Over the past 4 or so months, I have been enrolled in COMM 462: Sport and Strategic Communication with Professor O’Hallarn. In this class, I feel like I have grown my professional and person writing skills to the next level. I think that some of the best writing I had ever done for this class was in the “Sports Media Persona” assignment as I love to analyze topics that I’m interested in so it was very fun to do a cross section of myself and see how much of a Rangers fan I truly am (Hint: It’s a lot!). In that assignment, I really felt like I could dive into the topic of “what is a fan?” and “why am I a fan?” in relation to the topic of sports media and what propels me to join my selected fandom. I think the aspect of critical analysis, writing and networking that was found in the “Sports Penpal” assignments were some of the greatest skills that I could have ever asked to develop as I anticipate that I will have to use these skills very often when I get into my desired career path. Additionally, I loved the aspect of the NIL project that was always changing. I liked the feeling of having to be on my feet and having to respond accordingly in our document when our information changed or became obsolete with further developments. It really reminded me of the time I had in COMM 403: Crisis Communication where I had to do a simulated press response to a disaster as if it were happening in real time. This feeling of rapid development made me do daily google searches and research on what our topic was on the NIL project, which I thought could partially mirror a real life work environment where projects and tasks can be changed or adjusted on a whim.

Additionally, while this class was fun fun, I do think that some of the class assignments challenged me to grow professionally and expand my skills. The one assignment that really forced me out of my comfort zone and required me to grow was the Sports PenPal assignment. I say this because I had to break out of my comfort zone and start networking with Ben Bobick, who I had only one prior interaction with before this semester. Through talking to him and doing the course assignments, I got a somewhat deeper connection and more rapport with Ben while also expanding on my interpersonal communication and professional writing skills.

Overall, I really enjoyed my time in this course a lot. At first, I was really nervous because it was a 400 level class with a big term paper type of assignment that also happened to be a group project alongside the additional weekly assignments and blogs. However, I found that this class was super easy (In my opinion), very engaging, and a ton of fun. I loved how expressive and high energy O’Hallarn was during the lectures which helped make it so much easier to stay focused and actually care about the material that I was learning about. Additionally, all of the lectures that O’Hallarn had included plenty of real world media examples so we can see how the strategic communication process applies to media fields such as sports entertainment. Besides, they say you should love what you do in life and I love sports, so I loved my semester in this class.