Features
Communication
In our day and age what better way is there to catch someone's attention than visuals? My background in visual communication teaches me how to reach my target audience. I worked for my high school's football team as their head videographer for three years. Aside from that to build an even more extensive profile, I also worked for my high school's baseball and soccer teams. My job was a lot different than others because I had to not only capture footage of these players but also make sure that it looks appealing and that they looked their best to college recruiters. It was a challenge I quite enjoyed because you can not really use or say words in these videos. You must be able to communicate visually to be able to do something of this sort
Critical Problem Solving
Very recently I came together with a group of girls in one of my communications classes and did a service learning project. The idea was to find a problem in the Bryan, College Station area that affects residents and to also find a nonprofit organization that is tackling the project. From there you had to contact the organization and see how you could be of assistance. My group members and I found The Brazos Valley Down Syndrome Association and decided to reach out to them as their problem was not having enough items that the children enjoyed. As the leader of the group I reached out to the association and got in contact with a member and received a list of items they needed and started working with my group immediately to collect them.
Collaboration
There is nothing more satisfying than working together with a team to create Art. There is nothing more pleasing than having an idea and then bringing it to life. You could say I did something of that sort when I was the editor-in-chief of my local school's literary magazine. A literature magazine consists of pages and pages filled with poetry, stories, haikus, pictures, and art created by local people. When we received the art they were just attachments in Google Docs but there is no better feeling than to be able to bring them to life. I worked with a team of designers to bring our magazine to life and I could not be more proud of our award-winning world.
Culture
Culture is a big part of my life as I moved to the United States from Pakistan in 8th grade. Moving countries and being in a completely new place taught me a lot. I had no clue how many different people from all sorts of cultures lived all around me. Obviously, the culture in Pakistan is different but there is a reason The United States is called “The Land Of Immigrants”. In college, I get to be around people from all parts of the world. I have learned so much about Native American heritage as my best friend is from the Cherokee tribe, On the other hand, I know so much about Argentinian food and their culture as my co-worker is from Argentina, and on a daily basis I learn even more about my own culture as my roommate is also Pakistani. I have learned that there is much to learn from people in the area of culture.
Competencies
If there is one thing that I have learned when it comes to media competencies, it is that you must be teachable as much as you must be able to teach. In the world we live in today everyone is able to express their opinions and those opinions can be very easily accessed, which means that over time you will hear a lot of things you do not like. What matters is how you react to that information. For me personally, my teaching and the teachable moment was when I was being bullied on social media. My options were either retaliate or let the situation cool down and then talk to the people who were saying hateful things. As much as I wanted to say hurtful things back, I chose to be the bigger person and let them say what they wanted to and let them cool down for a few days, and then reported the posts and got them taken down. Afterward, I chose to talk to the initiators and was able to have a breakthrough with them.