Dear Lyla,
As you know I am on my sabbatical this year with reduced class load and I’m trying to reignite some of the creativity and excitement that I had as a student and young academic. On my walk this morning I was thinking about the projects that I have embarked on this year. On the surface the projects that I have chosen are very different than the type of work I did in graduate school, or even the first seven years after my PhD program. During my graduate studies I focused on political communication, specifically comparative political advertising, and I really enjoyed that work. However, none of my sabbatical projects focus on that area of specialty. I’ve chosen to go in a different direction; my podcast with Kate and her experiences as an Iranian hostage, creating a film with some of my colleagues that focuses on the narrative of redemption, and my work on the leadership and branding workbook that I hope to do with Dr. Moore.
While these projects may seem disjointed as if they don’t have a common theme, at the end of the day they are all about storytelling. I think that is what drew me to the discipline to begin with. Communication is about telling the story of the human condition in all its various forms and mediums and that is what excites me about the discipline. Whether I am examining how a candidate creates their brand and persona to persuade voters to elect them to office, or the theater of comparative advertising between two diametrically opposed political figures, or the story of redemption shown through a visual medium, or a retrospective podcast told from a specific socio-political context to illustrate a journey of faith and reconciliation, it all boils down to telling a compelling story.
The best stories, I think, are the ones that find some universal connection between the creator and their audience. I find it fascinating that people from very different walks of life can find community and shared emotion through storytelling. If you think about it, every major moment in our life centers around a narrative arc. The most important and pivotal life moments and news that we receive often come in the form of a conversation embedded in a descriptive context. That is what is so exciting to me about doing my projects this year!
Maybe no one will listen to the podcast, perhaps no one will ever see the short film that I make with my colleagues, and it is possible that the leadership and branding work I do may not resonate with anyone outside of the halls of Wartburg College. The point is, I am telling a story, and I am putting myself out there; and that is simultaneously the most exciting part of this creative journey as well as the most terrifying. Through this process I have already stumbled and made mistakes, but I learned from them. Those learning moments are a part of my personal story. I will always be a student of the human condition, I will always be a lifelong learner, and that comes with the risk of failure as well as the hope for success. One thing I know I have learned so far, for sure, is that there are quite a few stories left for me to tell.
Letters To Lyla 