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...

I decided to take an unplanned trip home this weekend. this probably doesn't seem like a big deal, and I'm sure that people do this all the time. For me, however, this is quite uncommon. This is actually the first time that I have gone home on my own when there wasn't any formal break. This is my first semester having a car on campus so I have never had the flexibility to do this before. It was honestly a lot of fun to make such a spur of the moment decision. Going home was not without purpose though. First, my family had a nice Halloween bonfire in our backyard. It was just my siblings and my parents, but it was fun to play some cheesy Halloween songs and drink apple cider on our back porch. Well, I did not drink  much of the apple cider because I may or may not have spilled it all over myself when I tripped. Another reason why I went home was because I needed to vote. I honestly forgot about absentee voting, but I prefer to go in person anyways. This was a pretty big elec...

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...

  Hey everyone! I hope your week has been going well because I know mine has been pretty crazy. I feel like there is so much to do and such little time to do it! Not only do I have long-term projects to be working on, but many little things are due along the way. This semester has been putting my time management skills to the test, and I am trying my best to stay afloat! Now you may be wondering what has been keeping me so busy. Honestly, a lot of things are! One of those things is my capstone project, which I will not go into detail about since that was my blog last week. Another thing that has taken quite a bit of time is my extracurricular activities, namely Northern Review . I haven’t been able to do as much with Northern Review as I normally would this semester due to time constraints, but I will occasionally pick up a story every once in a while because I enjoy it. I wrote a sports article most recently, and that went differently than I thought. I am not very familiar with m...

  Senior year means it is time for senior capstone projects! Capstone projects, also known as a senior thesis, usually take an entire semester to complete and require students to conduct research on a field relevant to their program of study. It showcases the skills students have learned throughout their time at Ohio Northern and helps them build a portfolio for post-graduation pursuits.  My capstone project is taking the form as an “unessay,” which is a term coined by my capstone advisor for projects that will not be literature reviews or research papers. You see, I am taking the Communications Studies capstone course, but I am also a student in the Writing and Multimedia Studies program. Since that program is closing, the university decided to merge the two capstone courses into one. While the communications capstone is typically an essay, they changed that requirement this year for the multimedia students. This is great news for me because I am excited to use my media skill...

I cannot believe it is already sorority recruitment week! This is arguably one of the most exciting times for sororities because we get to meet all the new members of our chapters. This week will be long and exhausting for everyone, but it will all be worth it once we get to celebrate on Bid Day! All of this recruitment talk has made me reflect on my own Greek life journey. My Greek life story isn’t the most traditional. In fact, I did not join my chapter until the spring of my freshman year. I am not going to lie, I never intended to join Greek life during my time at Ohio Northern. Truth be told, I did not think that an introvert like me could ever fit into a sorority.  Despite my hesitation, I knew the moment I walked through the doors of my chapter’s house that I was meant to join a sorority. There was so much joy and excitement in everyone when they approached me, and that made me feel so welcome. There is no such thing as being too crazy or cracking too many jokes. We’re all a...

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...

Last weekend, I officially said goodbye to eleven of my senior sorority sisters. As of right now, they are actually considered alumni of the chapter! Sunday was a truly emotional day, for it was really bittersweet to watch them leave the chapter. The events this year hit me harder than last year because I was a spring recruit and I didn’t really know the seniors at the time. While they were all very kind and welcoming towards me, I didn’t really have time to connect and form a deeper friendship with them. This year, though, I have gotten to know most of the seniors very well, and it saddened me to know that I will no longer be able to spend as much time with them as I had before.  Sunday’s events started out with the Senior Banquet where we recognized our seniors with a brief video filled with photos from Theta events in the last 4 years. We also give seniors letters from their parents and families, an entire scrapbook, as well as a basket that each of their littles makes for them....

Finally! After 14 long weeks of refining my social media skills, I have finally finished my digital marketing internship, or Simternship, from Stukent.  For those of you who may not be familiar with the Simternship, it is an online simulation that makes you, the user, a marketing manager for a company. You are given a series of tasks that prompt you to strengthen your social media skills and learn how to make more effective posts. Some tasks include picking time-relevant images, creating optimized captions, negotiating with social media influencers, and having targeted advertisements. The Simternship challenges everything you thought you knew about the social media landscape, compelling you to do your research and learn the best posting practices.  One of the main motivating factors of the Simternship is that you can see your rank in comparison to your classmates at the end of each round. Even though their names are anonymous, I still find myself determined to get a high score...

In my social media class, we are watching a documentary called The Social Dilemma, which talks about the impact social media addiction has on our daily lives. One of the things that stood out to me in this documentary the most was that social media addiction impacts people of all ages, not just kids. Even the adults on the documentary admitted to being addicted to their phones, and most of them owned or helped design the social media platforms. That concept alone amazes me. It also got me thinking: if the designers of the programs have a hard time, what does that mean for the average person?  Think of the young children who have access to social media and lack the emotional maturity and discipline to say “no” to their phones. How are they impacted by social media and screen time? Parents might not know how to work with their kids on these topics because the concept of social media and its impact on young kids is relatively new. We don’t have decades of research and past practices t...

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...

As I'm sure some of you might have seen on my last blog, last week was Greek Week!  Greek Week contains a long list of activities that all 10 of the social sorority and fraternities chapters take part in every spring. It starts off on a Monday with Greek Sing and carries on throughout the whole week until the Greek Olympics, which is kind of like the finale, on Saturday.  While this week can be incredibly exhausting for all Greek life members, it is probably one of the most memorable weeks out of the entire semester. Here's the thing: we spend several weeks practicing and getting ready for Greek Week. There is a lot of preparation that goes on behind the scenes to make sure that we are at the top of our game and feel confident in participating in the activities we were selected to be a part of. For example, I was in the chariot race this year, which is something completely out of my comfort zone. It consists of two partners of runners, and each group of partners runs around ha...

After weeks of preparation and anticipation, it is finally Greek Week! For those of you who may not know, I am a member of the Zeta Sigma chapter of Kappa Alpha Theta, a social sorority on campus. Theta is dedicated to the values of leadership, scholarship, service, personal excellence and sisterhood, and our philanthropy is Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA), which supports children in the foster care system. Greek Week is one of the most celebrated days in the Greek community and it is something that we prepare for weeks in advance. The first event during Greek week is Greek Sing. This event takes place on Monday evening. It is where all ten sorority and fraternity chapters prepare a seven minute singing and dance routine based on their Greek Week theme. This year, every chapter represents a particular style of music, and Theta’s theme is country. Preparing your performance is more than just picking out your music and styling outfits together. The entire process spans over the ...

Yesterday, I had the amazing opportunity to attend the annual Social Media Workshop and the PRSSA Alumni Dinner. As someone who is not in the business college and is not as familiar with these types of events or organizations I found this to be an amazing experience. For those of you who may not know, the Social Media Workshop is an annual event that invites businesses and social media professionals from the Northwest Ohio area to learn more about how to maximize their social media usage. A variety of keynote speakers present their well thought out and thoroughly researched advice to students and local entrepreneurs. While some of the speakers had similar observations of the modern social media landscape, it was interesting to see how each of them addressed it within their own companies. They were also very helpful in answering all of the audience's questions and being very conscious of what the interests and needs of the audience were. Later in the evening, Ohio Northern’s chapter...

As I am sure you know this from my previous blogs, I am not a big social media user. I tend to stick to using the same platforms and apps, and I am very hesitant to try new things. This mindset, however, shifted when I discovered Pinterest.  Pinterest is a social media platform that allows users to find a variety of pictures and images relating to their personal interests. You can save those images on Pinterest Boards based on themes and aesthetics. The pictures and types of content that are on Pinterest range from a variety of topics that include food, fashion, travel, and athletics.  Personally, I never used Pinterest just because it was another account that I had to set up and another platform that I needed to keep track of. It didn't seem like it was worth the effort when I could just Google images instead. I had limited my mindset, and that prevented me from utilizing an app that could have provided me with so much more ease in my vision boards and projects. Being as stub...

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 ...