I graduated from Cleveland State University in December of 2008, with a
bachelors degree in Journalism & Promotional Communication. Due to
my time on the Cleveland Stater staff, as well as that I served as an
officer in the Society of Professional Journalists and the Golden Key
International Honour Society chapters at CSU, I was creating press and
starting to become a source. So, I did what any graduating student would do
in my shoes. See for yourself:
That's my old portfolio.
I am grateful to Clifford Anthony, who served as my professor for my
core course work . He was also my advisor for the SPJ, prior to his
move to Lakeland Community College, and he continues to be a mentor I
greatly respect.
On
day one of that first Stater class — one of two core courses in the
journalism sequence — he said for us to be prepared to spend more than
four hours per week producing content for the bi-weekly, tabloid-style
paper. As I recall, he said it would be more like 20 hours per week. He
told students to drop the class if they couldn't handle staying until
we were finished designing, editing and proofing pages on each press
day.
I treated my time on the staff like a job. I competed with a peer in landing ad contracts — we had to get two per semester and I got 12 — plus designed three of them for one of my contracts. I was 'promoted' to Ad Manager for that, by heart wasn't in advertising. I liked to tutor my peers in Adobe InDesign, because it's just like the PageMaker I had used before and I felt like I was helping others. Also, I had started learning photography as a 12-year-old on a manual camera, so my passion for it led to my being named Photo Manager for one semester, and that was a hoot! (I got 'final say' on captions, for one.)