The days leading up to June 16 was like a ticking time bomb. As the days were getting closer the more nervous I kept getting. When the day came I was extremely anxious. I messaged my friend to tell her that it feels like it was the first day of school and I got the jitters that most people get. I’m a very timid person so stepping up to these types of situations was very hard for me but I don’t let that define me. When walking past those doors I saw a lot of unfamiliar faces which made me feel uneasy. There were some faces that I recognized and gave me a feeling of relief. When doing the icebreaker definitely loosen my nerves and made me more eager to know my fellow peers. It was nice to meet new people that were so unique and all have different styles to them.
As we were entering my first class – Communication and Civic Engagement I was very excited. I was excited to get more insight on the true meaning of communication and how we can impact people with our voices. We got our first guest speaker Megan Telles, she gave us her advice and being an overall guide to us all on how she reached her goals. She was sharing her obstacles that she came across and how she overcame them. Most of her advice I kinda had already a sense of but something that stuck with me was when she said to always put yourself out there and find your connections. Hearing her story made me really optimistic and truly was just inspiring. Something to tie into that was also reading the articles that we got about the meanings of comunication. I found it pretty eye opening the depths of communication, i just thought that it was a fundamental act that people do on a daily basis. One of the methods that we got introduced to was called encoding and decoding. I thought it was a cool perspective of seeing how the message gets interpreted and how it matters the way you send it. One of the sources of communication was an article called “ Communication Mosaics: An Introduction to the Field of Communication” by Wood J.T.. It demonstrated the various facets that communication offers and the circumstances in which communication is one of your strengths. I was very unaware of the extent of communication required. Additionally, I enjoy seeing my classmates’ viewpoints and how they approach communication.
I’ve gained a lot from both this and my other class, Journalism 101. In my other class, AYA Journalism 101, I gained a deeper understanding of how terminologies matter and how news might be interpreted. I became aware of the various approaches to communicate news and the things that the audience is more intrigued by. We did this tiny little assignment of building a booklet of pretty much anything. I thought that class was a pretty nice balance of learning as well as being interactive and fun. All things considered both classes had given me valuable abilities and made learning appealing.
To sum up my first week at aya it was definitely a memorable experience, i can not wait to see my progression grow and overall just make the best out of it. I’m really looking forward to this and as well as being grateful I get a bit of insight into what college life would be like.
Communicating Change 