Avoiding my Roommates

I wasn’t a huge fan of dealing with my roommate situation that year, which might have been a factor in why I got involved with so many other things on campus.  J’s presence had been a mediating balance in our room the first semester, because she was friends with my roommate, and girls have this mysterious connection with gay guys.  She probably played a significant role in keeping the peace, but she was not around the second semester, so I just survived the issues, and avoided being in my room when I wasn’t sleeping.  Basically every hour of my day was scheduled with things, from work at 8am, to project groups and meetings after midnight.

Our TV show had grown, and in an effort to get some level of credit for all of the work we were doing on it, we involved Dan, our multimedia professor, in the process.  That allowed us to use the TV show as our required project for the sophomore Intermediate Multimedia class, but turned it from fun, into work.  We were tasked to increase the production value to the point where it was unfeasible to continue making the show, and it fell apart after three episodes that “season.”  But it had gotten to the point where we had a set, and a band, and outside media pieces being created.  I still have copies of the tongue in cheek special-report interviews we did, with people from around campus, and they are some of my favorite pieces of content from that whole endeavor.  I have no idea how our investigative reporter Julie could keep a straight face during those interviews.

One of the students we interviewed as a guest the previous semester, after breaking a school football record, liked the TV show idea so much, that he started his own sports show as well.  Our production values were far higher, since I had the most talented technical people in the school working for me, but his actual content was probably better.  Anyhow, we got credit for the show from Dan, but that ended my stint as a live TV producer.

The Lacrosse Team was finally coming together as well.  We bought our own gear and uniforms, and started practicing seriously.  We had about eight games during that spring season, but lost all of them.  Most of the guys on the team didn’t lose so well, and with no coach to keep them in line, there were a few brawls on the field during fourth quarters and such.  We probably hold the record for most penalty violations as well.  Penalties are similar to hockey, with offenders removed from the field for a minute or two, giving the opposite team a temporary numerical advantage.  We were frequently down two or three guys at times during the second half.  I wasn’t very good at the game itself, but I was extremely fast, and had a gift for extracting the ball from a crowd fighting for it on the ground.  I had to pass it off ASAP, because my stick work wouldn’t hold up against decent defensive coverage for more than a couple of seconds.  They got their first win two years later, but I was long gone by then.  One season was enough for me; I helped them get the team started, so my job was done.

I also worked on one other significant video project that semester, for my Advanced TV Production class.  It was a fairly creative mixture of live action and Lego miniatures to tell a story I had come across in Bible class back in 8^th grade.  I worked on it together with Julie, from our TV show, and we actually took 2^nd class at the school film festival for it.  Something else I did for with my TV production class, was take my first trip to Las Vegas, for the NAB tradeshow.  And that was one hell of an adventure.