Left Turn, Right Turn
You may be wondering why I gave this post that title, but you’ll see why in a little bit :)…
When I was entering my freshman year of college, I thought that I was going to end up working as an archivist at a history museum. I know it seems specific, but I really liked history since I grew up around a place where a lot of Revolutionary War events took place. I even had an archives internship and a museum program planning internship my sophomore year. Though I enjoyed these at the time, I thought that I would not like a career in the museum/history field in the long-term.
Even before I got these two internships, I had declared history and communication studies to be my two majors. As I reflected on my experiences from my history internships, I soon turned to my interests in communications. By the end of my junior year, I was accepted as a research fellow in the Communications Department. And you may be asking yourself: how can research be done in Communications? Isn’t it such a broad topic?
Trust me, I had the same preconceived notions, but after spending a summer researching within the field, I soon learned of the infinite possibilities of Communications research. In short, I conducted a content analysis of the social media pages and websites of various irredentist and separatist nations across the globe. I learned about qualitative factors (i.e. color schemes, flags, characteristics of photos, symbolism, logos, etc.) and quantitative factors (i.e. repetition of logos/flags/other symbols, how many times a certain word appears, etc.) I saw the importance of social media within these movements as it was an extension of their soft power. Social media is a powerful tool, and if it is used effectively, it can persuade and influence in limitless ways.
Now, here I am in graduate school, taking classes all about social media. My academic journey has certainly been a lot of reflection and growth. *Cue the importance of the title of this post* At one point, I thought I was on a linear path toward a history job, but God had me take a left turn here and a right turn there. And in the end, I still ended up right where I needed to be. His plans are soooooo good, and I’m going to keep chasing after Him in all I do.
