Dont read my blog Matt

Do not read this matt. You know you shouldn't be.

Last post before assessment!

Hello there, just one last time.


Okay, so this week has actually been quite boring. My days have mostly consisted of study as my exams were all this week. But guess what!? I'm done! No more UQ centre for examinations this semester. Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeow!


But. Let me think of what I can tell you...
Monday. Day and Night = Study.. AND my brother's house for dinner! Check out the video he showed me. Tooooooooooooo funny!

Tuesday. Day and Night = Study...
Wednesday. EXAMS!
Thursday. Study....OH and I went out for dinnert! A girl is leaving Duchesne because she doesn't like the course here, and she's heading back home to do teaching. :(
A bunch of us went out for dinner with her last night to Grill'd to say our goodbyes. It wasn't too emotional or anything, just a bit of fun for the last time as a group. :)

And once I got home, I studied some more...


This morning I had my exam at 8am. Which I actually liked, because I don't have to spend the whole day thinking about it. :) It's over! It wasn't too difficult but I hate being confident about exams, I prefer to play the 'anything could happen' card.


I leave college tomorrow morning. I can't believe how crazy fast this semester has gone. Only 14 weeks or so ago I was thrown into O week, not knowing what to expect. And now I have this blog as a reminder of all the events and fun times I've had. 


I feel so privileged to be able to live here and have such a happy life. It is something that you cannot take for granted and it seems that other girls here feel the same. Just this morning, on our Duchesne Facebook Group, a girl has thought that maybe we should sponsor a child as a college. All up it would only be $2.50 each a year! And to put it in her words, "I guess at the end of the day, even if we fail our exams we can say we made a difference in one person's life."


And that, sir, is the note on which I wish to end my blog.


xx

Reflection :)

All up, I found Intro to Journalism an enjoyable class and found that my ability to blog grew over the semester. Well, at least I hope it did ha. I really didn't know how well I'd take to it when I first started the course and to be honest once I was about to submit my first blog assessment I saw how poor my first few lecture blogs were and edited them hugely! But overall, I think I'm happy with my bloggo. Also, I'm so crazy lazy with my diary, so doing weekly personal blogs and actually being made accountable for them is so beneficial! I can now look back at my first semester and remember all the good times I had, as not only a uni student but as a proud Duchie! :)

As for the actual course, I feel I can now look at news and the media as a whole with a much more critical eye. Although I don’t believe I’ll be going further with my journalism studies, I feel good that I explored this course and gained so many benefits from the content. Examples of this are things liiiiiiike, me knowing about news agenda, understanding how media companies pick what is 'newsworthy' (ie, news values), how to tell factual stories in a couple of different mediums, how changing technology is going to impact on journalism and really, so much more. 


I was fortunate enough to be trusted by a friend to hear and retell a frightening tale of her overseas journey for my Factual Story Assessment. It's crazy how much more I cared about that assignment over others I've been given throughout my education and schooling career. Once you know the person, you are so concentrated on telling the story right and doing it justice. I didn't want to waste her trust. 

Another bonus of doing this course was that we were able to have such a free choice with our annotated bibliography assessment piece. I took full use of this freedom and felt justified in spending time looking through journal articles and academic pieces on fashion journalism. It's funny that the one thing that is threatening fashion journalism the most is what I'm doing right now. Blogging, blogging, blogging. 


As I said earlier, I doubt I'll be going further into studying journalism. I just don't feel that it's where I should be and there are so many others who are more passionate. Besides, you are supposed to follow your passions, right?


I just don't know where that has me heading yet.


x

SWOTVAC = FUN

Ok, ok. I know I said I wouldn't have much to say this week because it was SWOTVAC. You know, no time for activities, just time for study. But turns out I love SWOTVAC! There was no classes to go to and I only have two exams coming up next week. :) I have had plenty of SWOTVAC adventurinos.


To start with, every day during this week Leo's boys go out to play touch at about 4o'clock, and anyone who drops the ball during that session has to do a nudie run past our college while their third years attack them. So everyday, at about 5pm, the whole of Duch heads to a window and takes in the sight of 30 to 40 Leo's boys doing their run. It's a nice bonding experience for us girls, and also a great study break. Ha.

ALSO, on Wednesday was my closest college friend's 18th. So we sent out the invite for all the first years to join us in hitting up the classy RE. Being SWOTVAC however, there was an...underwhelming response to say the least. So Wednesday night came, and all of us (by that I mean, the two of us) went for our first visit to the Royal Exchange! Luckily she had some friends from home that came to show us the ropes, otherwise we wouldn't have known what we were doing! I mean, the first thing we did when we got there was go to the toilet and wonder what to do next! Pretty sad haha. But it ended up being a very fun night and we were glad we ditched the study for it. :)

This brings us to Thursday. You see, Duchesne thought we were being sneaky when we planned an attack on the Leo's boys after their touch session. We had buckets of water, juice, beans, water balloons and so much more! We were perched and ready for the 5pm ambush when we realised there didn't seem to be any boys on their way back...

It was when we saw a rather suspicious group of boys jog past the college that we knew, that they knew. Aww no. They sent in some boys in the beginning to get us to use up all our water balloons and then we were screwed. Their boys came out in full force after we'd gone through our ammo and boy was it one messy occasion. They showed us no mercy and we were obliterated haha. But it was the best fun! However, our heads of colleges sure were not pleased. :(


Last night surpasses all others! As I was avoiding study during the day and finding new Lisa Mitchell songs, I realised she was playing in Brisbane that very night! The venue was St John's cathedral in the city, but all her tickets were sold out. :( Me being a little desperate to watch her, asked a friend if he would accompany me to sit outside to see if I could hear just a smidgen of her talent. They agreed, weow! So off we set, to sit outside the venue, in the cold, in hope that I could maybe hear something. When we arrived I felt SO eyed off by the security man. I think it was because you could actually hear really well outside and that the doors were open, so every now and then I went to have a little peak inside. I did eventually get intimidated and my friend thought it was about time we left when the seccy started approaching us. "Aw no," I thought, "we're gonna cop it now." 
"You guys wanna come in?" :0 I was so so soooo happy! He was the nicest guy ever and gave us two tickets (worth $55 each) for free!!!! We sat right at the back, but the lighting and sound in the cathedral was pretty amazing so we didn't suffer any loss by bad seats. I mean, anything is better that sitting outside. 

That's about all I have time to write for today! I'd better actually do some solid study for my exams.


Bye bye!
x

I AM 18. Weeeeow

My, oh my! It has been a bit more time between my personal posts because I have just been that busy! Right now, I'm taking time out of studying for my exams to have this little spiel of my day to day happenings. If I wind my memory back to not last weekend but the weekend before, this is what has gone on. :)

The girl across the hall from me had her 18th. So as a nice celebration we went out for dinner to Aroma Garden (I recommend the chickpea curry), hit up a private d-floor and spent hours wasting money in an arcade! Wild 18th...I know. Haha, but it was such a good little catch up and a great opportunity to wind down before the stress of end of semester exams start to kick in. 

The next day was a massive college event, the annual ICC Regatta. We head down to the rowing sheds and all the colleges battle it out for the top gong. To be honest though, not that much attention is given to the rowers and a lot of the day actually revolves around the 18+ area. Which I was unable to to join in on considering my birthday was two days after this event. Waaaaah. There was also an after party on at the college next door, but luckily my Mum was down for a visit so I didn't have to sit in my room listening to the fun times next door like so many of my underage friends had to do. 


I had plain old uni on during the day on Monday, but Monday night had in store for us yet another college comp! This time, it was Choralfest. A group of us went to watch Duchesne, not really expecting to enjoy other acts and merely offering some moral support for our fellow Duchies. But woah woah woah. It was actually one of the more fun things this year! And the winning college was the biggest surprise of the night. St Leo's usually takes everything as a massive joke and last year they came in at last place and were told not to participate this year. However, after much persuasion, they were allowed to once again enter a choir. And man, did they show everyone else up. Here is the comparison of last year and this year:


LAST YEAR: (aaaaall drunk)

 THIS YEAR: 

And it was so funny when they won, as it was actually the exact same judges as last year!


Anyway, onto the biggest day of the week! My birthday on the Tuesday! I actually had classes all day... BUT my boyfo brought me lunch and gave me a pandora charm. :) And I went out for dinner with him, my family, and two of my close friends. Location was left up to me, so of course I chose the upper class restauranto of Toowong Sizzler. But not really much else happened on my birthday so I'll move on to my first outing as a bona fide 18 year old! 


It was an all college exchange to the fancy (by college student standards) Fridays. I've never even been a big drinker so this night was pretty exciting! I don't really know what much else I can say about it...it was actually pretty relaxed, did a bit of dancing, talked to people I hadn't seen in ages aaaand realised that my little frame does not take too well to the drink. Haha. But enough about that, I'll just post a quick few pictures :)

And that's about all I have to update! I guess this week won't be all that exciting because it's SWOTVAC and all my exams are in first week, but oh well. I'm surprisingly not too stressed and am just looking forward to this semester being done, done, done. :)


NEWS:
Uh ohhh. The economy is not looking too good again as the Australian market has slid below 4000 points. But if we actually look at our markets relative to overseas markets, we're still going preeeetty good. When I went to the front page of the ABC website, I wondered why this was the main focus of the page... It's not like we've been thrown into a dire situation but I think the news values that have made it so important are 'follow up' and 'relevance'. It really does affect every Australian even though most would not be interested in it. 


Bye byeeee
x

PS. I thought this vid goes nicely with my 'college life' theme!

Last Lecture!

Hello for the last time. Well, for the last compulsory time.  Yesterday was our last JOUR1111 lecture and we had a guest by the name of Steve Molks, I couldn’t actually quite hear his full name so I think that will have to do. Haha. Molko started at uni studying Chemistry and figured that it wasn’t for him after about 2 and half years. That’s not to say he went straight into media, he actually went into IT, and that’s still his full-time job to date. I’m hoping I stick it out in Commerce and I think that I will, even though it’s very early days!

I feel a little weird writing about everything Steve said about developing our brand as a writer as I’m pretty sure I’m not going to be heading into the field of journalism. I spent the lecture trying to relate it to what I’m going to head in to. I think it is important that I watch what I say on my blog as it may be read by future employers after a quick Google search. Buuuut, more importantly I see the need to develop my brand early also in my field. These might be through slightly different means such as internships and mingling at events but nonetheless I gained some benefits from Steve’s talk.

He touched on several aspects that we’ve covered throughout the semester, but nothing was delved into with too much detail. There was the concept of; your news bulletin of choice (and their news agenda) will shape your view of the story at hand. He also believes that traditional media will continue to exist, a belief of which I agree.  And finally, a slight touch on citizen journalism. He commented on the fact that mobile phone camera footage is used regularly in news and the media. This is definitely the case and the thing I thought of first was the footage from the Boxing Day Tsunami. I looked for a fair while around Youtube but couldn’t find what I was after. Grr. Instead I got this pretty average quality vid I want to share! 

It pretty much just sums up the basics of what it is that makes up citizen journalism. And it has the added entertainment value of Lego men!

Apart from some chat about morning television and a quick look around his blog, that was about the extent to which the lecture went.

Oh Mel and Kochie....


Bye bye!

Annotated Bibliography Assessment

Rocamora, A. (2012). Hypertextuality and Remediation in the Fashion Media. Journalism Practice, 6(1), 92-106. doi: 10.1080/17512786.2011.622914

The author of this article, Agnes Rocamora, is a Senior Lecturer in Cultural and Historical Studies and a Senior Research Fellow at the London College of Fashion, University of the Arts. She has written many other journal articles and was a contributor to two fashion books. This academic and practical experience, along with the extensive use of sources throughout the article demonstrate that she is in a position to comment and pass judgement on issues that come under her expertise and that she has found many examples to corroborate her view. The article itself discusses the fashion blogosphere and its impacts on old media, whilst also investigating how traditional media is affecting this new form of fashion journalism. Two particular aspects are examined, hypertextualisation and remediation. She discovered that the rise of blogs has caused fashion magazines (traditional media) to include pieces of journalism that seem highly blog-influenced and, that blogs themselves have risen in popularity due to the idea of the ‘semantic’ web, with users having a great degree of control when searching through posts. The only point lacking in this article is that ‘traditional fashion media’ are discussed only as fashion magazines and as text; no strong mention of photography/illustration can be found. Overall, the discoveries discussed in this article (hypertextualisation and remediation) can be seen, to a certain extent, in the following three news media pieces.

Weiss, P. (2012). Vogue Bans Underage Models, Calls for Healthy Fashion Reform. At Last. Retrieved from http://shine.yahoo.com/fashion/vogue-bans-underage-models-calls-healthy-fashion-reform-235800554.html

This online article discusses Vogue’s decision to stop using models under the age of 16 and those who appear to have an eating disorder. The beginning of this piece seems extremely biased towards Vogue, focussing strongly on quotes from Vogue magazine themself. Towards the end of the article however, there are some questions raised as to whether Vogue will actually commit to their stated goals, and there is a small amount of criticism of the magazine. These negative comments seem weak compared to the heavy praise contained at the start of the piece. There is reference to the fact that Anna Wintour’s biggest competitor is now a blogger by the name of Tavi. This is strongly in line with Agnes Rocamora’s piece on the fashion blogosphere. Weiss hints that the statement about models by Vogue is a strategy to gain more readers and perhaps gain an advantage over bloggers. The author is an editor of Yahoo! Shine, and is heavily involved in fashion writing and photography which would lend her to be quite informed on fashion issues. Yahoo, however, is a commercial form of media and scattered throughout the page and in the story itself are links to other stories that are only loosely related to the main point. This may frustrate readers and it seems like a deliberate attempt to make readers more exposed to advertisements. This causes a lack of credibility to the site.

Landers, K. & Voloder, D. (Presenters), & Clements, K. (Interviewee). (2012, May 4). Vogue decides to ban underage and skinny models [Audio Podcast]. Retrieved from http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2012/s3495563.htm

This source is in the simple form of a radio interview (archived as a podcast) and in contrast to the Yahoo! Shine piece, there is heavy questioning on Vogue from the beginning. Similar points are discussed in this piece, such as the timing of the decision and the questioning of how it will be policed, but the ABC version seems to address them in much more substance. The ABC is generally held in high rapport with the public and they are trusted to deliver news that is factual and truthful, which they seem to have done by going direct to an Australian source on the issue. Although they questioned Clements quite thoroughly, there can be no guarantees to the truth of her statements and it would be a stronger piece overall if the presenter did more research on the topic or interviewed an opposing source in addition to the Australian Vogue editor. This would have given a wider view on the topic. It was aired on the ABC radio show The World Today which prides itself on analysing, interpreting and encouraging debate on events and issues that are important to Australians. This is a respected news program and Australians would, due to historical reputation, place more faith in this source than in Yahoo! Shine.

Next Media Animation. (2012, May 7). Vogue: Underweight Models Need Not Apply [Video]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KM_BuuGSnE

This video provides an extremely crude angle to the story and it should not be considered a credible news piece. To begin with, they provide only one source to back up their story, which was the press release itself. There is nothing to back up other claims stated throughout the video, unlike the two previous reports on the topic. They do question Vogue’s ability to police the topic and comment on the history of the industry but the hosts, who go by the names of Jen-Jen and Vanessa, have no credentials and their only aims for news-reporting are that it is ‘sexy, eye-popping and fun’. This would leave the viewer to be extremely critical of whatever they hear from this source. In contrast to the previous two sources, visuals are included in this medium. However, this only detracts even more credibility from the news piece; it is animated and grossly exaggerated in order to shock the audience. The author’s heavy bias is displayed in the visual content. An example of this is: when underweight models are not being used, the only alternative appears to be plus size models that are deemed by the authors to be ‘wide-loads’. Hopefully traditional fashion media will not follow Rocamora’s prediction of remediation with Next Media Animation in mind.