is at athletic banquets at schools. I hate to pick on coaches, but that is what I think of when I talk about poor speaking skills. I have only seen one athletic banquet where pretty much every speaker/coach was prepared and spoke well. The other several involved coaches forgetting players names, not writing down anything and sounding less than well-educated. I do not understand how the coaches coach, but can not speak. I realize that coaching is something different and is much less formal, but I would think that speaking and effective communication would be a requirement. Anyway, I will go off of my soapbox and back to why it my communications class should be the first of a series. I believe that the ability to speak in public is crucial to becoming successful in life because it something that will be required of every person at some point on another some place in the world. If every college student took three speech classes, the college graduate would and should be able to comfortably speak in front of a small crowd. Now that I have shared my position, I must go and give my final speech on a topic that may or may not work--yearbooks. I hope that all goes well, but I personally do not like this speech as much as the other four from the class this semester.