Doing the robot, journalist-style

Last week, I danced like a robot in front of a couple hundred people. No big deal.

A good friend of mine and I performed with our friend’s band, Disco Disco, at the 2010 Independent Professional Project (IPP) Presentations. We dressed up in pink spandex, tinfoil beer-box heads and space-silver vests and danced like we’ve never danced before.

Every year, students from the creative communications program at Red River College almost kill themselves working on their IPPs. An IPP is sort of the equivalent to a thesis project in university. You spend a year of your life, outside class time, working on a project that you developed in the first year of the program. Examples of IPPs include forming a band (like my good friend did), video documentaries, novellas, magazines and promotional projects.

It is a huge undertaking. You have to meet deadlines with an advisor throughout the year and at the end of it all, you perform at the IPP Presentations in front of first and second-year classmates, family, faculty and the media.

I graduated from the program last April. It was a surreal experience to come back a year later and instead of reading aloud a chapter of the most personal collection of words I’ve ever written, I got the chance to be a robot.

For my IPP, I wrote a true crime book on one of the most wanted drug and gun dealers in the country. It was a personal story as I knew this person very well and writing the book not only took up every moment of my free time, but involved me pouring a great deal of soul into something I could hopefully one day be proud of. Standing up in front of your peers, with a story you’ve never told them in the two years you’ve spent getting closer than you ever could with 75 other human beings, was an incredible experience.

But not only did I come back a year later to perform a ridiculously choreographed dance, I came back as a graduate of the program who has just started to find my way in an industry where experience means everything.

I applied for over 200 jobs in my first year out of the creative communications program. Hearing the word ‘no’ that many times is a hard thing to overcome but my blood, sweat and tears finally paid off when I got my first job as news production editor here at The Uniter. Also, just a few weeks ago, I got a job as junior editor at a publishing firm here in Winnipeg.

Being back at the IPPs and looking around at all the eager faces getting ready to graduate and enter the big adult working world brought about a huge mixture of emotions for me. I very much hope that all these bright creative minds will find their niche in an industry that is changing dramatically every day.

I also hope that in their post-graduation years, they too will get the chance to come back to the IPP Presentations and do their very own version of the robot.