Two weeks, two weeks, two weeks, two weeks, two weeks!  I graduate on the 11th!  It’s comiiiiing!

In the meantime, I’ve been dabbling in advertising and the next installment of my Yu-Gi-Oh mini-documentary series is in the works.  Also, the resident feline has been nice recently.  It’s been an exciting semester all around.

To cover the first, my Principles of Advertising class split into groups for a long project in which we competed as though each group was a real ad company responding to a call for advertising from ARAMARK Dining Services on the UT Tyler campus.  It was a fairly daunting project as I hadn’t really used the dining services on campus much after the first year here and I hadn’t been doing too hot in the class so far.  I ended up in a really good group, though, so it worked out well for us.  (EDIT:  The Tyler Morning Telegraph printed an article about this!)

Representatives (real ones!) from ARAMARK on campus came in and explained to us what their goals were and answered our questions.  They were really cooperative and responsive “clients.”  I think our class lucked out in that respect.  Anyway, we had to devise ways to increase sales and a number of other things and whoever had the best ideas and presented well “won the bid.”  All the groups did their best and everyone had at least one original idea.  Everyone showed up looking spiffy and we got pretty immediate feedback in the end.  The ARAMARK folks, including a regional manager, liked everyone’s ideas, and especially liked the notion of working with students to better reach students, their primary target audience in several of their locations.  We were told they would be implementing a little bit of everyone’s presentations in our location and were going to try to recreate what we’d done on this campus in their other locations as well.  Officially, the team I was in won.  Our main pitch was branding & signage for the sorely neglected cafeteria on campus, followed by putting all that to work to build presence not only on campus, but also within the surrounding community.  We put together mock-ups for the presentation and made sure they knew who we were and had our information if they really liked out stuff.  Nothing epic, but we made our point.

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They adopted the logo we made and I’m told have already started using it in at least one place.

It was definitely an experience.  I don’t think we would have done nearly so well if our instructor hadn’t been as ready and willing as she was to guide us when we came to her looking for clarification or advice.  The other girls in the group, too, were always really on top of things and keen to hold up their part of the project.  It’s one of the few times I wasn’t scrambling on my own to get things done.  They’re all fantastic.

Now I just have to take a test and write one last paper for that class and I’m done.  Yaaaay!  (ohgodsolittletime!)

As for the second installment of my Yu-Gi-Oh mini-documentary series, I’d estimated I would be done by… well, last Friday.  Yeah, that was way too optimistic a time frame.  I’m still sorting through b-roll and logging sound from the interviews!  There was no way it was going to be done by then.  It has to be done by May 10th, but I’ve given myself a deadline of May 8th just for a little wiggle room.  I did manage to get significantly more footage this time around than for the last time.  Here’s hoping enough of it is useable.

Soooo all that’s left of this semester is the last video project, a paper and a test that may help or doom me depending on whether or not I’m truly comprehending everything from the ad class.  Must not stress!  Must not not-stress too much!  The end is in sight, but it’s not quite here yet.  Five-year-long adventure, God willing, coming to an end.  Don’t know what more to say, really.  Wish me luck, I guess. But not too much.  There will be other adventures still, you know.  Life is this way.

Oh yeah, I think the cat knew we were talking about giving him away.  He’s been a snuggle monster.  Nothing much to do with Mass Communication.  He’s communication his desire to love us, I guess.  Massively.

Wow, long blog.

Alright, done stalling.  This blog entry will not keep the end of the semester at bay.  The adventure isn’t over yet!  To work!