A Brief Story of Recent History (Abridged)
I’m taking a social media class, and we have been assigned to blog at least twice a week with “significant” posts on the class’s private social network, hosted on ning.com. I’ll be reposting my articles (with some edits) here on Tumblr for all to see.
My name is Tommy.
Now that the hard part is out of the way, let me tell you about myself. I am currently 23 years old and born in Detroit, live in St. Clair Shores (“the SCS”), and work at a video game retailer that many people stop at. I’m also working at the school’s eLearning office, where I generally am awesome. I’m half-Filipino, half-American/German/Russian/Prussian/Polish/etc. but usually just default to the possibly-racist label of general “Asian”, which I’m moderately comfortable with.
When I’m not being awesome at school or work, I’m out being awesome just hanging out with friends getting into debates over ninjas vs. pirates or sharks vs. cats, traveling across state borders, and listening to rock music. As much as all that sounds awesome, in actuality I’m probably reading or reblogging posts on my Tumblr, or playing Team Fortress 2 with real-life friends online.
I originally started at this school in Fall 2004 after graduating high school. Back then, and up until spring ‘07, I was enrolled in the mechanical engineering program. Late-06 into early-07 I realized how much I wasn’t into engineering at all, and I discovered (re-discovered?) a kind of passion I have for video. In December ‘07 I began classes at Specs Howard School of Broadcast Arts, graduating from the TV/video broadcast program the following August. I returned here in January ‘08, enrolling in the Media Communication program, bringing me to today, with the lovely people all around.
Since then, and even before then, I had a certain interest in video, and the literal explosion of video sharing services online, and mainstream media’s response and attempt at integrating new media into their programming has absolutely piqued my interest. In an interesting turn of events involving podcasters and beer (more on that in the future), I discovered the video sharing site Vimeoand its great community of videographers. Coincidentally (or not), I also found out that Vimeo was owned by a parent company that owns CollegeHumor.com, which I loved visiting back in the ol’ high school days. In 2007, a Vimeo meetup in Brooklyn led me to meeting many great people, even having some CH guys serve me beer (thanks fellas!)
Many videographers on the site continue to inspire me, although I’m a little shy with posting work of my own. The little work I’ve done I’m proud of, and from what I hear from friends, it’s not bad.
I spent a month this past summer in the Philippines, meeting family I’ve never met before, and experiencing another culture, and indeed another world. I’m still going through the 3,000 pictures my family took, along with the hours of video as well. Eventually I’d like to do something with all that. The experiences there were worth more than money, and helped to ground me as to how lucky we are in our Country, and how lucky I am to be able to experience all that.
Although it still perplexes me how I could readily get Wi-Fi in the Philippines, yet none in Alabama.
I stand today on the edge of what I call my Death March to Graduation™. The DMG™ this semester is 21 credit hours of class, in addition to my aforementioned on-campus and register-jockey jobs. But with the majority of my classes being involved in my field, I feel little anxiety, and even excited for those classes. I get to play with the internet and video cameras, come on, how awesome is that?
And as for anything related to this class, my writing style is random, sporadic, and very very sarcastic. So yeah, suck it (don’t).
