This year has definitely been a wild ride in COMM 146. Starting off the year with setting up the foundation of the class and the event and create connections with the department’s alumni was a lesson in and of itself. Not only did we teach ourselves how do put together a large scale event with multiple moving parts, but the large amount of preparation needed to promote and encourage people to attend.

 

Being a part of the alumni work group along with Hope and Jamie has truly taught me a number of things this year in terms of applicable skills as well as building and nurturing relationships. We began the year collaborating together to create the first few letters to go out to the current undergraduate and graduate students at UCSD, as well as to the faculty and the alumni from the Communication department. We also worked with Outreach, reaching out to other UCSD alumni who were in industries that could pertain to communication and encourage them to attend the 30th Anniversary event in June.

 

As the year progressed, the alumni work group started preparing to film interviews of some of the department’s prominent alumni. We interviewed up to 8 alumni and continued to edit and publish these five minute interviews throughout the year. Although I’ve never taken a production class, I learned from Jamie how to handle a DSLR camera and a meranz and use the necessary lighting to enhance a video’s quality. Mark Schultz showed our group alternative ways to improve the lighting of our set to make our interviews look more professional. For the most part, I was the main liaison between the alumni and our group and arranged the classroom reservation, the filming schedule, and other coordination plans, so if the alumni got lost or weren’t sure where to park for the interview, they could easily contact me for solutions. After the interviews, I followed up with the alumni that participated and emailed them a link to view their videos. We also thought it would be great to write a handwritten thank you note to the alumni to personally thank them for coming in and participating with the filmed interviews.

 

As spring quarter rolled around, the number of tasks that were assigned to the alumni work group slowly diminished. However, I continued to stay active within the group at large through working with Gina on the Communication Alumni Mentorship page. I changed the design of the page as well as created more structure to the page by creating narratives to the alumni biographies instead of the original bullet points of information gathered. In addition to the alumni mentorship program, I also help with preparing for the event by putting up signs, helping with the coding of Google registration page, helping with the actual event registration, and editing and folding the paper programs.

 

Throughout the year, I would meet with my group to determine what needed to be done for that week and what else we could do to participate in the preparations of the June event. Occasionally I would also attend the CAAB meetings that would happen in the evenings. As the year progressed, it was harder to find things to do within our work group and soon got place in miscellaneous groups that didn’t communicate despite attempts to ask what tasks were needed to be completed. Often times when I did try to plug in, the times that the groups would meet were either too late of notice and I did not know until after the fact or it would be during the time I had work or classes. However, in the end, I feel that I contributed a lot to the event by assisting at events when I would pass by them, ask if anyone needed anything, and assist where there was no assistance prior to my arrival. I'm so proud to have been a part of this class and to have helped produce such a large, successful celebration for the amazing accomplishments our department has achieved. If I could go back, I would definitely do it all over again.