Day 4 | Best Day of WJMC (as of now)

Again, I am struggling to write this blog post. It is 12:52 am, and I have to wake up at 6:00 am. Normally I start working on my blog around 10:30 or 11:00 but I was literally having so much fun it would have been impossible to start. When we left our final speech of the day my friends and I ordered Domino's pizza then hung out in my dorm till security check. Then almost instantly after security check (which is around 11:00 pm) my roommates came into my room and we all hung out talking and eating the abundance of food I have. Somehow, we managed to start a knocking war with the girls in the room next to us that became an intense competition to see who could make the best knocks against the wall between our dorms. This lasted for easily over an hour. But all these fun moments can be talked about in another post, right now I need to discuss the real events of the day. Today was different than most in that we stayed on campus all day. We went back and forth between Southside and the Johnson Center and really no where else till the end of the night. The first speech was by Carol Guzy, a famous photographer. She presented a depressing speech about all the horrible things she has witnessed, including watching both her mother and sister die from Alzheimers. As if her traumatic, depressing life story wasn't enough, she followed her speech up with a 20 minute video of all the depressing photos that she felt made the most of an impact on her. I was tearing up the entire time, but once the animals from Hurricane Katrina were shown I could not stop crying from then on. During the last segment with the firefighters and victims of 9/11 I actually had to look away because I was on the verge of sobbing. The speech was incredible, and even though it was horribly sad, the day only went up from there. We had multiple meetings within our color group in which we completed a simulation of a news room and attended more speeches. Honestly the day is a blur so I will only talk about my two favorite speeches of the day. Starting with Kevin McCarthy. McCarthy writes movie reviews and frequently appears on Fox. My parents have always watched him and absolutely love him, and after his "speech," so do I. I put "speech" in quotations because he didn't exactly deliver a speech. He practically ranted about movies and all his great experiences as he began his career - it felt like we were all catching up with an old friend. Although his speech was hilarious and engaging, he did teach us how to always follow our passion, to be persistent to get where we want to be. After his speech about half the room went down to take pictures with him, and although I was about the last one to get down there I luckily was the first one to get a picture.

*Above is Kevin McCarthy taking a selife with me. In my defense I looked really good two seconds before this photo; however, as he was trying to get a grip on my phone case he almost dropped my phone and I laughed and sadly that is when he took the picture. But hey, it's still pretty cool.

After the photo sessions with McCarthy and other smaller activities, we went to self selected lectures by professors at the school. I went to Richard Craig's who is an assistant professor for the Department of Communications. Obviously I picked him because I want to major in Communications. I was surprised when I got there though because in his opening introduction he quoted Albert Bandura, a famous psychologist, and talked about pop culture's/media's influence on the public. Literally I was in love. I want to double major in Communications and Psychology and this random professor that I selected happens to be talking just about that, how great right? Anyway, those two speeches are some of the many that I will never forget. Especially Craig's, there were concepts in that speech that were new to me that were great to hear, his perspective was so invigorating. This is one of the reasons I am so excited for college, to just hear everything a professor has to say is incredible. Honestly I think I had such a good day because I had a perfect mix of fun friends and exciting speeches. Once again WJMC doesn't disappoint. Sadly it is now 1:40 am and I know I will be dead tomorrow morning, so here is a desperate goodnight.