“I see myself as a student. Trying to learn everything.”

Giannis Antetokounmpo, Milwaukee Bucks

To me personally, being a successful communication and media studies student means being an efficient communicator both nonverbally and verbally. Communication has many elements that often go unrecognized, most often on the nonverbal side. Consistent eye contact, effective nonverbal cues, and knowing how to address conflict are some of the many relevant skills this major has taught me and helped me improve upon. I have noticed that as I got further down the road in my academic journey and started taking part in professional environments such as job interviews, my confidence speaking in these settings has increased tenfold. In addition, I have also become a much stronger writer. Much of the communication and media study field required an extreme amount of writing in various different formats. All of these experiences have given me more confidence in my writing which is yet another important form of communication I use regularly. The internships and other experiences I have been a part of have all contained some level of writing necessary for various reasons, and the different forms of writing the Communication and Media Studies program has forced me to experiment with have given me a much greater sense of confidence in completing these tasks.

I specialized in the media studies side of the major, being a part of classes such as Writing for Media and Media Law and Regulation. One of the most unique and useful classes that I took during my time at the college was Conflict Communication. Conflict is unfortunately a part of any and all walks of life, something everyone is bound to engage in at many different points. This course gave me advice on how to best handle this conflict, and even taught me that not all conflict is necessarily pointless. If dealt with correctly, conflict can lead us to consider many different opinions and outlooks that we might not have prior and can even help us learn more about the person or people we are in conflict with!

After my time at SNC concludes, I am hoping to work my way towards my dream of working in sports! Sports have been a part of my life for as long as I can remember, and my dad is largely to thank for that. As a former basketball coach and athlete in several sports, he instilled this passion in me from a very young age. I am very interested in the marketing side of sports, as well as crafting content for various social media platforms. I also consider photography to be a hobby of mine that I enjoy and am passionate about and would love to utilize this enjoyment professionally if given the chance. I am actively looking to continue to get more and more marketing, advertising, and/or social media experience wherever I can and hopefully one day transition into a sports medium.

There have been many different experiences which have increased my knowledge and passion for marketing and social media outside of my schoolwork. My internships with the Civic Symphony of Green Bay and Fresh Ground Thinking both showed me passions that I was not aware I had. The Marketing Internship I had with the Civic Symphony was my first experience with professional social media content creation and marketing tactics, and after this experience I knew that this was something I wanted to experiment more with. This led to me reaching out to the SNC academic department and volunteering to help contribute to their social media profiles for a semester in order to get some more practice with professional social media management and content creation utilizing my graphic design skills. My current remote Advertising Internship with Fresh Ground Thinking continued utilizing these skills I built upon from my previous experiences as well as learning about advertising and how to create that type of content which is a bit different from generic social media posts. These are the main experiences that paved the path that I am now journeying on, and I could not be more excited to see where it leads me next!