Opening Day

Hello everyone,

I hope everybody is doing well, whether you be family, friend, or some misguided web surfer. I have created this blog - which I have decided to call The Bandwagon - for your benefit. I've been informed that many of you have been reading the articles I have had published over the past year. Some of you have even been generous enough to e-mail me and provide me with feedback. But I will admit, even considering the number of hours I spend in front of my computer, it is a daunting task for me to send out e-mails with links with my writing to everyone. Thus, my blogging experiment is born. I have never used one myself, but I hope this can serve as a universal platform for you all to come and find my latest articles. Feel free to leave me feedback, positive or negative, or you can simply stop by to let me know how you are doing. I will do my best to update this site with my latest pieces as long as the interest level remains high.

For those of you who I haven't had a chance to speak with recently, allow me to update you with what has been going on with me. I just began my senior year at Purdue, and it has been quite a ride. I graduated from Clinton Central in 2006 and enrolled in the athletic training program. However, it should be noted that I really had no clue what I wanted to spend the rest of my life doing. So, I spent a semester in AT before deciding it wasn't for me. I tried my luck in biology, pre-medicine and pre-law over the course of the next year before I found sociology. While in soc I was considering careers as a social worker, work in human resources, and a college professor. In the fall of 2008 I joined the sports desk staff at The Exponent, Purdue's independent daily student newspaper. It is free to people on campus and is completely driven by advertising revenue, while reaching about 17,000 people per day. At this point in my college career, I was still a sociology major. But my exposure to journalism encouraged me to further pursue a career in that field, and that is how I landed where I am today. I still have my sociology major, but I have added on a second degree - communication. So, if you go back and do the math, I have been through six different majors. I'm told the average student switches majors seven times. But as someone who has experienced this, I find that hard to believe.

The last four years have been quite the thrill. I'm often asked what I would change if I could go back and do college all over again, and my answer is always the same - nothing. I believe that everything happens for a reason and that you should live your life without regrets. Everything will fall into place in due time, so there is no need to waste your life worrying. My college adventure, while not easy, has provided me with more individual learning experiences than some people find in a lifetime. I'm quickly finding this is something that has allowed me to stand out in job interviews as well.

I worked as a staff reporter at The Exponent for a semester and got to meet some cool people, watch a lot of games, at court-side or in the press boxes, and travel to some cool places. I got to spend Thanksgiving in downtown Manhattan (on The Exponent's dollar), while covering the men's basketball NIT Tournament at Madison Square Garden. After only four months as a staff reporter I became sports editor. I served as the sports desk's head for the next three months before deciding to step down. I applied for an unpaid internship with sports at the Lafayette Journal and Courier about a month later, and that is what I spent this past summer doing. The J&C reaches in between 33,223 and 39,343 people, depending on the day. There, the majority of my assignments were high school athletics. However, I did tackle a heavy research story on the Mackey Renovation Project (which if you don't know anything about it, I would highly recommend checking it out; it's pretty cool). That article was picked up by the Indianapolis Star, which has a daily circulation of 255,303 (except Sunday which has a circulation of 324,329). Gold and Black Illustrated provided a web-link to that same story. However, I am not certain if it was printed, nor am I sure of GBI's circulation.

After I completed my internship with the J&C, I returned to Purdue for my senior year. I was then made aware of another intriguing job opening. Purdue Publications, in the Office of Marketing and Media, was offering a paid student internship. As much as I loved my time in sports, I was becoming bored with its monotonous style and more importantly, I missed being a fan at the games. My favorite sports assignments were the off-beat, feature type pieces. While I wouldn't be in sports anymore, Purdue Publications would allow me to write more feature articles. I was hired, and that is where I am today. Purdue Publications includes three different things: Purdue Today, Inside Purdue, and Perspective. PT is a daily faculty and staff e-newsletter. IP is pretty much the same thing except in print form. I don't actually know for sure, but I think IP only publishes around seven issues per year. And Perspective, I know the least about because I do the least amount of work with it. It's much more of a magazine format. I write a lot of briefs, do some re-writes and edits, and I get to tackle the occasional story. Actually, I just found out today that the Purdue Engineering Impact magazine (circulation around 70,000) is picking up one of my recent stories.

So, that is what has been going on with me. I'm not entirely sure what kind of job I am looking for when I graduate. I've had a chance to experience pretty much every aspect of print publications. The Exponent is a student run newspaper that covers Purdue. The J&C is a professionally run paper that covers Purdue, and my internship with PU Publications means I am actually employed by the University itself. My internship with PU Publications will last the remainder of the 2009-10 academic year. I am still freelancing with the Journal and Courier on weekends, and I still get phone calls from friends at The Exponent, for I guess you could call it consulting work. I'm set to graduate next Christmas. Yes, even despite all of the switches in majors. So, as you can tell I try and view Purdue as an amusement park (to continue with my ride metaphor). I'm simply trying to ride as many of the rides as I can. Because before I know it, my own Boilermaker amusement park will be closing its doors on me for good. My only hope is that it will open some new ones for me in the future.

I promise that my future posts will be much shorter. I know this has been a marathon of a read, and I applaud those of you who made it to the finish line. So without further a due, I hereby open my Boilermaker amusement park to all of you.

All Aboard The Bandwagon!