Vitamin C

Vitamin C is the name of this post because it's the band that sings that ultra-emo 'Graduation' song - and that's what I'm doing Wednesday morning!

I am going to receive my Bachelor's of Arts in Mass Communication. The degree focuses on the relationship between the audience and the media, as well as a critical interpretation of all sorts of media from radio to the internet. I've spent the last four years of my life studying; film; law; history of media; economics; the audience; language; philosophy; ethics; nationalism; symbolism; foreign policy; literature; myth; religion; news media; advertising and the music industry. I spent every single moment learning about something I had a deeply vested interest in. I feel like I've come out of university with no specialized knowledge in anything, but with a very general and well-rounded sense of the world I live in.

I also met some of the greatest people a man could hope to meet. To all my friends, who are too many to name and too great to be insulted by an exclusion from any list - a toast. You turned a crappy cinderblock palace and a city far away into a home for me. Thank you all.

Along the way, the students of Carleton's Mass Communication program lost someone great. Paul Atallah, the professor of MCOM 1000, who welcomed first-year students to university like no other professor could, passed away in late 2008. I'd like to take a moment to express how influential Professor Atallah was in my university career and how much he will be missed by myself and countless others.

a moment

For today, I'll forget about every complaint I've had towards you, Carleton. It's been a privledge and an honour.

I can say that Soundtrack is without a doubt the product of the broad and generalized education I received at university. I've already listed the range of courses I took over my four years, but I can't begin to explain how influential every single one of them were on the show's development.

Though at times I feel I want to create something entertaining and commercially appealing, at others I feel I should strongly be incorporating in-depth themes and motifs to the narrative. Lidless and Soundtrack's rivalry is what drives a majority of the themes explored through the show. The miniseries only explores the origin of this rivalry and so I feel like I've lost an opportunity to explore a lot of the more in-depth issues I'd hope to address through the show. Though I feel story comes first - the true reason I hope for a full season after the miniseries is to explore these themes.

So I'll bid you all farewell. I hope you all have a great week and say goodbye to you as the last time, a university STUDENT!