Sunday, January 27, 2013

Dangerous Design

Not to have the title throw any of the readers off, but I have a thing for alliteration titles.


It's my last semester as an Undergraduate at Hawaii Pacific University in Honolulu, HI, and hopefully I'll be graduating in the Spring with a degree in Digital Media.

Here's the catch: my major was discontinued as of Fall 2011, if I'm not mistaken. I had the option of keeping it or moving to the new on, Integrated Multimedia. I said to myself, "Eh, what the heck, I've already done two years of this stuff, so I'll just stick with it." And stick with it I did.


Although, I didn't really foresee the dwindling amount of enrollment in some classes which would cause cancellations in the future. Well, I didn't really have to deal with it until THIS semester a.k.a. my LAST semester.

Myself (right) in my Character attendant uniform
with Aladdin (left; my favorite character)
dressed as Prince Ali.
I was away from the island May 2012 to the first few days of January 2013 since I was in Orlando, FL participating in the Disney College Program at Walt Disney World. I was a Character Attendant at Magic Kingdom for seven months.

I was also taking 4 online classes through HPU while I was there since I had to keep my status as a full-time student in order to maintain my scholarship through the university--which was hard as a full-time employee at the busiest theme park on Earth. The only means of contacting anyone back home was either by phone or internet.

I was able to find out about Spring 2013 registration around late October through someone posting on Facebook about being able to get all the classes they wanted. After work, I hopped on to try register myself (after paying the Technology Fee that doesn't really matter to me since I'm off the island), only to find out 3 out of the 4 required classes for my major were not available.
MULT 3470 TV Studio Production
MULT 3560 Video Production II
MULT 3700 Radio Production
Upset, I called my advising counselor about it a week after and she said she'd email the heads of my department. Unfortunately, I didn't get any information, so I tried calling her again around mid December. She sent another message, and I got nothing. The whole thing was really frustrating since I was over 6000 miles away and it wasn't like I could hop on a bus to head to downtown Honolulu to talk to my counselor and professors in person. I honestly felt hopeless. It wasn't until I came back to have a face-to-face meeting with her 5 days before school started and she sent ANOTHER email, I got a phone number and someone to talk to.

I was able to substitute MULT 3470 for MULT 4702 Mobile Design and MULT 3700 with Advance Motion Graphics. I also was able to organize a Direct Study of MULT 3560 with Dr. Britos... Well, I still need to get the request signed by the Chairman and the Registrar). Once everything's sorted out, I can submit my petition to graduate.

I'm not exactly sure how Mobile Design can replace TV Studio Production, but we were running low on MULT class choices I think since I've taken all the other MULT classes available. It's not a class Digital Media majors are required to take, so it didn't even cross my mind during my initial registration process. I was told about the Advance Motion Graphics class by other video production students that were in the Integrated Media major, geared more toward Cinematic Production, but, to be honest, video production isn't really my cup of tea.

I'm kind of interested on what Mobile design has to offer since I mostly focus on web and print design, so it will be interesting to concentrate on a different platform.

I'm looking forward to what this semester will bring (especially through all the headaches I had to go through to get here).