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Recipe Additions:
A CSU Ram's Recipe Revisions to Self-Love
Reflective Piece. A year of beginnings, goodbyes and bittersweet-dyslexic hellos.
Reflective Recipe Additions 2021
Notes of The Marvelous Voice of Marv
Growing up shy left me speechless at big family gatherings. Grandpa Marv was the one I always ran to on Thanksgiving day. He was my voice then and he is my courage to speak up today.
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There are so many things I wish I could say to my grandpa, Marv Pierskalla. He passed away almost two years ago when the COVID-19 pandemic began, but not because of the virus. It's crazy to think that I haven't seen his opal-blue eyes in the past 24 months. It’s even crazier to think that I only officially said goodbye to him this year. It's hard to grieve when the world is preoccupied with mask mandates, social distancing restrictions govern your every move and you're constantly worried about when you’ll get your next booster shot.
If I could just share one last laugh with him. Or spend one last hour of my day listening to his marvelous stories and clever anecdotes about his days at war. Even one last millisecond spent listening to the life lessons he would spiel out over a bowl of Straus organic vanilla bean ice cream while sipping pitch-black coffee and rocking back and forth on that velvet green chair he would claim each Thanksgiving, would be enough. His presence was laced in love and he had this devotion to finding the bright side in every moment. Here, in him, lies my voice, a figment of my past that lives in the depths of my heart. This was the biggest goodbye I've ever faced and, although he had been gone for over a year, this fall semester was the one where I finally said my farewell out loud. I miss him every day, but I stifle my past shy tendencies with the voice he left me.
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I do not know what is more stylish here...Grandpa Marv's cell phone holster or my dark brown head of hair that swiftly turned butterscotch blonde as life progressed.
My contagious smile and endless scoops of positivity definitely originated from him. I was fascinated with his joy for life since day one.
Hints of a Bittersweet Hello From Reena Patel
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This is a bittersweet hello to a girl 1,188.9 miles away and 17 hours west of my home in Colorado. A virtual hug to that girl in sunny California, whose lyrical devotion somehow intertwines with the silent words in my mind — those ones that I only speak through the melodies on my deepest playlists. This semester I met Reena Patel, my musical soul sister, a fellow Swiftie and an absolute genius with prose. Although we met on peculiar terms, through an online class assignment for social media management that left us stalking each other’s digital presence, she has become a vital source of light in my life.
We're the type of texters that have too much to say to each other — communicating weekly through texts that go over the character limits of an iPhone screen. From Patel, I have learned to praise my "flaws" and to see strength in my independence. I can’t wait until the day I meet her in person, and we spend hours listening to Taylor Swift’s 10-minute release on repeat:
California Avenue by Vital Sinkevich is licensed under the Unsplash license.
A Splash of Journalistic Instincts From Michelle Ancell and Michael Humphrey.
Lots of dogs for a lover of all dogs. :) Thank you for all you have taught me and done for me over the fall 2021 semester.
A birch tree forrest with a quirky cat for the wood-working cat-loving professor. Thank you for all you have taught me and done for me during the fall 2021 semester.
Lots of dogs for a lover of all dogs. :) Thank you for all you have taught me and done for me over the fall 2021 semester.
Here I was going to share a cheesy anecdote of how my dyslexic tendencies and non-existent spelling capabilities left the names “Michelle” and "Michael” being my most dreaded names while working the register at the Hover and Trade Starbucks cafe — I could never spell them apart.
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You see, over the last semester, those dreaded "M’s" and my slight dyslexia followed me all the way up to my Fort Collins campus, looming in two professors that have become my storytelling role models over the last few months through unforgettable lessons — professors Michelle Ancell and Michael Humphrey. The punchline goes that at the beginning of the semester that I walked into my first audience insights class with Mike petrified, ready to sprint down the never ending halls in one of the most confusing buildings on campus, the Clark building, to not be late on the first day. But the most embarrassing part of my first-day false panic attack was definitely the cause of it. I thought I was in the wrong classroom. I was expecting a Michelle Humphrey to be at the front of the room...not a Michael Humphrey. All I can say is that I am so lucky I didn't make a mad dash for the door on that first day because the experience I had in that class has meant the world to me.
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Both of these professors, the subjects of this ingredient, have meant so much more than me than that silly anecdote. It felt like I was doing them a disservice through any cheesy punchline I wrote up. It was through them that I discovered journalistic instincts buried deep in my inner monologue. They taught me to be confident in my role as a storyteller, to explore new mediums of communication and to cherish the everyday stories around me. I have adored my Tuesday/Thursday lunch rendezvous with Humphrey and my Monday story pow-wows and two-fan fan club meetings for the Netflix original series, "Maid," with Ancell this semester.
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It is breathtaking to witness the passion they have for what they do and to feel supported by the joy they have for what I create. While I currently don't seek to write breaking news, chase war-torn stories in Vietnam or follow political candidates from one press conference to the next...I will always seek to embrace passion in the stories I tell, no matter where I land because of what they taught me.
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During this last semester, thanks to these wonderful professors and the best journalism class I have ever taken, online storytelling and audience engagement, I've grown tremendously as a storyteller...
Here's me bidding my farewells to 2021. New year = new self-confident podcasting, storytelling and narrative transporting me! Thank you all for being ingredients in my life recipe — to me, it means everything.
Method Revisions
(A reflection of the most influential journalism class I've taken this far that inspired this revision series.)
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During my time in online storytelling and audience engagement, I learned the skills that I tried to convey in this self-love recipe addition — skills that have been vital to those newfound journalistic instincts I've grown into over the semester and skills that I know will shape my future as a storyteller, like:
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How to tell stories that never restrain from emotional subjects and add a layer of personal vulnerability to my work that bypasses any reCAPTCHA or Turing test — to help me compete with robots in today's digital job market.
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How to transport audiences into a "story world,” captivating them in a dream of my design through the narrative transportation theory — a storytelling tool that uses empathy, vivid descriptions and personal experiences to move audiences into a piece.
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How to think strategically about the affordances my audience is predisposed to on any medium — an interactive element of user experience that tells my audience to click this link for a recipe that will always make me laugh and to click here for a video of a cute TikTok kid named Franki.
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How to embrace the journalistic tendencies rooted in me, which seeped out through the human-centered stories I wrote this year about trivial subjects like coffee.
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And how to intertwine those journalistic instincts into my newfound passion for podcasting.
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Next year, and in my future career, these skills will be vital. Now I will approach all the creative projects I face with confidence in myself and my journalistic instincts, use hyperlinks and affordances to interactively enhance the arguments I make as a strategic communicator and learn more about my role as an audio storyteller using the narrative transportation theory to bring audiences into my passion for podcasting (by taking student media classes to learn more about this medium next year). As far as my short-term Starbucks barista career, I won't hesitate when asked to spell one of those previously dreaded “M” names I mentioned earlier. Thanks to this class, 2021 was the year I grew into a self-confident storyteller and profound name-speller.
