Say What?

 

So it seems after what seems like hundreds of years, that I will be graduating in December 2011. That’s right folks, Kimberly Hunt has an actual goal for graduation! Shocking I know. For months now I have been estimating and trying to figure it out for myself, but I met with my advisor today and it has been confirmed. I will take 4 classes and a lab in the spring, (hopefully) 4 classes in the summer, and then after 4 more in the fall I will have my undergrad in Communications and Dramatic Arts. Even as I type it now, it is hard for me to believe that I am finally at this point with a set goal.

So what’s next…in the immediate future I will be studying myself to death just to get to the point of graduation, after that I plan on taking the Spring and Summer semesters off, then in Fall 2012 I will hopefully try to get my Masters in Secondary Language Arts (ie. I want to teach public speaking, newspaper, etc. in high school). Ideally I would love to one day teach at my Alma Mater, EMCA, but time will tell. There is just something about giving back to the place that gave me my roots, something about offering something more than what I got. This is not to bash the EMCA of my day, but rather to say that in the beginning stages of the school there were some areas that left something to be desired…the area of speech being one of them. I want to change that.

I left high school with virtually no public speaking experience at all. This is simply not acceptable in today’s world. Besides the fact that every person should know how to communicate in an understandable way with other people, at some point either in college or the professional world almost everyone will be called upon to get up in front of a crowd to speak or to answer a question in a public setting…this should not be a problem, unless you don’t have that foundation. This is what I want to provide, a foundation, so that if any of my students are called upon to speak in a group, they will know how to react in an educated and professional manner.

Beyond the area of speech, I also want to instill in my future students a basic knowledge of all types of writing, and maybe even a love of it. While I don’t plan on being an English teacher, there are many elements to high school journalism and speech that require a basic knowledge of writing. And not all types of writing require formality,( ie. this blog, which in many circles is considered a form of journalism).

All of this is very exciting for me to think about, and now beyond just dreaming about…I can see the light at the end of my undergraduate tunnel.