Evie Lou Writes

Here we are, getting back in the regular school routine again! It seems like Thanksgiving Break went by way too quickly. I am not ready for school again, nor the end of the semester. It is crazy how the weeks go by so slowly while the semester just flew by.  Overall, the Thanksgiving holiday was very nice. It was pretty quiet since my grandfather was the only family member we hosted. I did a good amount of the cooking and baking this year with my mom. I am not really good in the kitchen, but practice makes perfect! My mom says that the only way to learn how to cook is by continuing to do it. I am honestly not sure how much of a help I truly was, maybe more of a hindrance, but my mom was incredibly patient with me. She showed me how to prepare all the meals and make sure all the consistencies and measurements were correct. A good amount of what my mom does is from memory or learned by experience; there isn’t exactly an exact recipe to follow for some of these things. In the end, the...

Thank you for checking out my blog again! I do not have many updates for you, and nothing really interesting has happened this past week. I guess one thing that I can mention is that I held my documentary screening yesterday. For my capstone project, I am focusing on the value of local journalism in rural communities. I have found throughout my research that this is a very under-studied area, so I am reaching out to various local media platforms in Ada, Bluffton and Findlay to see what their perspectives are. All of my research will be placed in an article for Northern Review so everyone in the community can read it. I also made a mini-documentary to include in the article that is a vignette of Northern Review. I spoke with the editor's advisor and even some of the newest staff members to hear what their perspectives are on journalism at a small university. While this may already sound like a full workload, I also have to do a capstone enhancement as a part of the Honors Program. T...

With all of the craziness that you have seen me blog about these past couple of weeks, I'm sure you are probably expecting an interesting blog I can. I have bad news to tell you. Nothing interesting has happened to me this past week. At least nothing exciting enough for me to share on this blog.  This isn't to say that I've just been sitting around in my dorm room for the past week,  being bored to death. I have been extremely busy with school work and  keeping up with my jobs. In fact, it's been a little bit overwhelming to keep track of everything. I've been trying to relax and have some down time so that I don't completely overwhelm myself with stress. I guess one piece of good news is that I recently learned that I only need to take 15 credit hours next semester. I have been doing 19 credit hours pretty much every semester here, so it'll be nice to just be able to relax and enjoy my final semester at Ohio Northern. Besides, I am probably going to be work...

Fall Break could not have come soon enough! I felt like I was practically counting down the minutes until I could finally go home and see my family again. This break, we went to Pymatuning State Park Campground. This campground is fairly large and is right along Pymatuning Lake, which is perfect for sunset views and beach walks.  Growing up, my family went camping for all our vacations. We never stayed in hotels, and we usually camped at various state parks in Ohio. Going camping is one of my favorite things to do. I love the smell of campfires and the sound of other families spending time with their loved ones. It also allowed my siblings and I to explore new sights and meet new people. I still enjoy camping to this day. Out of all the parks my family has camped at, Pymatuning State Park is definitely my favorite. Pymatuning is the go-to place my family would go when we wanted a quick trip that wasn’t too far from home. It is about an hour away from my house and along the Pennsylv...

Hello! I hope everyone had an amazing first week of classes and is starting to get acclimated into college life again. It's crazy that we're already almost finished with two weeks of the semester. Time is flying by quickly! If you’ve ever met me, you’ll know that I always seem to have my Google Calendar booked with meetings and activities I need to be at, and this year is no different. Perhaps what I am most excited for is all of the photography opportunities that I have now. This summer, I was really busy with classes and work, so I was not able to go on any photo shoots or advertise for clients. Now that I'm back on campus, I am able to take pictures at events and at sporting games.  So far, I have been able to take pictures at three different events, and I am so glad to be back in the game! it is been so relaxing for me to be behind the camera again and edit all of these special moments. One thing that I am really looking forward to this semester is the semester-long pro...

Guess who is back at blogging?  I know I left off the last semester with a farewell and pretty much insinuating that I wouldn't be returning, but here I am! As it turns out, I will be continuing my weekly blogs throughout this semester for my Social Media Strategies and Campaigns class. I am excited to take you guys along this journey as I head into my second to last semester of college. Second to last semester? Wow, that's crazy to say. It honestly feels like I just started at ONU a few months ago. The time has really flown by! When I first started my college journey, I was a very quiet and nervous freshman who didn't know how to get her name out there. I was kind of slow at getting involved in extracurriculars, and I didn't go out of my comfort zone too often. Once the second semester of freshman year hit, I knew that I needed to be a lot more bold and adventurous if I wanted to make the most out of my college experience. I took more risks when it came to putting myse...

Hi everyone!  As some of you might know, I started this blog about five months ago as a part of my Principles of Social Media class for a social media minor I am pursuing. We were instructed to make two blog posts a week and comment on our peers’ blogs too. With it being our final week of class, I wanted to share that I will most likely be taking a break from blogging on here for a while. With two summer classes and a full-time internship this summer, I am not sure I will have the time to be posting here consistently.  Posting on a blog definitely has its ups and downs, as I have learned in the past 15 weeks. It is not as easy as you might think. One thing that was a challenge for me was reaching the word count requirement for every post. While there is no “official” length a blog needs to be, it is highly recommended that a blog should be 400-600 words so that it is not too long or too short for the readers. Even though I am a writer and talker, I found it surprisingly diffic...

For the first time since I started this blog series, I have to admit that I have nothing really interesting to share. Crazy, right? I am the kind of person who always has something to say or share, and suddenly having NOTHING to talk about is kind of weird for me. Just because I have nothing pivotal to say right now does not mean that nothing is happening in my life right now. Rather, there have been a lot of things happening all at once, and I don’t know how to organize all of those things into one, cohesive post.  One thing that stood out to me the most from this past week is that I officially quit my internship that I have had for the past two and a half years. The decision to quit this internship was very hard on me because I have grown close to all of these people. In fact, this is the first job that I have ever quit before. Up until this point, I've had every single job that I ever started since high school. This was the first time that I had to tell my employers that I would...

So I know you are reading the title of this blog post right now and thinking to yourself that this is not one of Evie's typical blog posts. I do realize that I am taking this blog in a completely different direction than normal. To be honest I really haven't done much photography lately. Coming back from spring break, I have had a lot more things to do on my workload, whether that be more school work or a plethora of meetings that I need to be at. Photography has just kind of been put on the back burner, and I am all right with that right now. To tell you the truth, the main thing that has taken up my time recently is Greek life. For those of you who might not know, I am a member of Kappa Alpha Theta, which is one of the four social sororities on campus. One of the biggest Greek life events on campus is approaching in the next week and a half: Greek Sing. Honestly, all of Greek week takes a lot of time and energy but Greeks Sing is the event that  is truly super time intensive ...

As someone who is a part of Generation Z, I am well aware of the fact that most people in my generation are on social media. I mean, according to Forbes , 98% of people in my generation own a smartphone and 97% use it as a main source of shopping inspiration. The reality is that we are on our phones all of the time and we use it a lot more than most other Generations do. I will admit that I am even on social media. However Snapchat is one of the apps that I refuse to ever download. Now you may be wondering to yourself: why Snapchat? Out of all of the apps that are out there, why limit myself to this one? Well the truth is, the only social media app that I actually have is Instagram, and that is purely because I can keep up to date with other organizations that I'm involved in and see what's happening around campus without actually having to post anything myself. The main purpose of Snapchat, however, is to send images or brief video clips to other people as the main source of c...

As I am sure most of you are probably aware, last week was spring break. As one of the few people who does not have a car on campus, it was nice to go home and finally leave Ohio Northern’s property for a little bit.  I don’t know about you guys, but midterms really hit me hard this year. I felt like I had so many assignments due at the same time, and my involvement in extracurricular activities kept increasing. There didn't seem to be enough time in the day to get all of my work done, and I grew increasingly tired as the week progressed. While I was trying to eat healthy and get 7-8 hours of sleep, my body just wasn’t able to handle the stress and I got sick. I wasn’t feverish or anything, but I was visibly worn out, congested, and feeling plain icky. That being said, I started my break feeling pretty miserable.  The good news was that I had an entire week of nothing on my Google Calendar. It was so nice to open my phone and see zero notifications for meetings I needed to be ...

Hey guys! It seems like the last two segments of my advice series have gone over pretty well with you all. I am glad you are enjoying them! I will admit that I am far from being an expert on photography and entrepreneurship, but I wanted to give you some advice from the perspective of a fellow college student. Navigating life is difficult at this time, so I feel that documenting our thoughts and experiences for each other will allow us to know that we are not in the struggle alone.  That being said, another fact that I struggled to come to terms with in my photography journey is that it is necessary to be compensated for your time . In fact, this concept still weighs on me now, and I constantly debate myself on whether or not I should charge my clients and if I do, how much is a fair amount? As someone who was just starting out as a “professional” photographer, I did not feel comfortable taking money from people when I wasn’t even sure my work was good enough to deserve it. My grea...

If you have been staying up to date on my recent blogs, you will know that I manage the ELM Photography Instagram account. This account was created a little over a year ago as a digital portfolio of my work. I figured that having an Instagram account would give me the opportunity to share my work with other people and give me more opportunities to take photos for other occasions.  Recently, I discovered that one of my closest friends, Allayna Reiff, also runs her own professional social media channels. She is an avid gym-goer who creates motivational content under the handle @workout_withallayna . I began following Allayna the moment I saw she created the account. Since then, I have seen a variety of inspirational posts that have even encouraged me to regularly go to the gym again (thanks, Allayna!). When we were asked to create a podcast for our Principles of Social Media class, I knew that there was no other person to do this project with. Allayna and I partnered together over o...

We are in a digital age where everything we see on social media is carefully manufactured to perfection. From famous influencers to our intimate friends, people tend to post the best of themselves. Every image is carefully selected and edited before it is posted so that what you see isn’t exactly reality. If I am being honest, I tend to doubt every influencer I see on my feed. I see fakeness in their stories, stiffness in their “perfect” relationships, and sadness through their smiles. I do not like thinking about other people this way, but I fear we have grown up in a culture that tells us “everything we see online is fake.”  Do you take everything you see online at face value? Do you immediately trust everything you see on social media? Consider these questions as I provide my preferred type of media. Despite the disappointment I find on mainstream media platforms, I tend to find comfort knowing that blogs still exist in the world today. I know that blogs can be edited and man...