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After the IUSTV banquet last week (I need to put up pictures soon), I’ve been doing a bit of thinking. When I graduated from high school three years ago, I hadn’t planned at all on coming to college and getting involved in video and stuff. I had spent two years making short videos, teaching myself Final Cut, working long hours for nothing, and also having a lot of fun. I worked with the school to expand the video department. Who am I kidding? Before me and my group (PoS Productions) started actually doing stuff, there WASN’T enough of anything there to call it a department. I’d spent many nights, days (skipping classes), even summers and a winter break of my high school days editing video. I knew I wasn’t going to major in telecom in college, and I thought I’d never really have to sit all night in front of a Mac ever again.

Then I came to IU and as fate would have it, I met Kieran down the hall in my dorm who was starting a TV station. Haha, what are the chances? I’ve spent the last three years here editing video again, working much the same way I did back then. I’ve helped manage an organization that went from a group of kids saying something like “man it would be cool to make TV,” to a 100+ member group on campus with a huge office, somewhat impressive recognition, producing everything from a dating game show to a sports news show to a food review show. In just a few years, I’d say this is a pretty nice list of accomplishments. A lot of the growth at IUSTV, I’ll say, was with my help. Not trying to brag (seriously), but I’ve given a lot to this organization (I never call it a club because I think it’s a lot more than that) just in my free time, for no reason other than because I wanted to do it. I’m not a telecom major, I’ve never taken a formal class, yet in a few weeks I’ll be leading the entire shebang.

Just like in high school, really even more so, I spend a LOT of time working on video stuff. That includes a lot of managerial type of thing, not just the practical skills. IUSTV really does take higher priority with me than schoolwork, as pretty much anyone who knows me will agree, although it probably shouldn’t. I’ll pull an all-nighter helping edit an episode of something, whereas I’d never even consider doing that for a class assignment. I guess it’s some kind of fate (or maybe addiction) that’s kept me here in the biz. I don’t even really know if I’m going to do anything related to this when I graduate into the *real* world next May. I really enjoy all my work here at IUSTV, and it’s gone from just a hobby I had in high school to something I really am proud of. I’m usually pretty modest, but at least to myself I do have a certain amount of pride whenever someone recognizes the name Hoosier Date?. Sure, we don’t exactly make stuff that’s going to pass as a network TV program, but it’s still pretty impressive I think for a group of college kids, who have a million other things going on, to make so many hours of quality programming with somewhat ghetto-rigged equipment setups. I even sit down and watch IUSTV shows, not just because I make them, but because they’re fun to watch.

I guess the point of this entry was to reflect on what I’ve been doing. Although I might complain sometime (about everything, not just IUSTV), I’m really lucky that I got “roped into” this a few years back. I honestly don’t know what I’d do with my freetime if I weren’t involved with IUSTV. I was playing with that thought even before the banquet, and I figured that even if I hadn’t gotten in on the ground floor, it would have been pretty impossible for me NOT to have joined at some point. It’s just too tempting and too much fun for me.

Coincidentally, as I was thinking about this over the past few days, I just got a message on MySpace from Nick Lambrou, one of the guys I worked with in high school. I gave him a quick line about what I’ve been up to here at IU, and his response was:
“That is awesome. You cannot escape film and video anthony. Its in your blood.”

That’s probably true.