photo: Aaron WhallonAll of this junk fit into a Toyota Corolla. There wasn't much room for me.
In early August of 1999, as a mere 17 year old preparing for my senior year of high school, I packed up all my earthly belongings and moved to Florida all by my lonesome to attempt playing professional soccer. That didn't work out as planned. Now it's early August of aught six. I've spent the last five years living in Kansas, which is something I never imagined would happen. Yesterday I once again packed up all my earthly belongings and began driving halfway across the country to Cliffside Park, New Jersey. I never thought I'd be moving to New Jersey either.
I still think the idea of playing professional soccer was a good reason to move across the country, but most people would probably argue that my reason for moving to New Jersey is a better one. It turns out that a college degree can actually help you get a job. Well, at least it helped me. I will be working as a web videographer for MSN Money.
My career goals have changed at least six times since 1999. After five years of college I somehow became interested in multimedia production. There seems to be something fun about multimedia production, in a nerdy sort of way. I'd love to tell you all the great responsibilities I'm going to have, but I don't even know. I'll do some stuff with video and some stuff with computers, but there will be some room for experimentation.
In a field of journalism that really hasn't come together quite yet, I hope this position will allow MSN to set a new industry benchmark for multimedia reporting. Regardless of what type of product I end up producing, I'm sure the work will be shown to the students in J694. And that's a good thing in my mind.
After spending a lot of time in an empty newsroom this summer writing the input/output tutorials, I hope my time and effort pays off for the next round of students. I do know for sure that the work I put into the turorials and all the other multimedia work I did at KU will pay off with my new job.
If nothing else, at least I know how to put pretty purple boxes around my pictures. Cause everyone loves pretty purple boxes.
We hope you'll stay in touch with us as you become another one of the multimedia newsroom alums who never get purged from our eHub users list. (Before we get too misty-eyed over this, I ought to point out that the alum list is also an artifact of the way Moveable Type works  or doesn't work. But, in this case, I am glad the glitch exists.