When I think back to my orientation week three years ago, a few things come to mind. The most notable memory is the first project of my course; hitting up local bars and restaurants. Not just because of the drinks! Although they do play a small part in it.
What I Remember
Our task was to make a top-5 list that matched a theme of our choice, so our team chose “Top Dates on a Dime” in the attempt to hit up the best bars and restaurants in the area. Our plan was a success, allowing us to visit places like Blu-Martini and Barcadia for a drink and interview with the staff. It was exactly the kind of thing I wanted from my college experience. Before then, I had always looked forward to being able to go out with classmates for a drink, and finding new friends in places that were unknown to me.
I also think back to one of my first presentations with my classmate and friend Vahid Amini, where we were tasked with creating a presentation promoting a product or service of our choice. The phrase “of our choice” is the aspect that interested me the most about the project when our teacher presented it to us. “Choice” meant that the limits were set by us and what we chose, giving us limitless possibilities of what we could do. I didn’t know at the time, but Vahid was thinking the same thing. After mulling it over for a bit in the classroom, I turned to him and jokingly suggested that we promote the service of P***Hub Premium. The madman agreed to it, calling my bluff. We checked with the teacher, and somehow received the greenlight. We decided to follow through. We created the presentation, along with buying fake moustaches, sunglasses, and even some matching salmon coloured suits from the local Value Village to complete the look.
We somehow made it through the presentation, which turned out to be pretty decent. It had to be, considering the amount of censoring we had to do. We would later make it through many more presentations, all while having a hell of a time. There are countless others I had the benefit of working with other great people that would soon become friends. I’d list them all here, but that would go against the next part of my post…
What I’ve Learned
Always keep your blog posts short! See what I did there? With the ellipses? No? It’s cool, I’ll let it slide! Among the various subjects I’ve learned about, such as effective blog writing and video editing, I’ve also learned to more easily accept things for what they are, and what they become. Did a joke not land in a blog post? Is my college experience confined to a janky video-call program? Why the hell am I paying $150 towards a fitness facility on campus that no one has stepped foot in for a year? I found these questions circling my mind for most of the semester, along with many others. I got too caught up on finding solutions to the problems that I had cooked up in my head. I came to realize that the scale of the problems in the grand scale of my life are minor, and over in the blink of an eye. Sure, I haven’t seen some classmates in a while, but what’s stopping us from meeting up when these problems are over? I’m looking forward to that time.
Aside from learning to dodge anxiety-inducing questions floating around, I also learned some practical skills through college. Who would’ve thought? One major aspect of digital marketing I’ve learned about is SEO (Search Engine Optimization) through keywords. We even used a search-engine simulation to learn about SEO called Mimic. I enjoyed learning about SEO, which almost seemed like a word-association game to me, but the Mimic simulation was far from enjoyable. The U.I. was confusing at times, and my stats started tanking randomly at the end of the simulation. It also had a $90 price-tag – pretty steep, especially during a pandemic. To try to fill in the gaps from what the sim may have missed, I decided to take a few courses on LinkedIn Learning about SEO, such as certs for keyword strategy, and even YouTube SEO. I chose YouTube SEO specifically because of the next part of this post.
What’s Next
My final step in my journey at SLC will be with the Original Hockey Hall of Fame in Kingston! I’ll be putting together some videos for them, so may be seeing my editing skills on YouTube! I’ll be sure to share them on my blog when they start rolling-in, so please subscribe and check your notifications every year or so! I may not know everything, but I do know quite a few people backing me up at SLC that are willing to help me learn and support me.
If you enjoyed reading my post, please consider checking out any of my friend’s blogs below. They all have interesting stories behind them, and are damn-fine marketers!
Vahid Amini – Creative Content Producer
Terry McGinn – Absolute Machine, future Prime Minister (my guess, not hers)
The Green Album 