It’s been extremely surreal spending the last two days graduating, first from the College as a whole (May 16) and then from the Communication Studies department (May 17), but I feel fully prepared to take the world by storm, and I owe that confidence to TCNJ.
For one final time, I want to thank my loved ones (especially my parents!), friends and professors for standing by me, challenging me, but ultimately making me a better person.
Thank you!
If engineers cannot restore a mechanism that keeps the Kepler spacecraft’s telescope pointed, one of the most romantic and successful of NASA’s missions could come to a premature end.
Safety Not Guaranteed
Rating: 5/5
Director: Colin Trevorrow
Year: 2012
Cast: Aubrey Plaza, Mark Duplass, Jake Johnson
Language: English
Genre: Independent Comedy
A team of journalists are dispatched to find out who’s behind a classified advertisement seeking a companion for time travel, with payment on return. After tracking down their oddball prey, the team has to decide how best to approach their subject (Netflix).
An adorably quirky indie *sort of* romantic comedy, Safety Not Guaranteed uses the typical twists and turns of a rom-com, but in unexpected ways. The characters are developed and endearing, and the plot will leave you feeling inspired.
The College of New Jersey (TCNJ) has been such a great adoptive “parent” for me these past two years, and today is the last day of my undergraduate career.
I transferred to TCNJ at the beginning of my junior year, when I felt scared and small, but the school’s community embraced me. In my first semester here, I was able to complete extensive research that resulted in one of the best papers in the nation for 2012.
At TCNJ, I grew into someone I’m proud of with real passion and real ambitions, but also a path I now know I want to take, and a means for me to achieve my goals.
Because of TCNJ I was able to go to England, complete research, meet professors that care, and form a network of people that I can always count on.
This is the last thing I will ever write in Kendall hall, the communication building. My home. I wanted my last words in this building, a building that has hosted so many of my words for so long, to be a thank you to the school that accepted a small scared girl and transformed her into a strong, brave woman.
Thank you.
Hearst Magazines, the publisher of such venerable titles as Esquire and Cosmopolitan, said on Wednesday that it was creating a new position, president of digital media.On one hand I’m happy they are focusing on digital media, since that’s where I want to work, but I don’t know about all these pure plays and aditorials. You’re going to want diversity and you’re going to want your content unbiased. Of course pure plays have to constantly innovate, they’re essentially one trick ponies. These both just seem like quick fixes, like we’re trying to cure the symptoms not the cancer.
Le Hérisson (The Hedgehog)
Rating: 4/5
Director: Mona Achache
Year: 2009
Cast: Josiane Balasko, Garance Le Guillermic, Togo Igawa
Language: French
Genre: Drama
Fed up with the world’s hypocrisy, an 11-year-old makes plans to commit suicide on the eve of her 12th birthday. But an unlikely bond with her building’s concierge and an older, elegant resident stands to alter her outlook on everything (Netflix).
Although slow at the beginning, this film captures your attention with its existentialism. In typical French fashion, watch out for the ending.
As part of a class assignment, classmates and I created a public relations firm named Lucky Beard & Gals public relations (LB&G) and were charged with writing the public relations plan for an on campus organization: Art Student Association (ASA). Overall, the plan involved formative research, audience segmentation, channel and media selection, competition analysis, evaluative research, a detailed budget, and Gantt charts.
ASA had issues with their identity and image, resulting in the need for total rebranding by LB&G. For the media portion, we developed a campaign of potential viral videos. Personally, I helped write, film, edit and even star in this series. This is The Aspiring Inspiration, the first in the series featuring LB&G member, Gina, as a pensive wanna-be art enthusiast.
As part of a class assignment, classmates and I created a public relations firm named Lucky Beard & Gals public relations (LB&G) and were charged with writing the public relations plan for an on campus organization: Art Student Association (ASA). Overall, the plan involved formative research, audience segmentation, channel and media selection, competition analysis, evaluative research, a detailed budget, and Gantt charts.
ASA had issues with their identity and image, resulting in the need for total rebranding by LB&G. For the media portion, we developed a campaign of potential viral videos. Personally, I helped write, film, edit and even star in this series. This is Art-atouille, the second in the series featuring me as a pensive wanna-be art enthusiast.
The years we spend at college are filled with plenty of firsts. First dates, first loves, and ultimately first break-ups. Singer/songwriter Allison Weiss can help you through the third.
“I want to make fun music to listen to but then at the same time, the only things I really know how to write about are heartbreak and the ends of relationships,” said Weiss when she visited the College on Saturday April 20, days after releasing her first full-length album, Say What You Mean.
Weiss’s EP, …Was Right All Along, was the first fully-funded album on Kickstarter and is often what she is best known for. Kickstarter is the fundraising platform responsible for financing Amanda Palmer’s latest album with the Grand Theft Orchestra which debuted in the top ten Billboard 200. Even more recently, it raised over $5.7 million for a Veronica Mars movie due out in theaters sometime in 2014.
Weiss’s new album, which was also funded through Kickstarter, consists of 10 songs, nine of which are new and harken that feeling of loneliness after a fresh break up. The song “One Way Love” is a perfect example of Weiss’s ability to mix dark lyrics with a happy, pop-punk melody.
“Every time I say that the song is called ‘One Way Love,’ everybody assumes that it’s going to be a song about unrequited love,” she said. “When I wrote it, I was thinking about how I had just gone through a breakup, and I was right back where I started. It was like I was on a round-trip, and I want the one way sort of thing.”
Holding a degree in graphic design, Weiss recalled her trepidation as a 20-year-old student. “When I was 20, I wasn’t sure yet if I was going to do it for real. I was in school, and I was getting my degree. I was playing shows sometimes. I was like ‘I don’t know! This seems like a thing that’s working out’ and then as the years passed, I saw all these cool things start to happen. I was making friends with people who I really respected growing up, and I was seeing that the hard work that I was putting in was paying off.”
Her reflection on her own self doubts as an undergrad reflect what many of us here at the College feel: Are we on the right path? Weiss, who recently turned 26, said, “I would probably go back in time to my 20-year-old self and I would say, ‘Keep doing what you’re doing! Because it’s working, and it will work.’”
Great advice to gets us through the end of the semester and finals week!
This is meant for people just starting to watch Battlestar Galactica (BSG) and should be a guide for terms as you get started! Read this as you watch, or after you watch the first few episodes! Some of this was cherry picked from Wikipedia, and some was written by me. It can be overwhelming to learn who and what things are (they call (everything) by various names), but the universe is so worth learning! Everything is explained very basically here, so there shouldn’t be any spoilers!
(Originally posted on my personal blog)
