How I learned the arts of Haiku and Stalking

In the past three weeks, I’m pretty positive I’ve learned a lot. Whether I’ve retained that information, however, is up for debate. I wrote a 2000 word essay composed entirely of haiku poetry and prose, so at least I learned  one thing – how to write a decent haiku.

 Most notably, I’ve learned about boys. I really enjoyed Dave Barry’s Complete Guide to Guys. I can’t say for sure whether he is accurate in his exaggerations about guys, but he does make me laugh out loud – literally. It is interesting how easy it is to analyze comedic texts after reading about the tools of comedy from Vorhaus and Morreall.

I’ve also learned how to write seven broadcast stories in an hour and a half. My first real anchor segment was recorded an hour after that, so I’d say I’ve successfully experienced something close to the full extent of pressures journalists face in a time crunch. Also, despite my fears, reading off of a teleprompter is actually quite easy.

This past week I studied terministic screens relative to language. This concept was actually brought up in two of my classes – Buddhism and Rhetorical Traditions. Throughout the semester thus far these two classes seem to have a lot of overlaying concepts. In my rhetoric class, I wrote a paper about quality being the Buddha, and in my Buddhism class, we talk about the use of language. I think it’s great when you can apply different things you’ve learned from different classes because it shows that you absorbed something.

In my computer reporting class I learned how to effectively super stalk people. We went on about seven different websites and practiced performing background checks on various people and finding addresses, numbers, and a lot of other personal information. We even searched for people’s houses on Google Maps and looked at their pictures on Facebook. Need I remind you that my professor spent an hour doing this with us in a class? This is why I love being a journalism major.

Hopefully I’ll have more fun learning experiences like this to come – minus the creepy stalking.