Your first days at
Mount Allison are approaching quickly. In the first of a 20-part video series,
below you will find a tip featuring fourth-year student Beth Whitfield (honours biology). The tip is about making the most of your
first few weeks at Mount Allison.
The most important
thing to do in September (besides go to class, of course) is to really branch
out and step out of your comfort zone as much as possible. My first day at
Mount Allison I was unpacking my stuff in residence, thinking about all the
technical things I had to do (open a bank account, figure out my classes and
get some food) and someone walked by and said hello. Today he is one of my best
friends and we are roommates in an apartment this year.
I really can’t stress
enough how important the first few weeks are to your success here. Doing well
in class and being involved in extracurriculars is important, but your first
couple of weeks is really meant for you to adjust to life on your own and make
lasting friendships. The upperclassmen are so welcoming and all the first-year
students are just trying to find where they fit in, just like you. I met some
of my closest friends during Orientation Week and I’m sure you will too.
Before I share with you the video I have to give credit to the others without whose hard work these videos wouldn't have been made. In particular, credit goes to Tony Frost for direction, Nadine Leblanc for videography and Melissa Lombard for editing and other support, and of course to all the students who volunteered their time and experience to help. While we were unable to use all of the footage we'd like to that you all for your time and effort in helping new students to successfully adjust.
Again, I simply asked the questions and what you'll hear is honest and hopefully helpful advice relating to your time at Mount Allison. We hope you enjoy and find these videos helpful as you begin your journey to University life.
On Saturday I was the only member of Amnesty International Mount Allison to make it out to volunteer at the U2 360 Concert in Moncton. It was rainy, miserable weather for a couple hours but then the rain finally stopped and we were able to get enough signatures to surpass the goal of 200,000 supporters of a petition to the president-elect of Peru to increase funding for Maternal Health over the North American leg of the tour. Here's us in the mud right in front of the Amnesty tent.
Then we were thanked for our efforts with a pass to the "Inner Circle" right next to the stage thanks to Bono's support of Amnesty.
There were some reports that Neil Young was there but I find that doubtful. We did run into John Paul Tremblay
To give you another clue of how wet and muddy things were, here's me in front of the Amnesty tent.
And to give you an idea of what 85,000+ people looks like here's a small section of the audience.
After volunteering I was chosen to walk on stage during the section of the concert Bono talks about Amnesty. There was a section like this (minus the happy birthday intro):
and then this specifically at Moncton:
and here, thankfully, is the view from where we walked on the platform. You can't see anybody's face very well but I'm third from last on the left.
Starting on Monday, August 8th and running until September 2nd I'll be posting a video and a very short tip for incoming students. The videos are of upper year students I had casual interviews with to get their take on different topics relating to being a student at Mount Allison. I hope that it will give a glimpse into life here and help you get an idea of campus life even before you arrive.
Hello Class of 2015! My name is Geoff Campbell and over the next four weeks I’ll be sharing advice on life here Mount Allison. I will be posting tips covering different aspects of life at Mount Allison, accompanied by a video from upper-year students. The tips and videos will cover everything you need to know before you get here. Upper-year students will share what they wish they knew before they arrived, what to do on weekends in Sackville, making the most out of residence life, and more. These videos will give you a great head start and help make your transition to University life a smooth one.
I will be sharing a tip and video every weekday starting August 8th and running until September 2nd, your first full day of Orientation at Mount Allison. The first piece of advice is on making the most out of your first two weeks at Mount Allison.
I hope you’ll find the information useful and I’ll see you in the Fall.
Geoff Campbell B.A. Honours, International Relations (’12) - Communications Assistant
PHOTO CAPTION: Geoff Campbell with Chancellor Peter Mansbridge and the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada's mascot Ursula at Convocation 2011.
P.S. For information about Orientation check out the newly updated website. I'm pretty jealous of you guys. The orientation committee is really on top of their stuff and is getting information to you as soon as it's available. For up to the minute information check out their Twitter feed.
It was generally met with a positive reaction. Out of 1,812,667 Impressions there were 773 likes and 117 comments, most of them positive. There were, however, a few negative ones. It kind of blew my mind that people could get so upset and leave negative comments on a thank you video.
I thought I was being fairly clear, especially by linking the current video to the one I was referencing, but as can be expected, there was a little confusion:
were a lot of kind words
the generic anti-NPR comments that were to be expected/
and then a reasoned rebuttal (with 42 likes):
There were a few generally negative posts along the lines of "You're being self-promoting" "What' the big deal", etc. I don't really see how a simple thank you message that lacks any sort of boasts or requests for a job or anything of the sort is self promoting. I keep getting reminders from YouTube that I could monetize the original video but continue to reject it so I don't think that sort of comment has any validity. Here's an example of a negative comment:
but they were the very slim minority and they were more than overcome by the more thoughtful comments.
There were a couple off-topic but funny comments:
All of those comments are generally to be expected on a public forum. However, there was one post that kind of surprised me. Someone took time out of their day (apparently not very valuable as he admits he's unemployed) to say, among other things, that I am clueless, should get a job in a high-stress, commissioned sales environment (maybe that's where he got 'laid off' from?), says again that I need to get a clue, that I lack wisdom, and that I should be more like Don Draper because apparently he has charisma. Then...
Next comes a series of recommendations about how I could "adult up" and get "a clue about life" with typos almost every other sentence.
I really doubt anyone who stays up until 4:29am (Atlantic, at least) trolling on Facebook pages has the competence to give advice to me or anybody else on earth advice on anything, much less having clue about how to live. Mr. Peter Wong aside, there was some useful, constructive criticism.
I'm not very practiced at recording videos speaking to a camera in an empty room to nobody in particular so I got a little nervous. That being said I really need to improve my on camera speaking ability. I appreciate the humanely-worded advice that I should have presented a more polished version of myself to a public audience. I admit the video is not the most gripping and I'm not the most engaging in it because I recorded it around 11pm after a long day of work, going to the gym, and recording trial runs of my WorkStory video.
I should have waited another day when I would have more more well-rested and given a better looking and sounding performance. I realize that now and I had I had been more patient. I figure it was a positive video where I was expressing my gratitude and that people may forgive my slowness in getting to the next point but really, in the end, people aren't going to pay attention to the substance of something if the style in which it is presented is not up to par.
Someone else then actually gave some useful advice about watching TED talks to get inspired and have more confidence (especially on camera). There are a lot of TED talks that are very inspiring but I think what I needed at that moment was a good night's rest.
Anyway, back to the point I was making. I eventually realized the commenter, for whatever reason, had nothing better to do than troll around Facebook and demean someone who expressed gratitude for having stumbled upon something that helped him see himself on a career path in which he could be happy. This is what is called Trolling. As I've been researching best practices to develop social media guidelines for Mount Allison, I found the Air Force's Web Posting Response Assessment. It's a flowchart giving directions on how to respond to positive or negative postings about an organization online. It is so simple, powerful, and all-encompassing that it has been slightly tweaked and used by countless other organizations (including The Ohio State University Medical Center). Just as it would be unproductive for an organization to engage with someone who is posting bashing and degrading comments, there is no point for me to pay them any mind either.
In fact, after ignoring the negative posts, there were multiple people who posted retorts to the Troll and supportive of me. I doubt any of them read my blog but if any of you are out there, thank you.
If it was at all unclear in the video I don't think at all that the fact I created the NPR page got me either the job at the Argosy or the job at the school, nor should it. I was simply being thankful for the fact that after I posted a video, a tiny tidbit about the start of the NPR Facebook page that people reacted so positively. It was their reaction that helped me realize that the social media skills I had been developing over the years might have some value and I could use them in a future occupation. I think it was the years of being active on social media and demonstrated ability to write well that helped me land both jobs.
It seems that I was clear, as more than 100/115 were positive, that most people understood that.
I don't think there will be any need for any more posts by myself on the NPR page but if there is something NPR related that I believe people would be interested (and garner 700+ likes) I'll be sure that it is more rehearsed than my less-than-polished thank you message.
For those of you who aren't fans of NPR on Facebook 1) You should. There's nothing wrong with supplementing the banal Facebook status updates from your elementary school pals with some really intelligent journalism 2)You probably haven't seen the video so here it is:
Unsurprisingly the trolls were to lazy to log into YouTube to continue complaining about a thank you message. There are 12 really nice comments in addition to the nearly 100 on Facebook. Thank you all for the kind words.
I was recently contacted by Natalie Allen regarding a project she and her colleague David Stanley at the University of Guelph are working on. The project, WorkStory.net, is a collection of videos by people in different occupations and stages of professional development who have all decided on a career choice. The idea is simple: have people who have gone through the process of surveying the options, sometimes choosing a job that doesn't fit, and eventually deciding on something that is a match for their skill and interest.
For people who have always known what they wanted to do and have chosen a traditional path to their careers mulling over a job choice and sometimes making the wrong one may seem like a foreign concept. However, I know adults who by circumstance or conscious choice decided that they needed to do something radically different than what they were currently doing.
I myself have thought about many different possible careers and all but decided what i want to do multiple times. I considered the possibility of being a police officer so when I had the opportunity I went through a fairly rigorous application and screening process to participate in the RCMP Youth Academy when I lived in British Columbia. It was designed to give possible future applicants experience as close to possible resembling the boot camp that is training to be an RCMP officer. It was an eye opening experience into just how dedicated many RCMP officers are, and the fact that they all volunteered without pay to organize the camp was a testament to the character of most RCMP officers.
The physical training was the most physically exhausting experience of my life to the point that when it came to classes I feel asleep, was caught, and then was forced to be undergo a field sobriety test as I was in the front of the class and it was a lecture from the RCMP expert on convicting people of DUI/DWI.
In the end it was a great experience and it gave me a newfound respect for those who chose that career. However, it also make it clear to me that the physically draining 5am-10pm training and heavily regimented lifestyle of an RCMP officer was not ultimately what I wanted to do. Sometimes you need real-time experience to know a certain job is or isn't for you. However, when you know what you want, and simply want to know how to get there, that's where I think sites like WorkStory
Workstory is the an avenue for people to share their story of how they eventually got to where they are today.
Since coming to Mount Allison University, I always thought I would end up going into some international relations related work, but as time has worn on I've realized that I'm not as interested in writing papers about political theory than helping to communicate things in real time.
As I discuss in the video (below), it was when I found out via the response to a video from an NPR training session on social media at the Knight Digital Media Center in Los Angeles that I thought I could use social media in a full-time capacity. The original video discusses how I created their Facebook page into as an introduction into the real content of the discussion which was managing online communities which NPR has been praised for doing so well and has been used as an example for other news organizations.
I'm still interested in international relations and regularly check NPR (the website, not the FB page, as they deliberately feature Music, Culture, and 'Oddly Enough'-type stories because that's what engages their younger fans who are more active on Facebook) and the BBC (and occasionally MSNBC, and when I want a surface level analysis, CNN) for international news. I'm very much looking forward to my IR courses this semester as they will reference current real-world events. I'll be taking US-Canadian Relations, Africa in a Global Context, Cultural and Political Change, Global Governance (in an age of (declining?) U.S. hegemony) and others.
While I still plan on taking the GRE during my trip home in August it won't have the be-all end-all feeling that taking the ACT was. It's no longer a feeling that this number represents how smart I am but more an independent confirmation that I have certain skills.
I'm going to be applying to different schools (including possibly the Evans School of Public Affairs at the University of Washington and yet-to-be determined schools in the US and Canada which offer programs/classes in Communications and New Media).
Unless you're going into a field that requires credentials for entry (medicine, law, academia), and especially in non-managerial communications it seems the consensus is that having demonstrated knowledge and skill carries more weight than having a piece of paper that says you took a class on social media (which would be outdated the next month anyway).
What seems more valuable these days is training on best practices like that offered by Poynter's News University. (Side note: I'm taking the class Social Media and Journalism: What Works and Why to inform my work as the Argosy's first ever online editor.) Taking recently obtained knowledge and sharing it via presentation seems the most appropriate for a field that changes every day. I'm going to buy a textbook on the French Revolution for a class next term but I'm never going to waste my money on one that portends to teach a person how to use Facebook.
The WorkStory video is a very brief summary of my job and how I came to apply for and enjoy doing it. If I had more time I would have spoke at longer length about what I was thinking before coming to University, how I initially thought I'd go into a more academic field, about the NPR story more in depth, and then my thoughts about how, despite the fact I may not end up going to graduate school to continue studying social science, how a degree in International Relations from Mount Allison is incredibly useful and versatile in that it's a demonstration that you have a wide base of knowledge with which to work and that you can write well about varying topics.
When I first considered not going to graduate school (in the social sciences at least), I felt as if doing so would be a personal failure, that I wasn't doing what I 'should' do and that I was 'taking the easy way out'. I then realized that was an insane thought. I have tremendous respect for people who dedicate their lives to studying what interests them and teaching the next generation. At the same time, I'm certain at least some of them were initially pushed externally or internally towards something else. I've loved my classes, from learning and discussing mutual interests with experts on the subject but I realized that I don't have to feel guilty about taking the critical thinking, analytical and writing ability gained from those classes and using it for another purpose. Not everyone who takes a Spanish class is going to become fluent and not everybody who takes a comparative politics class is going to be an academic.
While the work that I hope to do after I graduate will not have been a specific subject area in anything I studied, I have never even for a moment regretted coming to Mount Allison. It is the skill set earned through taking courses gives one experience with the process of learning and writing effectively. As the skills required in this ever-globalizing workplace change more frequently, the ability to hit the ground running is more crucial than ever to staying relevant and (gainfully) employed.
If I do continue with this type of career thinking I no doubt will eventually need additional specific training (Public Speaking, for one) and classes and possibly some credentials in Communications, but I already feel that Mount Allison has given me a solid foundation for whatever it is I will do after graduation.
If you'd like to share your WorkStory, they are accepting videos from people in all occupations.
I just posted a short thank you video to NPR and its fans because of the effect that their support had on my attitude towards social media. I've realized over the years that I'm much better at expressing myself by writing than by speaking. However, it has been my experience that people generally choose watching something over reading it so I gave it a go.
I've been thinking a lot lately about everything in my life that I'm thankful for. What comes to mind is my family, my friends, my girlfriend, and my job. I can show my appreciation to all the people in my life every day but there aren't really many ways to show appreciation to a realization that I could do what I enjoy doing for a living.
Recently I was asked to record a short video for WorkStory.net, a project that asks people who have decided on their careers about their jobs, what they like about them, and how they got there. I realized that my discovering the NPR video discussing my creation of the NPR Facebook page was a pivotal moment in my thinking about my future career. It was then that I thought I should thank those whose reaction inspired my change of heart. This is that thank you message:
This is a personal weblog. The opinions expressed here are my own and not necessarily those of Mount Allison University. For official University policy visit their website.
