This was my final Videojournalism project. I spent an entire month with Shelby while she painted to gather footage and information.
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This video was the first independent project I completed for Videojournalism in Fall 2019. The sun sets
Sharing its radiance with strangers On the other side of the world While we sit here Relishing the serenity of your favorite place Watching it disappear I see the turmoil behind your eyes The worry is tearing you apart It’s a raging ocean You are but a piece of driftwood The remains of a splintered ship Caught up in the storm This is your only escape The breeze caressing the lavender petals Filling the silence with the murmurs Of the dancing flowers surrounding us Drowning in your own thoughts You always forget I’m sitting beside you I wish I could tell you how Your perfect smile paired with the crinkles And twinkles of your eyes Are the brightest parts of my days Your boisterous giggles tickle my ears Quick and constant like the drum roll in my chest Your heart as soft as a brand-new fleece sweater Overflowing with compassion for all things around Your passionate spirit adorned with your beauty There’s no one more marvelous Not sure when but I’ve fallen for my best friend An obnoxious combination of reward and frustration Alas, you’ll never understand what I mean I wrote this column for the Northwest Missourian, originally posted here. This is my strongest opinion piece of the year. My mom’s first observation when she visited me was the tidiness of my room, or rather the lack of it. My unmade bed and paper-littered desk stood no match against my roommate’s folded blankets and perfectly stacked textbooks.
“Kayla’s side of the room is cleaner than yours,” she said immediately. With the top shelf covered in decorative knick-knacks and half of my desk used as storage space for notebooks I never use and books I have yet to read, my workspace becomes messy quickly. Having a mess on my desk isn’t the end of the world. Actually, I am better off with the clutter. Several psychological studies have shown some benefits in keeping a disorderly work area. Researchers at University of Minnesota found that the participants in their study produced the same number of ideas regardless of the work environment. However, the participants who stayed in a messy room generated ideas that were rated more interesting and innovative than the people who worked in clean rooms. Historically, highly intelligent and creative people were pictured with a messy desk because a clean desk was considered a sign of laziness before the 20th century. Mark Twain, for example, chose to leave his desk cluttered whenever someone took a photo of him. Albert Einstein also kept a messy desk. He preferred the disorganization in his work environment. “If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?” Einstein said. I like my messy room. It may just look like a pile of papers and books, but I know where everything is placed. However, people may choose to keep a clean work area for other advantages, like improved health habits. According to the American Psychological Association, a study consisting of multiple experiments by Kathleen Vohs found working in a tidy room encourages people to eat healthfully, sleep better and give to charity more often. Professionals in the decluttering business say their clients typically experience less stress and anxiety, feel more self-confident and have stronger decision-making skills after cleaning their home and work areas. On the contrary, Columbia Business School professor Eric Abrahamson wrote “A Perfect Mess” to discuss the rewards of disorder. He said people often fail to recognize the opportunity costs of keeping a tidy work area. For example, devoting specific time to maintain an orderly environment means having less time to spend on projects. A messy work area is better for college students because the increased creativity will only help develop problem-solving skills which will be important when students enter the workforce. With jam-packed schedules filled with classes, study sessions, meal breaks, extracurriculars and sleep, students shouldn’t worry about taking the time to organize their desk. Every extra minute spent on assignments can add up to the 0.3 percent that differentiates an A from a B grade. A 10-minute nap is more beneficial than decluttering one’s work area because it boosts focus and productivity. The messy environment correlates with breaking free from conventional thinking and thus the ability to create new concepts. Our society needs more people with diverse ideas. Everyone should leave their messy desks alone and use the extra time for brainstorming instead. I wrote this article for a final in one of my classes. It has been edited and improved after being graded. The diversity of ideas, personalities and beliefs people have continues to grow as millennials solidify their adulthood and a new generation is introduced.
The generation after millennials, Generation Z, is entering the work force as students born in the late 1990s are finishing college. According to Pew Research Center, the oldest of Gen Z were born in 1997. Millennials were born from 1981-1996 as Generation Y. Pew Research Center named the new generation Gen Z because it appeared in online searches more than other generation terms like iGeneration and post-millennials. Various websites define the generations with different years. Generations may not be universal because people have different perceptions of each generation. Gen Z doesn’t have a concrete cut-off yet because its members are still young. Gen Zer and junior Megan Bua thinks defining generations is an interesting concept, but she thinks the cut-off for a certain generation should be a range of years rather than a specific one. “There’s no real cut-off,” Bua said. “There are different places that define the year differently which is why I think of it more like a gradient. You have older millennials that would almost identify with the generation before them; then you have the strong millennials right there in the center. Then they kind of fade into Gen Z…I would not necessarily put an end year (that says) ‘this is where one starts and one stops’.” Each generation comes with a set of shared characteristics that further separates them from the previous generation. Common characteristics of Gen Z are being cynical, private, entrepreneurial and technology-reliant, according to Growing Leaders. Graduate student and millennial Bailey Weese is wary of stereotyping people with the generation to which they belong. “I think I see the point (in characterizing generations), but I think it’s important to also allow for nuance,” Weese said. “With any sort of category, you run the risk or putting people in boxes. There’s always outliers…So I think it’s dangerous to categorize people and not leave any room for an in-between or gray area.” University archivist and Northwest alumna Jessica Vest is a millennial. She didn’t know whether or not she identified with the characteristics of Gen Y. “What is the millennial definition?” Vest said. “I actually abhor that sort of thing.” Vest doesn’t see much of a difference between the two generations other than the higher level of tech-savviness Gen Z students have. Junior and Gen Zer Kati Steinman has similar sentiments about the generations; she thinks the attitudinal differences between millennials and Gen Zers is simply due to the age difference. She doesn’t correct people when they call her a millennial because she was born two years after the cut-off, and she doesn’t think it matters. “Personally, I don’t see a difference between the generations,” Steinman said. “I feel like we’ve grown up similarly… We’re at different developmental periods in our lives. There’s not much of a difference between our generations except the fact of where we are right now. In the future, we’re just going to be the same as millennials. They’re too close to define (differently).” With the majority of seniors being 22 years old, millennials are the minority in the student population. However, many staff members are millennials, Assistant Director of Career Services Hannah Christian said. “We were talking (recently), and with the exception of one person, all of us full-time staff fall into that early ‘80s frame of reference,” Christian said. Conversations about generational differences are common in the Career Services office. Christian sees technology as the biggest influence on a generation’s characteristics and behavior; Gen Zers grew with technology while millennials had to adapt to it as adults. Vest agrees that technology is the main difference between the generations. “There’s more reliance on not face-to-face communication,” Vest said. “The library, for example, has chat staff so you can either chat with the library staff on your laptop or through texting. That never existed when I was a student… We have professors who say technology can make you more reliant on it with things like spell check and autocorrect. You don’t really need to know how to spell something if you can just types some semblance of it into Google. That technology piece, as new things emerge, it can make you—I don’t want to say lazier—but you don’t use those muscles and brain power as much.” Bua said Northwest utilizes technology to minimize the differences between the generations. “Northwest lends itself to bridge the gap because everyone has an equal playing field, as far as technology goes,” Bua said. “We are a very technologically focused camps which I think helps bridge the gap between the two generations we have right now in college.” Weese doesn’t like how dependent people are on technology. She works in the B.D. Owens Library office where there’ll be times when she’ll be sitting next to someone, and they will communicate via email rather than talking to each other. “It’s just so digital, and I don’t like it,” Weese said. “I miss that face-to-face communication, and I think it causes so many conflicts because there’s not that face-to-face (mentality of) ‘let’s solve this together’…I’m not sure how productive that (technological) communication is. It’s certainly increased the amount of people we can communicate with because I can talk to someone in another country on Instagram…but I’m not sure I’d count that as real quality communication. It’s kind of surface level to me. I don’t know that it’s possible to have genuine communication with technology.” Christian is concerned about how Gen Z’s reliance on technology is going to affect their future in the work force. “Working in a university and working very close with those Generation Z students, we have a better understanding of how they communicate, and we tend to adapt to their styles of communication,” Christian said. “I think a Gen Z students going out into the world is going to find it a little bit harsher because the world is not going to adapt to them. They’re going to have to adapt to what’s happening in the world… I think it’s tempting for Gen Z to stop when they see no answers or (job) openings. They can rely on the digital tools too heavily. What Gen Z lacks is the initiative and the knowledge to say, ‘hey just because this is closed, it doesn’t mean there’s no opportunity’.” Although Weese doesn’t like how much Gen Z relies on technology, she believes having unlimited access to the internet makes the new generation more accepting. “They are so accepting of all of these other types of people,” Weese said. “They’re more liberal and less conservative with their beliefs and the ways they look… You can just really tell with their appearance, creativity and self-expression how much that’s changed. That’s what I really love about the new generations; they’re more outwardly expressive because I think that’s okay now. Those stereotypes are getting broken down a little bit.”
Wow, this year has really flown by. My first semester of college is practically over. Two weeks left. I bought this tiny notebook to have a place to write everywhere I go. Thanks to Rhiannon McGavin for the idea.
I didn't intend to start journaling, but I'm feeling really low right now. I don't want to do anything, but there is so much I need to do. I need to make a to-do list. First I am going to clean my room because the clutter is bringing me down. Speaking of clutter, I deleted two games from my phone. I've been spending way too much time playing "Cookie Cats Bubble Pop" and it's really affecting my productivity. The other game was "Sushi Cat Words" which I haven't played in awhile anyway. I had considered deleting them before but didn't because I didn't want to throw away the progress. I had completed over 200 levels in the Sushi game and 300 in Cookie Cats. Is that really what I want to accomplish in life? No, so I uninstalled them. After I did that, I deleted some pics and videos just to clear some space in my phone. I ran across some stuff about my last boyfriend and realized I needed to update the bullet journal spread I'd made about the relationship. Looking at it really tugged at my heart. Ending a relationship is always hard, but it'll be better in the long run. I'm still growing. People grow apart and that's okay. That chapter has ended but the story of my life isn't over. Another is just beginning. A simple mark it is A quick stroke with a spot Or a simple tap your thumb grazed for just short a second No one really knows just how much it means to me A sign of excitement passion small but not slight An expression I'll never miss You know the worth I give to the minuscule details just seeing the mark my cheeks glow with a warmth only your arms can give Although I can't reach you you know my words are all I have You hold a piece of me my love overflowing like the ink in this pen You know how much it means So you use it often just a little detail one that reminds me That our bodies may be far But our hearts are as close as ever before <3 *It happens to be National Punctuation Day. How serendipitous!* I love pens and writing utensils. A few favorites of mine recently are cute cat pens. I own lots of cat pens now and I've been getting some for my roommate who loves cats as well. This set is for her and I came up with a note that follows the tune of "Soft Kitty" from The Big Bang Theory.
Blue Kitty Green Kitty And some Black and White Purple Kitty Yellow Kitty Pens for you Striving to glow
To mirror the stars above As the baby blue fades Sinking back to give the orange, purple and pink their time to shine Before the darkness swallows the light Fireflies take their turn Glowing to show their persistence Even if others only catch a glimpse Unlike embers floating from a fire that disappear In a second The light returns We do the same Spending the entirety of our lives Surrounded by the shadows of our futures Having moments that dazzle like no other Only to fade away as time passes. The light never dies We will glow again We’re always in the dark about what comes next The distinction lies in the decision to take any opportunity To choose the route that guarantees enlightenment To take the chance to shine We can’t let the fear burn us out The darkness may seem to last for an eternity But we will continue to glow Choosing to embrace the joy and passion in those moments Defines what it means to be alive After all, fireflies are nothing without a light *June 2017* |
AuthorWriter. Reader. Dabbler in Photography. Violinist. BuJo Enthusiast. Logophile. Archives
April 2020
CategoriesA majority of my high school newspaper work can be found by clicking the box below.
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