Winding down and giddying up.

The school year is finally winding down - only 6 days left! And then we'll be off to Chicago and starting our summer jobs in the industry (hopefully). I am excited as I start to organize my summer holidays and appointments (that hair doesn't cut itself). But a part of me is sad.

Next year we will be without the all-knowing second years, we will actually BE the second years. This is a exciting and disturbing thought. (As I think back to how many notes I took in to the ProTools test to record one tiny segment). How could I possibly help someone with their technical difficulties? I'm constantly spelling things wrong  and I still haven't finished my montage. But I'm sure I could show a first year to the washroom. That's something isn't it?

Even though there still remains some things I am unsure about, I did learn a lot this year. I learned how to write an article (so much so that when I was writing an essay I kept thinking I need to add a quote from an actual person to liven it up a bit). I learned how to work a ENG camera (which my eye will be glued to for half the upcoming school year as I film my IPP video documentary). I learned how to edit said footage on the lovely Final Cut Pro, and I learned how to write a proper cover letter. Not to mention an entire PR proposal (another thing I'll have to get used to next year as a PR major).

But it was all a lot of fun. While my friends were studying for biology tests and sketching out architectural projects I was pretending to be an avid caller to BOY TOYZ on an infomercial for a call line specializing in men ready to talk to woman. Or creating a magazine on college life in InDesign. Or making a trade show to promote a fake magazine. These things will stay with me forever. Look at all these good memories of CreComm and we haven't even been to Chicago yet!

But now that we are all said and done the "hazing" period of first year and we've survived, we feel like we deserve to go out in the world and share our expertise this summer. I will be working at the same job at Citizenship and Immigration Canada, which is a great experience and not far off from where I want to be after I graduate. (I hope to be in the public sector doing communications work.) But to kick off our summer in the professional world we had to design a personal profile and a business card. Now we feel professional.

The results are in!

So I drove straight home after class today with a shoebox filled with ballots from our magazine trade show tucked tightly underneath my arm. I went straight to my kitchen table and added up how many people came to our booth to hear about P.S. Magazine last Thursday.

And  the grand total is a whopping 109!

So out of those 109 people, 79 signed up for a PDF to be sent to them. I have 79 email addresses entered and I'm just waiting until I get to school tomorrow so I can send them it. The others checked no to signing up for one. But it is still a success!

We got people to fill in this ballot form. Almost all were happy to. And plenty (as the numbers show) expressed to us they wanted to read the magazine. So this final bit of research and evaluation shows the real success of our booth.

A success

After what felt like years, we finally finished our magazine. We did a magazine directed at college and university students entitled P.S. Magazine. It was a humorous lifestyle magazine that had articles such "How to get out of exams" and "Dealing with a schmuck professor."

Our cover photo, big thanks to Michael Tanasychuk for posing in the near-nude

My article "A guide to getting out of exams"

But after writing, editing, and laying out the magazine, we had our finished project. Now we had to promote it in a trade show. Our booth was set up alike a birthday party with streams and balloons, in the magazine colours; blue and yellow. The table cloth was yellow which made it stand out from some of the other table who had modest colours.

We started the fair off by giving away free pizza and root beer, in exchange for people to fill in a ballot with their name and email. This way we could see who came to our booth. We gave away all the pizza in half and our. That means we had 32 people come through our booth in half an hour. That's one per minute.


 After that we brought out a big wheel that you could spin to win prizes. The prizes were college themed like "Date Night" which was two passes for bowling, "Free Dinner" which was Kraft Dinner, "Study Motivator" which was candy, "Job Interview Survival Kit" which was a hair product, "Post Exam Relaxation" which was candles. Thanks to my group members for getting such awesome prizes! As the trade show wore on we ended up pulling out jello shooters and then P.S. cupcakes. This all was a great  success. The result? We haven't tallied it up yet, but the ballot box was full!

It was a success for five reasons:

1) People could interact with our booth
2) People weren't just interested in free food or prizes, the image on the front of the magazine caught their attention and they wanted to know more.
3)People had no problem filling in a ballot and now we know how many people came to our booth.(Well we will when we count the ballots)

4)People were invited to check off if they wanted a PDF of the magazine sent to them and plenty did.
 5) We got some positive feedback from patrons of the booth who loved the magazine.

***I had photos on my BlackBerry but they got erased sadly.

All in all it was a successful trade show and a nice payoff for the final step in the magazine project.

How stressed is stressed?

If you have a magazine to produce, a IPP year long proposal to write and not get rejected, a montage to shoot and edit as well as in class assignments blogs and whatever else is going on in your life(maybe take care of your elderly grandmother or get a summer job) your stressed. But is that enough?

If you still seem to have time to go to Red Lobster with your best friends, have people over for beers are you still stressed? Are you allowed to be stressed with so much downtime on your hands? Well, this is my life and I feel like maybe I shouldn't be so stressed?

Like maybe I should have a job and raise kids in between completing all these projects? But then I wouldn't have time to fall asleep to "Blue Bloods" or Eric Church on my iPod.

I would probably be even more insane. I would be going crazy worrying about all my responsibilities. In truth, my only responsibilities are school. The rest is just for my own personal enjoyment. But it takes time. It takes time to pack up and live with your Granny over night. It takes time to plan a meal that evreyone can make it to.

But in the end it all seems worth it. It seems to keep me grounded and moving forward. If not, where would we be between the projects that surround our personal lives? We would be nothing more then a CreComm without a personality.