If I were to choose a different field that was in the hard sciences, I would have chosen biology. I always did well in my science classes - granted, I was just a good student. But the creation of life was intriguing to me. I had plans to become a doctor for perhaps a year after seeing the show Scrubs. It is embarrassing to admit this, but I first heard about the field of Anthropology through the show Bones. Forensic Anthropology combined History and Biology which, for me, would have been a perfect field. However, I found out that there were maybe four Forensic Anthropologists in the country. So I switched to Cultural Anthropology. But without that major at Clarkson, I had to choose a similar field that could still get me into the Anthropology field. Never would I have thought that JavaScript coding and Adobe editing software were on that path. I have been doing this Communication and Media internship as a part of my Communication major (if you recall that my Social Documentation major is a double major in History and Communication). The internship has given me a surprising amount of insight in the realms of blogging, social media, and web design in the professional world.
While I am only experienced in web design, coding has become a passion of mine. It is a type of expression that is both logical and creative. I believe I think differently than I did previously because of it.
Video via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPblG6ceqOs
Video via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPblG6ceqOs
As I've mentioned previously, a lot of people have asked me what I'm doing at Clarkson. Why would I want to study people and culture at a school geared towards technology and science? Somehow, I've been able to make my studies work. The faculty in the Humanities and Social Science Department (HSS department) has had such an impact on me and my interests. While I was intrigued by the prehistoric Anthropology class I was taking this semester, I find that very modern and complicated human history is what I am invested in. I feel that Clarkson has very forward-thinking curriculum overall that extends both back to the conquests and blunders of Medieval warfare up to modern technology and science that is expanding on a daily basis. Both teach us how to make the world better. But how does this relate to the field of Communication?
For my internship, there were three main tasks that I had to complete. First, I had to blog about my experiences as a student in the HSS department. This has been my forum for this semester, blogging about topics I found interesting and exciting. Second, I had to explore the use of social media by posting for a client on her own blog called Africa's Public Procurement & Entrepreneurship Research Initiative, or APPERI. My client had been taking news articles on the topic of procurement and entrepreneurship in Africa and sharing them with her readership, listing her source and the date the article was released along with the content. I also promoted the APPERI blog's posts on APPERI's Facebook page. Finally, I offered my services to the HSS department as a web designer in order to begin or edit pages professors were associated with.
I had originally entered into an agreement with Dr. Laura Ettinger to edit her personal page linked to the Clarkson website and build websites for both the oral histories made in her class HIST360, "Voices of the Past" , and for her own research concerning the first women engineers at Clarkson. I completed her personal page earlier in the semester. While I was taking a class in JavaScript and JQuery this semester, I was still fumbling with the code since I had no prior experience with these languages. I took "Intro to Web Design" last semester and incidentally Dr. Ettinger's class "Voices of the Past". That's actually how I ended up building a website about my own oral histories as my final project for both classes and got involved with Dr. Ettinger.
The other websites I was assigned to edit were a bit different than the free-form pages I published for myself and Dr. Ettinger. Two HSS professors contacted me with plans to edit or expand pages on the Clarkson website, including the Gender and Sexuality minor/concentration on the HSS page and the Smart Housing initiative page. Just to be clear, they aren't done. The plans for the Gender and Sexuality Studies (GSS) page are to create a database of GSS-related information, like the history of gender and sexuality and on current modes of activism. While not changing the actual content of the Smart Housing page, I will be rearranging how the information is presented to be clearer and more attractive to the viewer. It has been quite the experience coordinating with clients and coding for hours on end. While I did this last semester for my oral history website, it has been constantly in my life this semester. And somehow, even after my eyes start hurting from staring at the computer screen for an entire night, I love what I'm doing. It's logical, systematic, and creative. Seeing my code move words and objects around on a screen is extremely satisfying. And the diagnostics of it makes me both rip my hair out from frustration and pat myself on the back for eventually figuring out what was wrong.
This experience was manufactured purely from an offhand conversation with Dr. Ettinger in her office about how we both wanted to see the oral histories from "Voices of the Past" come to life on the internet. To see it coming to an end (even though I still have hours of coding ahead of me before the semester ends) is disorienting. While this isn't the traditional internship with a company, it has still filled me with knowledge about the professional world. It is very possible that I will be self-employed with the skills I have been accumulating. Most of my work can be done behind a book, behind a camera, and in front of a computer. But I was able to create an entire professional experience from a conversation and a department eager to spread information via the internet. I was able to express myself through multiple media including these blog posts on a weekly basis. Writing between 100 and 1500 words a week definitely improved my writing and communication skills. I also felt active in the politics of procurement in Africa after managing the social media sharing of APPERI. Being involved in this internship has given me skills such as time management and proper communication with clients that will be useful for the rest of my professional career (not to mention the technology skills I picked up).
For my internship, there were three main tasks that I had to complete. First, I had to blog about my experiences as a student in the HSS department. This has been my forum for this semester, blogging about topics I found interesting and exciting. Second, I had to explore the use of social media by posting for a client on her own blog called Africa's Public Procurement & Entrepreneurship Research Initiative, or APPERI. My client had been taking news articles on the topic of procurement and entrepreneurship in Africa and sharing them with her readership, listing her source and the date the article was released along with the content. I also promoted the APPERI blog's posts on APPERI's Facebook page. Finally, I offered my services to the HSS department as a web designer in order to begin or edit pages professors were associated with.
I had originally entered into an agreement with Dr. Laura Ettinger to edit her personal page linked to the Clarkson website and build websites for both the oral histories made in her class HIST360, "Voices of the Past" , and for her own research concerning the first women engineers at Clarkson. I completed her personal page earlier in the semester. While I was taking a class in JavaScript and JQuery this semester, I was still fumbling with the code since I had no prior experience with these languages. I took "Intro to Web Design" last semester and incidentally Dr. Ettinger's class "Voices of the Past". That's actually how I ended up building a website about my own oral histories as my final project for both classes and got involved with Dr. Ettinger.
The other websites I was assigned to edit were a bit different than the free-form pages I published for myself and Dr. Ettinger. Two HSS professors contacted me with plans to edit or expand pages on the Clarkson website, including the Gender and Sexuality minor/concentration on the HSS page and the Smart Housing initiative page. Just to be clear, they aren't done. The plans for the Gender and Sexuality Studies (GSS) page are to create a database of GSS-related information, like the history of gender and sexuality and on current modes of activism. While not changing the actual content of the Smart Housing page, I will be rearranging how the information is presented to be clearer and more attractive to the viewer. It has been quite the experience coordinating with clients and coding for hours on end. While I did this last semester for my oral history website, it has been constantly in my life this semester. And somehow, even after my eyes start hurting from staring at the computer screen for an entire night, I love what I'm doing. It's logical, systematic, and creative. Seeing my code move words and objects around on a screen is extremely satisfying. And the diagnostics of it makes me both rip my hair out from frustration and pat myself on the back for eventually figuring out what was wrong.
This experience was manufactured purely from an offhand conversation with Dr. Ettinger in her office about how we both wanted to see the oral histories from "Voices of the Past" come to life on the internet. To see it coming to an end (even though I still have hours of coding ahead of me before the semester ends) is disorienting. While this isn't the traditional internship with a company, it has still filled me with knowledge about the professional world. It is very possible that I will be self-employed with the skills I have been accumulating. Most of my work can be done behind a book, behind a camera, and in front of a computer. But I was able to create an entire professional experience from a conversation and a department eager to spread information via the internet. I was able to express myself through multiple media including these blog posts on a weekly basis. Writing between 100 and 1500 words a week definitely improved my writing and communication skills. I also felt active in the politics of procurement in Africa after managing the social media sharing of APPERI. Being involved in this internship has given me skills such as time management and proper communication with clients that will be useful for the rest of my professional career (not to mention the technology skills I picked up).
From Dr. Laura Ettinger's call to women engineers online Find the call here: http://people.clarkson.edu/~lettinge/home/Ettinger 's_project.Women_engineers.html | At the beginning of the semester, I was given a small article for the class "Rhetoric of Business, Science, and Engineering". This article proposed that Communication isn't a subject in itself, rather a set of skills for how to communicate other subjects. And while Rhetoric has subject matter, most Communication classes I have taken have taught me about media as if it were a conduit between two sources. Granted, most subjects are conduits of information if you look at their basic methods. Science and technology looks towards the physical world for answers while the Humanities and Social Sciences take more abstract concepts and transmit them for further learning. While this internship is ending, I will not stop learning how to properly communicate. For instance, I will be taking the Humanities Senior Research Seminar next semester. I will, yet again, have to find a medium I like that properly communicates a message I care about. I am thinking that an ethnography on gender and engineering will be a useful subject considering Clarkson's 3:1 male to female ratio in the student body. Clarkson was originally a co-ed institution when the school began in 1896 but stopped admitting women in 1907. The school became co-ed again in 1964. I hope to continue using this blog as a non-Clarkson-related forum, perhaps as a documentary of my research next semester. To students, good luck with finals. And to everyone, thank you for reading my work and I hoped you enjoyed it as much as I did. |
The Social Scientific Method has included posts involving the happenings on campus, in the HSS department, and my experience as a student. Please comment, share, and enjoy! I hope to continue updating The Social Scientific Method after my internship ends.
Special thanks to Dr. Laura Ettinger for her work with the webpages and editing my blog every week, Dr. Johndan Johnson-Eilola for his diligent help with the internship, the clients I've worked with this semester, and all of those who keep up with my blog!
IMDB page on Scrubs:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0285403/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
IMDB page on Bones:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0460627/
My post on the HSS class "War in the Middle Ages:
http://socialscientific.weebly.com/blog/resources-power-and-cultural-difference-warfare-of-the-middle-ages
APPERI's blog:
http://apperi.org/
APPERI's Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Africas-Public-Procurement-Entrepreneurship-Research-Initiative/195861697110733?ref=br_tf
Info on JavaScript and JQuery:
http://learn.jquery.com/javascript-101/
Dr. Ettinger's personal page:
http://people.clarkson.edu/~lettinge/home/Ettinger/index.html
My oral history/documentary on the Frederic Remington Art Museum:
http://people.clarkson.edu/~bakerer/comm341/fredericremington/
Clarkson's Gender and Sexuality Studies page:
http://www.clarkson.edu/humanities-ss/minors/gss.html
Clarkson's Smart Housing page:
http://www.clarkson.edu/smarthousing/
US News's statistics on Clarkson:
http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/clarkson-university-2699/student-life
Note that any writing or opinions on this blog do not reflect the views of the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences or Clarkson University.
Special thanks to Dr. Laura Ettinger for her work with the webpages and editing my blog every week, Dr. Johndan Johnson-Eilola for his diligent help with the internship, the clients I've worked with this semester, and all of those who keep up with my blog!
IMDB page on Scrubs:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0285403/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
IMDB page on Bones:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0460627/
My post on the HSS class "War in the Middle Ages:
http://socialscientific.weebly.com/blog/resources-power-and-cultural-difference-warfare-of-the-middle-ages
APPERI's blog:
http://apperi.org/
APPERI's Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Africas-Public-Procurement-Entrepreneurship-Research-Initiative/195861697110733?ref=br_tf
Info on JavaScript and JQuery:
http://learn.jquery.com/javascript-101/
Dr. Ettinger's personal page:
http://people.clarkson.edu/~lettinge/home/Ettinger/index.html
My oral history/documentary on the Frederic Remington Art Museum:
http://people.clarkson.edu/~bakerer/comm341/fredericremington/
Clarkson's Gender and Sexuality Studies page:
http://www.clarkson.edu/humanities-ss/minors/gss.html
Clarkson's Smart Housing page:
http://www.clarkson.edu/smarthousing/
US News's statistics on Clarkson:
http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/clarkson-university-2699/student-life
Note that any writing or opinions on this blog do not reflect the views of the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences or Clarkson University.