It’s that time again. Moving time.

Once every year for the past five years, I have moved to a different home (each year of college, plus this year). I’m ok with that, but it’s certainly not what I was used to growing up, where we moved only twice throughout my childhood.

This year, I’m moving yet again! Me, my current roommate, and my cousin have signed and delivered our new lease for a townhouse across town, still here in the District. We’ll be a little bit closer to downtown, in a more transitional area, and closer to the metro (the Rhode Island Avenue metro station).

This is a good thing. As much as I love northwest DC, I’m ready for a change. I’m looking forward to getting a little farther away from American University—as much as I loved it, I need to escape the bubble—and getting away from the largest hill in the city will be a nice change of pace (literally) for biking around DC.

The new townhouse is fantastic. Three bedrooms, three bathrooms, a gorgeous kitchen with all stainless steel appliances, back porch, parking spot, in-unit washer and dryer… we really couldn’t ask for much more. And my roommates, Paul (@ptklein) and Scott (@scottlanford) are both so amazing I know we’re going to have a blast living together. Oh, and we’ll have a dog and a cat (and possibly a kitten at some point in the near future…) so life will be even more interesting.

It’s going to be a fairly dramatic change, too. This will be the first time I’ve lived in a house and not an apartment building in DC. This will be the first time I’ve lived in a DC zip code other than 20016 (new zip is 20002). This will be the first time I’ve lived in a different quadrant than NW (this one is NE). And this will be the first time I’ve lived anywhere other than on a state avenue (this is a side street). So yea, rest assured adventures will be had.

Anyway, I’ll be blogging more about the move as it approaches, and no doubt blogging a lot about our adventures in our new neighborhood once we’ve moved! Move-in date is November 4th, so more soon.

I joined the crew team.

Yup. I started waking up at 4 a.m. every day. I put on spandex. I worked my ass off for months to get in shape (and actually—surprisingly—did). It was one of the best and hardest years of my entire life, but I loved every minute of it.

One day in mid-November, a few of my crew mates decided to do something even more ridiculous than wake up at 4 a.m. to go row. They jumped in the river. And this isn’t some big, beautiful blue river, with nice warm water and beaches. We’re talking about the Anacostia River. A river that has the dubious distinction of being http://alexpriest.com/?p=1329 Continue reading →]]> So this is a little weird.

For the past 22 years—or well, as long as I can remember—my entire life has really had one constant theme: school. It’s been all about doing better in class, getting the grade, moving on to the next year and working my way, one step at a time, toward the BIG one, graduating from college. And it’s finally here.

It’s an incredible feeling. An insane feeling, really. And I couldn’t be more excited about the incredible things happening in my life right now. I am so incredibly fortunate to be where I am today, and to have the family, friends, and colleagues who support me, encourage me, challenge me, and push me to achieve more each and every day.

This is a big moment.

Just today it was announced that I have won the President’s Award at American University. And equally as exciting, I’m starting my career (!) on May 16th as Director of Marketing for GeniusRocket. Finally, this weekend I’ll be graduating with my B.S.B.A. in Marketing and B.A. in Public Communications from AU (and you’re invited!). I’ll be honest, I’m practically falling out of my chair I’m so excited about all of this.

I look back on the past 22 years and it’s flown by. And I’m realizing now that this was all just Chapter 1. A long chapter, maybe, with lots of twists and turns, but this… now this is moving on to Chapter 2. The next big step in my life.

No longer is it about how many hours I’m sitting in the classroom. Now it’s about how many awesome things I can fit into 24 hours of life every single day.

There’s no more tests or papers to worry about, and no more grades. Just fun work and honest, critical feedback from my colleagues, the people I respect and trust the most.

Finally, from now on, my accomplishments are going to be judged by more than just a standardized number at the end. I’m done thinking on a 4.0 scale—I’m ready to start thinking in terms of how big an impact I can make, how many lives I can touch, and how much value I can pack into a lifetime of work, adventure, and just living.

Life is good. Let’s go.

No really, you’re all invited. To my graduation, that is, which is coming up in just over three weeks.

It’s a little hard to believe it’s here already. It might sound cliche, but it really does seem like just yesterday that I was walking onto American University‘s campus for the first time, starting an entirely new chapter in my life.

But I’ll save the reflection and introspection for later. For now, I just wanted to let you know that you’re invited, and since I obviously can’t send you all physical invitations, I figured I’d post the invitation right here online (and well, it’s a special sneak peek for those of you receiving one in the mail). Check it out, let me know what you think, and I hope to see you at my graduation in a few weeks! More information on commencement at AU can be found here.

I’ve been busy the past few months, though. Honest. I haven’t just been sitting around writing blog entries in a notebook instead of sharing them with you here online. Here’s a little of what I’ve managed to get done:

• Developed, designed, and launched the the new AU Social Media Club website —twice, actually, after our original host had a server crash the day after I finished it the first time, losing almost everything. v2.0 is definitely a little more awesome than v1.0 though, so I suppose at least some good came of that.
• Survived two more months of classes to get me to this point, now only a little over three weeks from graduation (say what?!).
• Coordinated and pulled off probably the coolest event I’ve ever had the pleasure of working on, the 2011 Social Learning Summit, a conference aimed at bringing together students, educators, and professionals to learn from each other and with each other about the latest in social media, technology, innovation and education. It was a tremendous success, with more than 300 attendees, almost 10,000 tweets for the weekend, 80+ speakers across 21 panels, and overwhelmingly positive reviews by all in attendance. I’m still a little giddy about it.
• Dove headfirst into the job search, seeking out any and all cool opportunities, mostly here in DC. Haven’t made a decision yet, but I’m real excited about whatever might be in store for me next.

So there’s your obligatory update on my life. Alas, don’t expect to hear a lot from me over the next couple weeks as I work to get through finals and graduation, but I’ll do my best!

The Westboro Baptist Church Counter Demonstration: Rally to Reaffirm Sanity

Date: Friday, January 14
Time: 3:30 – 4:45pm
Place: The grassy hill behind the Kay Spiritual Life Center and in front of Massachusetts Ave.
What: A peaceful and uniting rally consisting of a capella performances, remarks by Student Government President Nate Bronstein and tabling by campus groups and clubs such as the Methodist Student Association and God Loves Poetry.
Who: All members of the American University community
How: Bring your commitment to tolerance, acceptance and respect. May also bring posters for the rally along with monetary donations to be contributed to causes the Westboro Baptist Church targets.

Message

“The American University community is holding the WBC Counter Demonstration: A Rally to Reaffirm Sanity not because of the Westboro Baptist Church. The American University community is holding the WBC Counter Demonstration: A Rally to Reaffirm Sanity to show our commitment to tolerance, acceptance and respect.”

Mission Statement of the Westboro Baptist Church Counter Demonstration: Rally to Reaffirm Sanity

The WBC Counter Demonstration: A Rally to Reaffirm Sanity is an ad-hoc organization advised by Student Activities at American University. The WBC Counter Demonstration: A Rally to Reaffirm Sanity is a unified student effort to demonstrate our community’s respect, tolerance and acceptance of every member of our community. The WBC Counter Demonstration was created in response to a press release issued by the Westboro Baptist Church stating that they plan to hold a demonstration/religious service adjacent to the American University campus. As a university that prides itself on its diverse community, its strong political involvement and ongoing effort to engage in an open dialogue, we join together to demonstrate our love of every member of our community.

The WBC Counter Demonstration: A Rally to Reaffirm Sanity is devoted to demonstrating our student body’s continued affirmation of tolerance, respect and love for one another. While we acknowledge the right to freedom of speech, and by extension, the rights of the Westboro Baptist Church, we affirm our community’s ongoing desire to remain unified in the presence of hate, rebuke hate with a message of acceptance and stand together, as one student body, as one campus and as one community to speak out against hate and reaffirm our commitment to tolerance.

Why is Westboro Baptist Church coming to American University?

Keep on reading for more…

The Westboro Baptist Church announced their plan to “picket the fag-infested, pervert-run American University” and has characterized the demonstration as “religious opinion & bible commentary on current events.” The Westboro Baptist Church hopes to “give [American University students] an opportunity to see what truth looks like.”

Who is the Westboro Baptist Church?

The Westboro Baptist Church is an independent church not affiliated with any Baptist conventions or associations and is consisted mostly of its founder’s large family. The Westboro Baptist Church is known for its extreme views against homosexuality, for picketing military funerals and for desecrating the American flag.

What does the Westboro Baptist Church believe?

Homosexuality: The group condemns homosexuality and maintains that God hates gays above all other kinds of “sinners” and that homosexuality should be a capital crime.

Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy: The group refers to Catholic priests as “vampires” and “Draculas” and says Catholic priests suck semen out of male children’s genitals like vampires suck blood from their victims, describes the Roman Catholic Church as being “the largest, most well-funded and organized pedophile group in the history of man” and accuses both Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy of committing idolatry.

Protestantism: The group criticizes several mainline Protestant churches including Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Anglicans, and Baptists.

Islam: The group believes Mohammed was a demon-possessed whoremonger and pedophile who contrived a 300-page work of satanic fiction: The Quran!

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: The group believes Mormons are “America’s own whoremonger and pedophile that wangled their own hokey Book of Mormon.”

Hinduism: The group believes Hinduism is a religion “full of idolatry that inevitably results in fags and fag-enablers.”

Judaism: The group believes “Jews killed Christ” and that “the only true Jews are Christians. The rest of the people who claim to be Jews aren’t, and they are nothing more than typical, impenitent sinners.”

President Barack Obama: The groups believes Barack Obama is the Antichrist, and that he forms an Unholy Trinity with Satan and Pope Benedict XVI who is believed by the group to be the False Prophet.

I used to think 2007 was the most pivotal year of my life. In that year I graduated from high school, traveled to Europe, spent six weeks in Japan, and then moved to Washington, D.C. for college. Quite the radical change from the tiny little town of Leitchfield, Kentucky.

Then, of course, 2009 rolled around and I spent my first summer in D.C., started tweeting, then studied abroad in Copenhagen, Denmark for four months. I came back with a completely different perspective on the world. Then finally we made it to 2010.

I didn’t expect it this time last year, but 2010 ended up being possibly one of the most important years of my life. My perspectives on work, school, friendships and relationships all changed. I moved into a new apartment with a new roommate—my best friend—and got a cat. I started networking in D.C. and built an incredible network of friends that have absolutely changed my life in amazing, amazing ways.

So now, picking out a “most pivotal year” seems just silly. Every year of my life has been pivotal, especially the last few. I’m confident 2011 will be no different. I’m already kicking off this year with a trip to Las Vegas for the 2011 International Consumer Electronics Show. In January and February I’ll be giving workshops, guest lecturing in classes at my school, and even presenting at several exciting events. I’m starting my own independent consulting work, and in May, I’ll graduate with my B.S.B.A. in Marketing and B.A. in Public Communication from American University. Then, of course, off to the “real world”, and who knows what incredible experiences I’ll encounter there.

I’m starting 2011 with great friends, an exciting professional future, a fantastic city, incredible opportunities ahead, and God-only-knows what surprises. I’m excited.

So how does Miranda explain this apathy among us college students? Brilliantly:

I call it an inflexible system. Education has a fresh cornucopia of potential tools that have not been utilized to potential. That is a shame, and a failure on the part of the system to adapt.

As a student of marketing and public relations, one of the first things any budding professional is taught is to identify your audience. Identify your audience. Professors now have a very different audience today than professors even 10 years ago. My generation was raised with toys. With gadgets. My generation has a high processing speed and a low tolerance for filler. My generation learns in bullet points and status updates of 140 characters or less. Most importantly, my generation is endlessly engaged with a wide online community. This is the audience.

And moreover, this should be any professor’s dream. You have a venue for innovation!

She’s right. And it’s not just social media. As many of you know, I’ve made social media in education a big priority in my college life with the AU Social Media Club, but this isn’t just social media we’re talking about. It’s a simple failure to acknowledge passion and creativity, and a massive failure to help student unlock those passions in innovative ways.

Let me put this in some context. I’ll be blunt—I’m not a fan of my international business course. It’s not because I don’t like business; In fact, I love business. One of my degrees is a B.S. in Business Administration and the Kogod School of Business has been an outstanding place for me to unlock my business potential. But this one class is a failure, largely because our professor is deaf and blind to the needs, wants, and passions of our generation.

So far, the course has consisted of long—as in two and a half hour long—lectures, very little homework, two exams, and a significant group “business plan” project in which we develop our own international business. Sounds cool? Sort of. The problem is that it’s boring and honestly, couldn’t unleash the passion of even the most hardened and fascinated international business major. Our professor tries to be “hip” by encouraging us to text him (+ points), but then fails to grasp even the most basic functions of BlackBoard (- points). He tries to discuss current events (+ points), but then fails to mention anything about the state of the media (- points), how we’re receiving this news (- points), or what this news means in the context of our real lives (- points).

But I don’t mean to single out this one class. There are numerous classes—at every university, I’m sure—that can benefit from a more modern approach. An approach that utilizes modern technology, encourages discussion and debate, asks students where and how they get their information and why they get it where they do. An approach that allows students to express their knowledge in whatever way they know how—whether that’s building a website, tweeting a thousand times a month, starting a group on Facebook, or putting together a good old-fashioned scrapbook.

Miranda nailed it right on the head—our education needs flexibility. It needs to adapt not just to modern students, but to each and every one of us.

This might sound like we’re asking a lot, but really, we’re not. We’re asking that our professors use the time and the resources at their disposal to unlock our passion in new and innovative ways. We’re asking that they step outside of their comfort zone as we step outside of ours. We’re asking that as we work our asses off for that perfect grade, they do the same to not only help us reach that grade, but reach it in a way that gets us excited about the next course in that subject area.

I want to walk out of every class—regardless of the topic—feeling like I should major in it. I want to be that passionate about my classes. I want to care. I really, really, do.

So see? It’s not that we don’t want to care. I think I speak for most of us when I say: yes, we want to care, we want to be passionate. But unfortunately our education isn’t always stepping up to the plate.

Want to know more about the AU Social Media Club? E-mail us at smcedu@american.edu. Are you a student at AU and want to get involved? Sign up for our mailing list here.

It’s all especially relevant lately, and here in D.C., as Stewart and Colbert prepare for their big rallies on the National Mall in October.

American University Professor Matt Nisbet has been writing a lot about this lately on his Age of Engagement blog and he has a lot of fascinating things to say. One of the coolest parts about his most recent posts on this topic, too, is that he’s interviewed one of my other favorite American University professors, Dr. Lauren Feldman, about the issue (she also happens to be our AU-SMCEDU advisor–more on that soon).

It’s all absolutely fascinating to read. Read the whole series on the Age of Engagement blog here–Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3. And check out a quick excerpt below the cut.

Q: Are audiences learning about politics when they watch these programs or are these programs, as some fear, replacing the use of more valuable sources of news and information?

Feldman: During the 2004 election, the Pew Research Center reported that young people were relying on satirical comedy programs like SNL and The Daily Show and late-night talk shows like Leno and Letterman for information about the campaign. While this group was the most likely to say they learned from comedy, it was the least likely to say they learned from network news and newspapers. These trends fueled a media narrative that young people were deserting traditional news in favor of comedy.

Well, it turns out that although at a macro-level, yes, young people as a demographic are consuming much less traditional news and more late-night comedy, it is not necessarily that the same individuals who are tuning out the news are those watching late-night. A 2006 study conducted by Danna Young and Russ Tisinger found that those young people who reported watching and learning the most from late-night comedy also reported the highest rates of exposure to more traditional forms of news.

As a follow up to that study, I partnered with Danna Young to investigate whether exposure to political information in late-night comedy might actually lead people to pay more attention to traditional news. We were testing something called the “gateway hypothesis,” originally proposed by Harvard political scientist Matthew Baum.

This is the idea that entertainment programming that contains political content will motivate otherwise uninterested viewers to start paying attention to the news by making politics more salient (via its political interviews, jokes, etc.) and providing them with a cursory understanding of political issues.

Consistent with our hypothesis, we found that over the course of the 2004 primaries, the audiences of Leno and Letterman increased their attention to campaign news in traditional sources at a faster rate than non-viewers—suggesting that coverage of the election on Leno and Letterman fostered interest in conventional campaign news.

The audience for The Daily Show, on the other hand, maintained high levels of news attention regardless of that program’s election coverage. This is likely because, unlike Leno and Letterman, the content of The Daily Show is consistently and reliably political—not just during campaign events and elections, but all the time. These results confirm that late-night comedy audiences—of both The Daily Show and Leno/Letterman varieties—are not tuning into these programs instead of traditional news.

I would also argue that traditional news is not necessarily more valuable as a source of political information than The Daily Show or Colbert Report. Although it is unclear how much people learn about politics from The Daily Show and Colbert Report, any absence of learning is not due to a dearth of political substance – for example, a study by Julia Fox and colleagues found that The Daily Show was at least as substantive in its coverage of the 2004 election as the network evening news.

More likely, audiences are already knowledgeable about the news of the day when they tune into The Daily Show and Colbert Report. All in all, I would argue that The Daily Show and similar programs provide a useful complement to, rather than a replacement for, citizens’ traditional news diets.

Q: It seems that the Daily Show, Colbert Report, and SNL have become an important part of our personal conversations about politics, at least among a younger generation of Americans. If these programs are not only being watched but also frequently talked about at school, at the office, or online via Facebook and blogs, does this add to their impact?

Feldman: Absolutely. Conversations about these shows – both online and offline – only serve to increase their profile and reinforce their impact. People don’t have to actually see the original broadcast of these programs in order to be influenced by them. Moreover, when relayed by a friend or colleague, along with a personal endorsement or commentary, this is apt to give more weight – or provide new context – to the show’s message.

Comedy Central apparently recognizes the importance of informal sharing of its shows’ content; its website facilitates online conversations about The Daily Show and The Colbert Report by making it easy for people to embed or link to their video clips on blogs, social media, etc.

• My first USA Today blog post is online! In it, I write about how George Friedman’s book The Next One Hundred Years has changed my perception of leadership as I enter my senior year of college. Go read it, and go “like” USA Today’s Facebook page while you’re at it–they’re doing some awesome work.
• The American University chapter of SMCEDU (Social Media Club for Education) is getting up and running, founded by yours truly. We’ve been recognized as an official student organization, signed on our faculty advisor, begun building up our faculty advisory board, and are submitting our first budget and rolling out our first advertisements in less than two weeks. Soon I’ll begin blogging on AU Professor Matt Nisbet’s blog, Age of Engagement, on the subject as well, and I couldn’t be more excited! Lots more on this topic coming soon.
• Class is moving along smoothly. My six classes this semester are keeping me busy, but haven’t become overwhelming yet (and hopefully they won’t!). It’s a refreshing change of pace from the past, since all of my courses this semester are major or minor related, with no general education courses. I feel like I’m enjoying them more, learning more and actually able to get my work done more efficiently. It’s nice.
• My computer is still dead. But being resuscitated as I type this (I hope). Finally got an Apple “genius” who seemed to know what he was talking about and it sounds like my hard drive is dying on me. It’s odd I can still access files, but he talked like there was basically something fatally corrupt about it that won’t let me boot the OS normally. He promised if replacing the hard drive didn’t fix it they wouldn’t charge me for it, so I let them go for it. Plus, they’re upgrading me to a 250 GB from a 160 GB, and I could use the extra space anyway.
• Work is still crazy, and squeezing in CEA work with TechChange work, and now my assistant editor duties at Technorati, is keeping me busy, busy, busy. I love them all though, and I wouldn’t trade these experiences for anything.

Anyway, there’s your quick update. Hoping to get some good content written up in the next day or two and keep you guys thinking over the next week.