We saw what some of the faculty’s plans for 100W are, but I agree with you – I get the impression that undergraduates put off 100W as long as they can, thus defeating the purpose of using the class to give students a taste of everything.

I always try to relate the curriculum structure here back to my undergrad film school experience — both are essentially craft schools, with different tasks to perform and media to specialize in.

My freshman year, I was required to take one semester of a Sound class and one of a Photo class, but the emphasis in both was on storytelling.

The following year, the required production classes were a semester of (silent B&W) film and a semester of video — in each class, we formed crews and worked together doing the different jobs of filmmaking. In the video class, we also did studio work and were supposed to rotate through the job positions throughout the semester, although I sure do remember doing a lot of lighting.

Junior year, the required production class was Color/Sync – each student made a color film with synchronized sound, working on the 4 films of your crew members.

Okay – so what did I learn from all this? Everyone gravitated to their specialty Sophomore year when we got a chance to produce our own little films & videos. I chose camera and lighting and never looked back. Other students loved to record, design and edit sound. Others only wanted to direct.

How can we give students an opportunity, early on, to choose their specialty based on their own experience?

Okay, that logic isn’t going to get us anywhere – but how can students learn the basics of journalism and touch all the media taught here at the same time?

That sounds like a matter for A.S. to take up on a grander scale.

But, there has been talk of adding a “lab fee” for the computer-lab-heavy classes in JMC — the money would pay for…wait for it…new computers. Or software, or something useful.