Back in May of 2021, I moved out of my parents house, in Radisson, Wis., into the dorms at UW-Superior. I thought my collegiate career would lead me to the path of becoming an art teacher, but right before my semester started I switched majors completely. Little did I know that this switch would propel me forward to living almost a lifetime worth of experience in a career in journalism.
I didn’t know we had a Multimedia Journalism course, likewise I didn’t know filmmaking was offered. But I took a chance. I made a few videos back in high school for projects, and besides art, that’s all I really all I knew that I enjoyed doing.
Now, three and a half years later, I can’t see myself doing anything different in my life. I was quick to join our campus’ newspaper, just as quick to apply as a production assistant in local television. Before I took my first reporting class, I already was the assistant editor of the Promethean. Before returning back for my sophomore year, I was my tv station’s only weekend reporter.
Drew Kerner will be retiring from his role as Editor-in-Chief of the Promethean but will be around in Spring 2025 as a consultant as he wraps up his double major.
I’m not one to believe in coincidences. I tend to think people work towards and advance into their position. But everything worked out better than I could have imagined.
I’m equally surprised how things worked out in both degrees. I’ve been a part of a few local commercial and film productions through outside work with the Upper Midwest Film Office. I’ve once slept in a hammock in Chislom, Minn., a place I’ve never been to before, all for a short film workshop during a chilly October weekend.
Probably my biggest sense of accomplishment has come from the media I’ve produced in and around our campus’s film department. My first two short films, Ink of the Black Gloves and Metamodernity, only further solidified that I made the right choice a week before I actually started classes fall of 2021.
My time here at UWS felt short-lived, but it feels more like a lifetime of learning and fun. I met some of my best friends here on campus, this campus gave me the tools to jointly better a career and my education. It didn’t come without any hardships, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to finish that documentary I was making back in spring of 2023. It was hard doing 18 credits, a film, all during the semester my close grandmother died. But I still passed, mostly.
I have one more semester left, one more incomplete to make up. I may not be as around on campus as I used to. But I’m excited for my life to have a soft restart after receiving both of my BA’s in Multimedia Journalism and Digital Filmmaking. For now, I’m a student and the morning technical director at KQDS Fox21, but no matter where I go, I’ll have a camera and microphone on my side waiting to tell that next film or story.
