Hey friends. It’s been a while since I’ve come to you from the casual online environment that is my blog. About five months to be exact. As I sit here on my grandpa’s old chair, listening to Surf and letting an Unknown Mortal Orchestra review loom over me, I ponder how I can sum up my last semester as concise as possible.
Well first off, I went to my classes. One of which, African American Studies 156, was one of my favorite classes over the last four years. The course covers Black Music in America from the end of World War II to the present, and is a great vessel for getting some sense of cultural perspective (the reason an ethnic studies course is required for the graduation from UW-Madison). Additionally, Professor Alexander Shashko is a phenomenal speaker, and regardless of how much you think you know about music, you will learn SOMETHING new about the music covered and develop a desire to learn even more. This class made me wish I had forgone other business courses to become a more well-rounded student. I guess there’s always more time for learning in the future.
Speaking of classes and the future, I finished all my final courses smoothly, and I officially graduated from the Wisconsin School of Business at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Come mid-June, I will be moving to Chicago to start work for Conversant, a digital marketing agency leveraging the power of personal to help clients succeed online. I will be a part of their Sales Apprenticeship Program. I can’t wait to start my career in digital!
Most pertinent to this blog, I spent a lot of my time this last semester (and the semester before that) as the Associate Director of Marketing for WUD Music. As always, I was exposed to a bunch of new music, I was surrounded by people that inspire me, and I made some lasting relationships with those people as well. Sometimes I feel as though I was half in and half out with the squad, but I stood by (and still stand by) the mission of WUD in full: providing alternative activities for people to try something new and get out of their comfort zone. Without WUD, I would have probably just spent even more of my time working on school, playing video games, and watching Netflix. I am so grateful for the opportunities WUD and the Wisconsin Union have provided. Like Afro 156, it has helped me become a more well-rounded individual.
Given how appreciative I have been to WUD, I definitely feel like I could have put in more work for them. I could have started the WSUM + WUD Music podcast sooner (https://soundcloud.com/wsum-wud-music). I could have made updates to our website. I could have been A LOT more active on Twitter. Overall, I think the people that wanted to see our shows actually came out to see our shows, and they loved it just as much as we did.
I also happened to take a lot of photos that I never posted to our social media, so I figured I’d use them to tell just a small part of the story of WUD Music 2015. All of these (I think) have never been shared on the internet until now. Enjoy:
I could talk about WUD Music all day. If you want to converse further about whatever, feel free to hit me up on social media and we can go from there. I check Twitter most often. See you soon.
