My Final PR Class

Tonight I have my last class for public relations.  Ever.  In my life.  It's kind of weird because for the past four years I've been on this PR track, and now it's finally coming to an end.  I've had to watch seniors scramble to fit all their classes in at the last minute, but I was smart and started taking the classes as early as possible and spread them out.  So now, next semester, I have all electives.

My last class is an important one, because we acted as a real PR agency for a non-profit organization.  Let's just say that this experience has been....well, an experience.  I've learned that working with clients isn't exactly easy, especially when they don't want to admit that they don't know everything.  But whatever, I'm over it.

I hope that these last four years haven't been a waste.  I've got an internship lined up next semester with Joel Fitzpatrick Design to work on his PR, and from there I hope to be able to make some sort of career from all of this information I've acquired.

So, if you know anyone who's hiring next year...

Sandusky vs. Fine

If you don't know about the Jerry Sandusky and Bernie Fine scandals by now, you must be living under a rock.  After being charged with numerous accounts for child molestation, both Sandusky and Fine are wrecking havoc on their schools' (Sandusky, former assistant football coach at Penn State, more so than Fine, former assistant basketball coach at Syracuse).

When the Sandusky story broke, it was all anyone could talk about for a good month.  It was horrific what happened to these kids, and justice will definitely be served.  But it didn't just stop at Sandusky.  Joe Paterno, college football's most winningest head coach, was fired from his position after failing to report an incident to the proper authorities (though he did alert his Athletic Director).  The athletic administration has been put on trial by the public, both fans and non-fans alike.  Loyalties only go so far in cases like these, though it doesn't seem to matter to the Penn State students.

Fine, on the other hand, was in a bit of a different situation.  He wasn't outright charged by the police with anything, just accused publicly by former ball boys for Syracuse.  Jim Boeheim, head coach for the Orange, came right out to the media saying the Fine did nothing wrong, and that these men are just looking for fame and sympathy after the Sandusky case.  

Did Boeheim just completely skip a day of media training when he signed on as a head coach?  I thought most, if not all, coaches and staff were trained as to how to handle a crisis situation.  And, after more proof came out after a phone call of Fine's wife and the accuser was leaked to ESPN, Fine was fired and Boeheim forced to apologize to the accusers.  It also didn't help that a Syracuse basketball player took to his Facebook to publicly support Fine, but subsequently was forced to delete his post.

Once again, these cases are terrible and tragic.  But that's no excuse for such prestigious and popular universities to not have an implemented strategy to deal with a crisis situation.  Coaches, players, students, EVERYONE involved with anything to do with these cases should know (and if they don't know, be taught BEFORE it happens) not to just go to the media or go public with whatever you're thinking.  

Boeheim learned his lesson.  Let's hope it doesn't take another case like this for other universities and colleges to train their staff.

Virginia Tech- Part II

My heart truly goes out to the Virginia Tech community.  This school, already known for the shooting back in 2007 (where 32 people were killed and 25 others were injured), is facing yet another terrible crisis. Though the shooter was not a student at Virginia Tech (he was actually a student at Radford University), a VT police officer was killed and the shootings occurred on campus.

One of my roommates works for admissions at Hofstra, and she mentioned the other day that the admissions office at VT must be a hellhole after the second shooting incident.  And she's totally right.  How is Virginia Tech going to convince incoming freshmen and other high schoolers looking at colleges that it is, in fact, a safe campus?

For one, they will have to really talk up their campus-alert system that was put into effect after the first incident in 2007.  This security system prevented any other killings by alerting the entire campus that a shooter was on the loose.

I don't necessarily think that Virginia Tech's reputation is ruined.  It's just extremely unfortunate that they've had to deal with two shootings in the past five years.  If they can control their press mentions and get the story to include the positive details about the school, then they can certainly get back on track.

NFL Concussion Catastrophe

Colt McCoy, rookie quarterback for the Cleveland Browns, really got rocked last night when he received a helmet-to-helmet hit from Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker James Harrison.

I mean, wow.  That makes me cringe up every time I rewind it.  But get this: McCoy gets back in the game just 2 plays later.
Is anyone else a little skeptical about this?  The kid falls to the ground rigid, rolling around in obvious pain (cranial pain, I might add), and he's up and ready to get back in the game in 3 minutes?
I guess I wasn't the only one, since McCoy's dad is the one hitting the media, claiming that the Browns didn't perform a concussion test on his son even though the signs were obvious.  After the game, McCoy told reporters that he couldn't remember the hit, and that the bright lights of their cameras were bothering him.

Um, helloOoOo?  I haven't even been passed a CPR test and it seems like I could've done a lot more for poor Colt than his highly-trained-and-certified athletic staff.

The Browns better get on this quick and reassure their fans that they do, in fact, care about their players' health and not just their athletic ability.  Otherwise, they could face not only NFL investigation into their care and treatment, but those tragic Clevelandites may just decide to side with a player instead of the team.

American Airlines

American Airlines is on a whoooole other level right now.  We all know by now that American kicked Alec Baldwin off a flight for playing "Words with Friends" on his iPad.  I've heard both sides of the story, reading Alec's so-called "apology" on Huffington Post and also reading American's version.  But, honestly, no matter what American does from here on out, they will be known as  the airline that kicked Alec Baldwin off its flight.  That's because they weren't the first ones to come out with the story, and the first story is the only one that matters.  They should've known that the story would get out, and instead of being proactive about it and making a statement, they let Alec Baldwin take over the Twitter world and really get the story going.

American, let's hope Tyler Perry can fix you up...

PR Invasion

Okay, so I have to make some blog posts for my public relations class.  I thought I was fulfilling this requirement by just having a blog, but I guess not.  So for those of you who actually read this, just ignore the next few posts.

 Just keep scrolling til you see some more pictures.

Sigh

Okay, so.  I've been M.I.A.  I know.  What can I say?  I've been super busy watching TV.  Also, I went home for Thanksgiving, which was awesome.  So, those are my excuses.

In Painting class, I've finished the still life.  It turned out pretty well, I think.  Take a look at the finished product.

I changed a few things around, some colors, and fixed the flowers and leaves.  Overall, I'm happy with it.  Some things could be different, but I'm content.

Our next and final painting to do is actually two paintings.  Two small little canvases, using the same composition, but having to paint them completely opposite.  Meaning different colors, different thickness, different texture, different EVERYTHING.  It's actually a lot harder than it sounds.
I chose a picture of an orchid I found.  I made the first painting basically just the same as the picture.

I think it's pretty, right?  I like to think so.  I really like it, anyway.  So, how do I make it the opposite?  At first I was going to just use complimentary colors, but then I realized that the next painting would still just be red and green.  So I decided to use different colors.  I decided to make the flower blue, but go reverse as to how it's laid out in the first one.  Meaning, where it's white in the above painting, it would be the darkest blue in the second painting.  And where it's a dark red, that part will be white.  I also decided not to blend the shades as much, and instead leave them stripe-y.  And the edges will be blurred with the background.  So, here's what I've got so far:

In the background, I am going to make some kind of multi-colored pattern, or something.  I don't really know yet.  I am TOTALLY up for suggestions...but this is due tomorrow.  Yikes!  Maybe I can get him to extend it til the final next week.

On to drawing.  

After the whole skeletal disaster, we moved onto ink.  At first, the ink gave me a lot of trouble.  It's hard to control, it's hard to get the shade right, and you can't erase or fix anything at all.  When it's on there, it's permanent.  For the assignment we had to do a landscape.  A quick Google search and I found a simple enough picture to copy.  So here is my ink copy:

At first, I didn't really like it.  Well, scratch that.  I didn't dislike it, but I wasn't crazy about it either.  We all hung our pictures on the wall, took a good look, and after a few minutes the professor asked "Which ones stand out to you?"  And the first one pointed out was mine!  By like, 5 people!  I was floored.  Even the professor after class was like, "Hey, how about that, people actually liked your drawing for once!"  Yeah, thanks jackass.

These were a couple other ones I really liked.  Specifically the forest one.

Today we started our last new thing, and I was sooo nervous about it.  We started doing figure drawing today.  As in the human figure.  As in the naked human figure.  We did a man today, and we're doing a woman on Thursday (that's what she said).  More on this later.  For now all I'll say is, it's not nearly as bad as I thought it would be.

In 3D Design, I just finished my work on the roses.  When we last left off, I had finished the roses and the vase with the foam board.  I had to decide if I wanted to paint the roses, the vase, both, or neither.  My issue with painting the roses is that, because they were so tightly wound and had the hot glue already, it would be tricky if not impossible to make it not look messy.  But then I had this idea about Alice in Wonderland, and the whole "Painting the Roses Red" scene...

So after that I just had this whole vision of the roses being white but painted red, and they're sitting on a vase in the Queen of Hearts's castle but she doesn't even notice...okay, well, now I'm off in my own little world.  But you get the idea, I hope.
Basically what all this means is that I painted the roses red, but you can tell that they've been painted.  Here's the finished result:

Everyone was really impressed by the vase because it's hard to cut foam board so cleanly and neatly.  Overall, I'm really happy with how this project turned out for me.


The last thing is ceramics.  I don't ever have any pictures from this class, which you can all thank me for later because it's never anything good that comes out of there.  Once I get a few pics, I'll be able to explain the project.


Ok.  Wow.  What an update, right?  All I have to say is, thank GOD the semester's almost over.  And then what?  I'll have all this leftover art supplies, like paint...and charcoal...and a wooden smoothing tool.  What am I going to do with all of this crap?