The Power of Social Media

If you know me, you know that I am enamored with social media. I am one of those crazy people that always has Twitter open when I'm online and most of the time, I have Facebook open as well. While I am well versed in the growing importance of social media, it wasn't until around September of 2011 that I finally really started realizing how important websites that connects people are. 

First, let's start with the little bird that has gripped the nation.

I've had a Twitter account since about 2009 but to say I wasn't using it to the best of my ability is an understatement. I only had about 20ish followers and probably half of them were spambots. I also only tweeted my articles, I had no dialogue with any followers and I bet to most of followers, I was about as good as the spambots. 

Finally in September, the switch flipped that had me think "hey, maybe this is a good way to get my name out there and brand myself". Little did I know that it would become so much more.

I started out by talking to a ton of people, both from school and the people I followed. Slowly but surely, I gained more followers and started networking. Not only was I talking to my friends on Twitter, but I was also having meaningful conversations with people in multiple industries. By having those conversations, I slowly worked my way into what industry I mainly want to focus on (the horse racing people I talked to quickly reminded me why I should return to the horse industry, hence part of my blog a few weeks ago). With the positive response I got from these people, especially when holding a conversation about important issues, I stretched out farther and it paid dividends.

Finally, I was being recognized for my horse racing articles in the NTRA Notebook, something I consider to be a huge deal. I also made it into the Paulick Report, by giving opinions on questions they asked. To say Twitter helped me get into an industry that I may have had trouble getting into without the resources it provides would be a discredit to the technology.

I have much the same story with Facebook. I've probably been on Facebook since my Junior year of High School but *gasp* used it more like Myspace. However, again like Twitter, I realized the power of it this school year. It did take me a little more time to adjust to making my Facebook more professional (something I still struggle with at times) but out went the old too personal posts and in came a new group of "professional" friends, including some athletes that I cover on the school's sports teams. 

At first, I used this new power to connect for interviews in addition to getting to know the people I was talking to on a regular basis better. But as my confidence grew with both my experiences on Twitter and Facebook, I decided to reach out and see what would happen if I approached one of the people I admire most in any industry.

I am a HUGE fan of Three Chimneys Farm and when Jen Roytz joined the farm a few years ago, she became my inspiration for school. So when she accepted my friend request on Facebook, I was ecstatic. I mean, come on, one of the people I admire most became my Facebook friend. Then I decided that I had nothing to lose by trying to talk to her and sent her a Facebook message. She replied and that's about all she wrote (no pun intended) when it came to me getting stuck on social media (and reaffirmed my teenage self's idea that the horse industry is the friendliest one out there).

My love of social media has grown ten-fold in the past few months and as I get closer to graduating, I see just how important it is. Not only do I feel that social media is important to growing one's own brand but it is important to industries that want to not only survive but bring in more fans. 

Now it's time convince said industries that making their way to social media, and effectively using it, is worth it. I'm seeing a lot of baby steps happening in communications departments in coming years,

A Lesson in Life After Graduation

For the last time in my undergraduate career, I am on break at home in Washington. Spring Break for WT officially arrives tomorrow but due to my light class schedule I hopped on a plane on Tuesday to hang out here for two weeks. I expected to take the time off and not really learn anything... once again, I was proven wrong. In fact, I even got a glimpse at life after graduation. 

The first day and a half I was here, there was nearly no talk on facebook about school. But today, Facebook has blown up with "we are doing this or that at school/in the prairie lab". Since I am almost always in the Prairie lab or somewhere at school, this is extremely weird for me to see. In addition, I had a few friends tweet and facebook me about how weird it was not to have me in Canyon.

It hit me today after getting a few of these messages and seeing the statuses that for the rest of my life (or until my friends graduate), this is how life will be after May. I will see these updates, maybe get a few tweets or facebook messages about how I'm missed, etc. No longer is Spring Break just a break. Instead, it is a look into what lies ahead after May. And man, is it scary. The one thing I have going for me on *this* change is that I'm at home so it's not a total change for me but what happens when I move to Kentucky and I'm mostly alone and have to establish a new group of friends? I don't really want to think about that right now. 

For now, I'm going to enjoy the next two months (64 days) and not worry about the next step in my life when it comes to the social aspect. I've passed my senior capstone class with my interview last monday so while I still have eight weeks of classes, a research project to start, and my Fulbright application I am going to somewhat relax for the next eight weeks and soak it all in.

This break may be full of lessons but it's definitely not going to give me a panic attack like it would have in January. It's time to fully embrace what is coming, not hope that this part of my life never ends.

A Lesson in Patience... and Confidence

“A horse is the projection of peoples’ dreams about themselves – strong, powerful, beautiful – and it has the capability of giving us escape from our mundane existence.”
- Pam Brown

Keeping up the theme from last week, it's time for another horse blog.

Almost seven years ago, the love of my life (sorry guys, you don't have a chance to take her spot) gave birth to a palomino tobiano filly. Little did I know at 4am in the morning when she was born that I would be on the adventure of a lifetime.

To say I cleaned up with that foal a year later in in-hand classes would be an understatement. She was extremely professional in the ring for only being a yearling (heading to the ring was another story).  But as I grew up and moved to college, she spent more time in the pasture than doing anything productive, so when I got the chance to move her down to Texas this year, I jumped on it.

Even though this horse is seven, with the lack of work I've put into her over the past few years, she's more at the stage of a four or five year old (if that) but can act mature at times. 

When I got her to Texas, she was a dream for the first several weeks. She rode like a dream and I thought we were getting somewhere with her training. But slowly, little signs started popping up, which led to a bigger problem.

By late November, I was truly frustrated and hated riding her so I let her sit and relax for the few weeks before I left for winter break, giving her a month and a half break just to relax. But when I got back, I still had the same problems. My horse was stressed out in the arena and all of our rides end in frustration and accomplished nothing.

Finally, I took a step back and evaluated everything from an outsider view. First, with the stress my horse seemed to be displaying basically all the time, I decided it wouldn't hurt to treat for ulcers and grabbed some aloe vera juice to see if that would help (its apparently a good cure for ulcers). 

I gave that a few days to start working then moved back to riding. But instead of pushing my horse and getting exercise in, I took it easy in the arena. We worked on walk/trot transitions and did absolutely no cantering. My goal was to keep her relaxed while also getting some work done.

Finally today, she was responding well and seemed relaxed enough that I decided to give it a try. Our first attempt at a lope was a little rusty but there was little fuss in the few times I cued for it and by the end, we were loping pretty much at the cue (something we've always had a bit of a problem with). During one of these intervals, I realized that something that my mare needed was confidence. And really, it makes sense why.

I had shipped this horse 1,700 miles, taken her from a pasture to a stall with a run, and basically isolated her from other horses (after my roommate sold her horse, there was no one next to her), THEN I had pushed her harder than she's been pushed since she was broke as a 2-year-old. If there was a way to do something wrong, I did it.

And like many lessons horses have taught me, Vegas once again taught me that I needed patience (as soon as I backed off and was patient enough to wait for her to show me she was ready, we were successful) and that I need to remember to build the confidence of my mount. On the ground, I can ask this horse for anything and she'll do it, but under saddle, she's not as sure of herself and I need to reassure her that she is doing fine and will be okay.

So I guess like always, it's time to salute my mare and thank her for teaching me a lesson that is also useful with humans. Who says horses aren't good teachers?

Until next time,

Mel

An Industry that Keeps Bringing You Back

It's ironic how things work. Thursday night was one of those horrible nights that you wish was a bad dream. My friend's mare finally foaled (after being on heavy duty foal watch for a few days prior) but after a weird delivery, the foal was born dead. At some point, her umbilical cord had gotten (for lack of a better word) kinked, cutting oxygen off to the foal. While it was a horrible experience, instead of chasing me away from the industry again, it actually brought me back.

If you know me, you know that when I was a teenager, my life was all about horses. There was a time that I was on the road nearly every weekend with my horse and had major dreams of being a big rider. As that dream slowly faded due to lack of money and life getting in the way, I moved on to other things. And when I got injured, I pretty much stepped out of the horse industry all together other than watching horse racing.

While I have been writing articles about horse racing off and on over the past year or so, it was mostly just a fun thing. I love the whole industry and have a lot of opinions on it so writing about racing let me get some of those opinions out. But I honestly never thought about rejoining the industry in an active role until the past few months. When I first got my USEF internship, I figured I'd go, get the experience, then move on to another sport. But now, that plan has drastically changed and I hope that I can stay in some position like the one I'll be doing for the six months after graduation.

Horses are amazing animals, I don't think many people will dispute that. But what we all seem to fail to realize is that they have some sort of weird power over us that lets us think we can escape before pulling us back in. I may have spent the past few years trying to escape my horse craziness that was my life when I was younger but I think it's time to face the facts that it will never go away. So I think it's time to give in and admit that for once, my younger version was way smarter than the person I am today on this issue.

Liz Murray

WT added another thing to it's resume when it comes to changing my life last night. Every year, we have something called "Communications Week". Last year I didn't participate but last night I went to the guest speaker they brought in. Her name is Liz Murray and she's probably mostly known as the "Homeless to Harvard" girl. To kind of explain her story, I've linked a video below so you can get a better feel about her than I could ever describe.

I'm not going to lie, at first I wasn't planning on going to this speech. I was supposed to work the reception beforehand for the Eternal Flame and decided that after the reception, I'd go do homework. But after going to the reception, I decided to join my friends to watch the speech. It was definitely a night full of learning for me. 

When I showed up to the reception, I learned it wasn't really for students, more for the big, important people that help run the school. I talked to people from the Board of Advisers for our college and other people I'd never dream of being in a room with at any other time. It was definitely a learning experience on smoozing. 

As we went into the lecture after the reception, I was hoping it would be a 45 minute thing followed by 15 minutes of questions, then we'd be done and even kept checking the time for the first 10 minutes or so but Liz finally sucked me in and I never wanted it to end. She was the right sort of entertaining and inspiring that after the lecture, I wanted to go out and do something productive. Here was a lady that was homeless and STILL made something of her life, after a speech like that, you can't feel sorry for yourself. And it's really made me step up and reevaluate where I am right now. How can I continue to better myself? That's the burning question that I have in my brain.

It's been 24 hours and I'm still attempting to digest everything I heard last night and how it affects me. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to sit down and be totally honest with myself and figure out how I can't only help myself, but also help others like Liz Murray did. I'm definitely going to get her book soon so I can be reminded about the speech and think about the "What If" she brought up when talking about life changing moments. Like she said, a life changing experience can be inches away from you at all times, I'm ready to find that experience and take it head on.

For the love of sports

Tonight The Prairie had a mixer with the local community college where we not only got to mingle with each other and give the visiting students a chance to experience WT but the editor of the local major paper in the area, the Amarillo Globe, also came to talk to us.

One of the things he said was that as journalists, our goal should be to make a change in the community where we work. He gave some real life examples that make total sense and while I’m not really planning on doing anything outside of sports, I related to what he said and even saw how it could apply to my area of the industry.

I’m not sure if I’m going to be a journalist in the “real” sense or if I’m going to go into media relations but like making a difference in the community, I want to make a different for whatever sport I work in. My immediate plans are obviously to work with the USEF and my goal there isn’t just to grow the association within the equestrian community, but also to educate those outside of the industry about this part of the Olympic team.

Sports as a whole are huge in cultures all over the world but at least in America, not many people focus on our national teams. And with hundreds of professional teams playing year-round on television, I understand how our country’s teams can get lost in the shuffle. But I also believe that with the right kind of attention given to these teams, they can gain more popularity and fans. The ways to reach this goal may change throughout my career but working for one of the US National Teams has been one of my goals for quite a while now and I think that this is one goal that I will always focus on.

I know my goal is a huge undertaking but if I can get more people to focus on national teams during my career, I will feel like I have accomplished something. So yes, the speech we got may have applied to local communities and non-sports news but like a ton of stuff I have learned during my school career, information that doesn’t directly apply to my field can always give me ideas for my own field.

Moving On

My editor pointed out yesterday that we just have 11 more issues of the paper until we graduate and today in another meeting, we were reminded that Green Lighting starts this month to register for the Fall semester. It's slowly hitting me that even though the school is already preparing for the Fall semester, I don't have anything to plan for when it comes to school, at least for the next year.

The surprising thing is that while this would have bugged me a month ago, now I'm totally okay with graduating. Now that I have a plan in place for at least the first few months after I graduate, I'm okay with moving on. I've been at WT for two years now and while the first year wasn't that great (okay, there were points that I hated it) this year has been everything and more than I could have imagined, but I can't see myself here next year.

Sure, staying a kid for another year would be amazing, but I'm ready to accomplish my goals and take the world head on. Really, even though I planned to stay here for another semester and had good reasons to in my head, it wasn't the real reason I wanted to stay. I wanted to stay because I was afraid to grow up and looking at how I would have been then, I really wouldn't have been all that happy with my choice.

One of the assignments for my portfolio class was to find a job listing to be "interviewed" for and while other people have struggled with finding any job that interests them, I found mine within one minute. And it's actually a job I would love to have. This may not be a big deal to most people, but finding the job and realizing that it's something that I would love to do prepared me for moving on.

With this newfound confidence, the next 96 days will be full of enjoying the last of my college experience instead of worrying about the future.