As I walk to the AYA building, I can feel my palms sweating. I nervously swallow as I walk in, and strange faces greet me, but one familiar one. After a rough breakfast and icebreaker, I settled into our new class and welcomed the start of a new routine, new experiences, and new knowledge.
There, I met our first guest speaker, Megan Telley, and my anxiety eased away as I listened to her story and received her handy advice. After Megan’s notable presentation, the vibe of the room shifted, and an inspirational aura surrounded us.
We then moved on to our first class, Communication & Civil Engagement 101. In this class, we covered a variety of topics, with a primary focus on the history of communication on the first day. The class itself wasn’t too hard, but it was a lot of information to take in; however, the variety of activities helped us develop a further understanding. One of the activities that stood out to me was the lesson and reading of encoding and decoding. The activity required teams to encode a message using only emojis, and the other teams to decode it; it was a fun game that allowed the students to work together freely.
After our first class came lunch at one of the USC dining halls. I could sense the excitement surrounding the students as we walked in, all of us getting a taste of college life. The lunch itself was fulfilling, the real energy coming from the friend groups forming around us. I looked at my friend from school, both of us realizing that we were falling a bit behind on the agenda of making new friends.
After lunch, my friend and I had a few minutes of exploration time. We made our way around the USC campus, admiring the architecture of each building, both of us planning where we would visit once we received our IDs. Before we knew it, we had to head to our next class, Journalism 101. The class was fun, the students engaged a lot more, and I found myself—no disregard to my communication class—more focused on it. At the end of class, we all headed our separate ways. As I headed home, I found myself excited to repeat it all over again the next day.
The next days were a fun blur, one of the notable moments being a new project for both classes. In my comms class, we were assigned to design an infographic. Even though the groups were assigned, I found myself getting along with my team members. In my journalism class, we were assigned to create an AYA newscast. We all jumped into the project, the discussion of the themes leading to a bit of a tense argument between some members, but nonetheless fun and entertaining.
Throughout the week, we adapted quickly to the new routine set upon us; we all tried new things. I guess you can say the program is a course on Trying New Things 101.
Works Cited:
Works Cited: Cairo, A. (2012). The functional art: An introduction to information graphics and visualization. New Riders.
Communicating Change 