From Part-Time Job To Dream Job

I am very pleased to write this because after 22 years of life and 4 and a half years of college I think I finally know what I want to be when I grow up! I never knew when I signed up to be a substitute teacher in Norman this school year that I would discover my real passion.

I always knew that I loved children and got along very well with them, but it had never occurred to me that I could teach for a living. So here I am with a semester of substitute teaching and about to graduate with a degree in Journalism, not education.

I have given my future a lot of thought throughout my college years, probably because I changed my major 3 times. After finally deciding on Journalism with an emphasis in public relations I thought I was set. Then when it came to be my last semester of school, I started really thinking about what I wanted to do after graduation.

It was actually after my first day of substitute teaching that I decided that I wanted to be a teacher. I had such a wonderful experience getting to know some of the children that I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to be there everyday, helping to shape their lives.

After much research and a meeting with the vice superintendent I have discovered that I can get my teaching certification in Journalism. This will allow me to teach middle school journalism classes, including yearbook, which was my favorite activity in high school.

I am so excited to have the opportunity to be in charge of recording a school’s year in a yearbook. I have always been really into scrapbooking, nerdy I know. But it will only help me in my future profession, with laying out yearbook pages and coming up with creative ideas.

I have found a way to use what I have learned in college with my own personal passion for creativity and children. I couldn’t be happier!

Helping Families Have A Healthy Holiday Season

My blog is a little late this time, due to Oklahoma weather causing several asthma attacks on me last week. As I started to think about this blog, it made me realize what great things my client, CCFI does for children and families. I thought about how lucky I am to have the ability to see a doctor when I am not feeling well. So many families in the Norman community do not have the capabilities to go to the doctor when they or their family member is feeling sick. Many families simply do not have enough money to do this and they must choose between taking their child to the doctor or having enough money to pay for childcare that month. The Center for Children and Families is helping to make this an easier choice for these families.

CCFI has implemented several programs for underprivileged families making their lives a little easier. Something as simple as an after school program, where parents can send their children and know that they are safe after school while their parents work, shows that a little help can go a long way. After attending the official tour of CCFI, where I learned more about their organization, I now understand why people would want to work for a non-profit. Before, I never thought I could see myself working at a non-profit and now I do not understand why I wouldn’t want to work at a place like CCFI. The work that they are doing is touching so many lives for the better each day. Seeing a child and parent play together for the first time or see a troubled parent turn their path around and decide to get help would be some of the most rewarding work.

My group has struggled with what we could possibly do for our client, CCFI. We have gone back and forth between our contact at CCFI, Whitney Russell, who is in charge of communications there, and Dr. Carstarphen. For about the first 8 weeks of class it seemed like we could not catch a break. We would come up with what we thought was a brilliant idea for our campaign with CCFI, only to find out that they already had something like that being done or to find out that our idea would not work for this class. Talk about frustrating! It was only yesterday we finally got it set in stone what we will do for our event. Not only are we incredibly behind the other groups, but we all have so much work to do for other classes during midterms. I believe our group will be able to pull of a fantastic event for CCFI.

We plan to hold our own event inside of one of their events. During the annual CCFI Christmas Open House, we will hold a diaper drive. I believe this will be very successful seeing that we have a very influential minister helping us to promote the diaper drive. Jim Burns, who is a member of the Ministerial Alliance, and also on the Board of Directors at CCFI will announce our event at the monthly Ministerial Alliance meeting. The purpose of this is for him to get the other members to announce the diaper drive to their congregations. We will provide the information that Jim Burns will say as well as the information for each member to say when they announce the event. We are going to have a short story for them to tell their congregation about how badly CCFI needs their help and hopefully this will persuade them to bring donations.

My own personal goal for this campaign is that providing diapers to families in need will allow for them to have the resources needed to keep their family healthy this holiday season.

Blogging Could Change the World

When I think about what is going on with public relations today, blogging is definitely at the top of the list. Blogging is a new medium being used that can be very influential to a company or individual’s credibility and/or public reach.
There are so many different kinds of blogs out there. If you do a simple search using the Google Search Engine, for “blogging” it returns 103,000,000 hits. This shows us that blogging has reached tremendous numbers in popularity. For any given subject you can almost guarantee that there is a blog out there about it.

“I think the best blogs cover the kinds of things that traditional media don't think are important enough to cover, or don't want to tie their names to,” Brian Lam, editor of Gawker blog said.

As a young female in today’s society I am interested in celebrities and all the gossip that comes with being a celebrity. About a year ago my roommate introduced me to a celebrity gossip blog called Perez Hilton: celebrity juice, not from concentrate. I was always buying the celebrity magazines such as People and Us Weekly, my roommate had already seen all the pictures and heard all the stories in these magazines. She had read them on perezhilton.com. I instantly became obsessed with his blog, checking it daily. My roommate and our obsession with celebrity gossip introduced me to the phenomenon that is blogging.

The author of perezhilton.com, Mario Lavandeira, was recently named number 5 in Detail magazine’s list of “50 Most Influential Men Under 45”. The magazine article points out that while perezhilton.com is bringing in 2.6 million viewers a week, Us Weekly only bring in 1.8 million readers. The article also mentions the influential power that Lavandeira has; stating that, “piano-pop singer Eric Hutchinson’s album jumped to No.5 on iTunes after 2 Perez mentions”.

Seeing the success of blogs all over the world including perezhilton.com. I think it would be incredibly beneficial for the U.S. Government to consider starting a blog. The blog would allow members of the House and Senate to voice their opinions on situations in the government. I truly believe that blogging done the right way could really change the way citizens of the United States feel about their government and the officials that run their country.