I'm back and I've brought a few changes...

I haven't wrote for awhile on this blog but I am going to try and bring it to life again. I want to make it a more day to day blog where I share lessons I have learned, pictures I have taken and things I have done. I hope to leave little tips that I have pick up too. Such as good places to eat, shop or visit. I hope to build my following and keep people entertained! Thanks for checking this out and I will leave you with a couple pictures that I have taken recently.

Here are a few portraits I took of a friend and her husband. They are expecting a child and I was able to have a photo-shoot with them.

THE PRANK!

So I am, by nature, a prankster and decided it was high time for another prank. Before I leave the Christian Campus House I want to have as much fun as possible... well one night while thinking this I came up with a great idea, instead of pranking the other girls or guys (the students aka my peers) I decided it would be epic to prank our ministers! They are a fun loving group who can enjoy a good laugh so I knew that was my ideal group to get especially since they always miss out on being the targets! So after my last final a few friends joined me in carrying out my prank idea and I finally have the video done!

So without further ado, enjoy the video!

Summer break...

So its here, summer break. I have been officially graduated for 2 weeks and I still can't believe it. I haven't blogged for a long time but I felt the inkling to. I haven't been up to much because my job doesn't start until August. I have been relaxing and doing some stuff I didn't get to when I was in classes and busy with school. I have been eating healthier, cooking often, working out on a more regular basis, SLEEPING (yes I actually get to sleep now! WOW) along with a few other things like movie nights with my friends, going to the batting cages with my boyfriend and just sitting around reading a book. So far I have read 4 novels and probably watched 20 movies! haha! OH! I also put together an uber puzzle, dorky I know, but it was something I had not done in FOREVER and I rather enjoyed reverting back to my days as an elementary school kid. It is a picture of Mickey Mouse and, even though you can't see it, the picture of him is actually made up of a lot of small scenes from Disney movies... in other words HARD AS HECK!


One of my recent summer adventures was just two days ago (Thursday) when I traveled to Oklahoma City to watch my roommate and her team play. She is on the Mizzou Softball team and they made it to the Women's College World Series. I am very proud of the girls, having known several of them for awhile now. Today however, they lost, but they had an awesome season and ended with a record of 50-12. Not too shabby eh? 50 wins is AMAZING! It was a long day on Thursday because we drove to Oklahoma City that morning, leaving at 5:45 AM and drove back home afterwards arriving in Columbia at 2:00 AM. Other than that like I said I have been up to randomness and relaxing. I hope to start this blog up again as more of a day to day record of all my happenings!
Thanks for reading and post me back!

LAST WEEK OF COLLEGE!

So here it is... my last week in college. It is kind of scary but I am ready. I think. I have enjoyed so much being at MU these past 4 years that I am not quite ready to say goodbye. I have loved my time in the journalism school and as a student at MU but the best part of the last 4 years has to be my time at the Christian Campus House. I have lived here every year since I came to MU thats 8 regular semesters plus 3 summer semesters. It has become a part of me and I will miss it the most. I became stronger in my faith and my walk with God while also getting to do some pretty awesome stuff! I have also been able to use the little things I learned in my journalism classes and apply them to CCH events. I made several videos and promotional adds while here, as well as participate in several skits. I even wrote and directed several skits/videos/speeches for CCH. This past week I gave my farewell speech to the people at CCH and it had to have been one of the hardest things I have ever done. I talked about all the good times, the lessons learned and where my future is taking me. After talking I showed this video:




I luckily won't have to say goodbye for good from CCH. No I won't live there again but I may actually have an internship there for part of the year next semester. I will be working on more in-depth videos and such for them and possibly will get to help with setting up a website. I am excited to have that to look forward to along with a couple other job possibilities. I will be working for a start-up company called Athelink and that starts in August. The last thing on my plate right now may be working part time at FM 92.1 ( a Christian Radio station in Columbia) as a sort of online manager. I pretty much contacted the management and asked if they had jobs available and told them about myself. They said they actually did not have any openings but would let me know... and that is when I decided I wasn't going to take no for an answer. I wrote back selling myself on all of my online skills and knowledge. I told them about twitter and facebook and blogs and how if used correctly those tools can be very useful for a company to get word out. I talked about my website and all I am involved online and just kept going. After I sent that message the manager wrote back and said that the station officials had actually just been talking about starting a twitter and facebook the other day but decided not to because they did not have enough manpower. He said he would talk to the others to see if they could possibly move the budget around to afford to pay me part time to do that work. I think if that all pans out it will be great experience and great fun! I am so happy that even in the bleakest of times as far as jobs go, that I see hope on the horizon. I just have to make it through a last week of school, finalize my apartment and hopefully start the jobs I mentioned above!

FIRE! Graduation and the Job Hunt!

So this week turned out to be rather event full. Monday I produced sports for the newscast from 2-11. I also had a package run during my show. It was a really cute story about some senior citizens who play a nintendo Wii while living at Tiger Place (an independent living center in Columbia). After my shift I was starving having not gone home to get supper during my shift because I was working on my package. So I decided to cook myself a delicious meal of chicken, carrots, celery and etc. stir fry! I sat the pan on the burner and barely a minute later it burst into flames! HUGE FLAMES! It set off the alarm system at CCH where I live and woke all the girls. All 40 of us! I had to put it out with a fire extinguisher but not before the microwave also caught fire! It was awful. I felt terrible because it was 1 AM and then to top it off the firemen showed up. Super. After they left my friends helped me clean up the mess that the fire and the fire extinguisher had left behind. (BTW fire extinguishers emit a substance very similar to fine grained saw dust) It was a pain to clean up but I was lucky to have amazing friends to help! After clean up it was already 2:30 AM and I was still hungry and now sad and embarrassed, so my boyfriend took me to Hardee's to get some food. Then on Wednesday I started to feel really ill, eventually I got sick to my stomach which later was attributed to the medication I was on. Go figure, the medicine helps to be not sick in one way but then sick in another. Another awesome event of the week. So Thursday I felt a bit better and dragged myself to class and then got around to go shoot my final package for sports class. I drove all the way to Harrisburg just to turn around because the people never showed up. HAHA. So what have I learned from this week? That I have bad good luck, but can still laugh at myself. Now as I head into the weekend I am going to be bunkering down tomorrow and Sunday to study/prepare/memorize/etc. for the four finals I have this coming week (which I might add is NOT finals week even though it includes my finals!) I have 3 toughies on Tuesday but the other final is Thursday and it is the least hardest. As I see it, I technically have one had rough week left and then can celebrate GRADUATION! I am excited for so many reasons, but sad for others. I DO have a job, not much pay, but its a journalism job so that is a giant bonus. I DONT have a place to live yet but that will pan out too I am sure. I look forward to working my last web shifts at KOMU, but will most likely miss the action when its gone! But that is how the story goes!

Graduation is 15 days away...and counting!

Tweeking my site and preparing for the end of the year!

So since my last blog I was able to meet with Jen and discuss my website. We talked about several cool things to add to my site as well as a few little things to fix. I took her advice and have been messing with my site on and off all week. I also met with Greeley Kyle another journalism professor of mine and was able to get his opinion on the site. He actually really liked it and asked for permission to show my website in his broadcast 2 class as an example. I thought that was cool and was kind of flattered to be asked that. After meeting with Greeley I actually headed straight to my capstone meeting where things are starting to wrap up. We talked about what was left to do and how we were going to make sure to execute it all before graduation. Our whole group also visited Mark Jarvis and had him tell us about uploading the content we collected, into ItunesU. He was very helpful and also showed us how to enter metadata for all our content. All in all I am very pleased with the process of my website and the capstone project. I am learning more and more about the internet and multi-media outlets everyday!

Please check out my site at www.trinityjnelson.com!

Website Cover letter

This is the first draft of my cover letter for my website. I worked it out this week and even though I am sure it may need more work, I like where it is heading.


My first step into the world of journalism came as I was a radio intern at KNEM-KNMO in Nevada, MO. My first night alone I was working during a St. Louis Cardinal's game and my only duties were to make sure the signal for the game and its pre-game and post game shows went through on-air. I also was in charge of running the correct commercials during each commercial break, having to manually put them through. The night went relatively smoothly until post game. As the post game started I was suddenly jolted by a loud beeping noise coming from the machine behind me. I had no clue what it was and after about a minute of it going off the phone started to ring. It was my boss, who was also the owner of the station, saying that the machine going off was the tornado warning. I had not yet been trained on how to run through severe weather warnings and because of that I had missed the window to transmit the automatic signal across the radio waves. So my boss filled me with dread as he stated I would have to go live to give the warning! I was not prepared and hadn't even been trained on how to turn on the microphone! So as I nervously listened to everything my boss said from the speaker phone, I prepared myself for my on-air debut! I put on the headphones, turned the mic toward me, and turned all the right buttons on the switch board and as I spoke... nothing. I heard nothing, fearing I was messing up I said in a panic to the speaker phone, "I don't know what I am doing!". Little did I know that I had been working it right and the headphones were not plugged in.

So there you have it, my very eloquent on-air debut! From that moment on I have tried to do everything in my power to make sure I never end up in that situation again. I believe through my time at the University of Missouri Journalism school I have been prepared for whatever lies ahead for me. I may not always know what I am doing, but I learned how to keep my head straight and work until I do know how to do it. I have developed this skill through experience as a news and sports reporter as well as a producer. I have had stories come so close to the deadline that I was finished merely minutes before it needed to air, but even in the toughest situations I was able to always keep my cool. As a reporter I have enhanced my ability to think on my feet and to focus on the situation at hand. I have worked hard all my life and will continue to do so to strive ahead in my endeavors. I come from a farming family and because of my hard work I graduated top of my class, was accepted into the best journalism school in the country and earned enough scholarship money to pay for it all. Throughout everything I have done this work only to be able to make the world smarter, more aware of what is happening around them. I dream of being able to make a difference through video, photographs and words. That is my ultimate goal. I may not always know what I am doing, but I know how to learn and through that I was to teach the world as well so no one ever has to say, "I don't know what I am doing!".