Keeping Up With Kayleigh

Dressing Room Pals! The time has come! After nearly nine weeks of rehearsals, tech and shows, "9 to 5" is officially over. It feels absolutely crazy to say that out loud. This has been such a huge part of my life for the past few weeks and I don't know what to do with myself now that I have free time because that was non-existent throughout this whole process. However, we are getting into the hardest two weeks of the semester so I won't have much free time after all.  The puppet girls ;) I want to talk you through how this weekend went so I can remember every moment of it! We had a brush-up rehearsal Thursday to make sure that we still remembered the show and didn't have any issues. It was a really chill rehearsal with no costumes, makeup or lights. We had one show Friday and two shows Saturday, so we made sure to soak up every minute of it. I was extra excited for this weekend because my mom, little brother and grandma were coming to visit and see the show! I had...

One of our main assignments for the Principles of Social Media class I have been taking this semester was completing a simulation of what it is like to be a digital marketer for a company. There were 12 rounds in total and we had the majority of the semester to complete them. I remember feeling overwhelmed when we first got the assignment because I had never done anything like this before, but once I got going I noticed that each round got easier.  The Stukent Social Media Simternship is a simulation that helps the student work on creating organic social media posts, paid social posts, work with influencers and know how to do all of this while balancing a strict budget. While doing these main tasks we also have to decide the proper way to respond to customer messages, examine prior company data, analyze strategies and more. The Simternship is based on working for a bag company called Buhi Supply Co. They offer a variety of bags for every occasion which helps marketing strategies....

During the past two class meetings we have been watching "The Social Dilemma" which is a short documentary distributed by Netflix. This documentary was released in September 2020 and was directed by Jeff Orlowski. I have seen clips of "The Social Dilemma" on TikTok before, but I never sat down and watched the full documentary before this class. I normally am not the type of person who likes to sit down and watch a documentary in class because I always get tired and distracted. However, this documentary somehow enthralled me and I was intrigued the whole time while watching it. Throughout "The Social Dilemma" we hear from many experts who previously worked in the social media field and now want to inform users of the dangers that social media brings. The main theme of this documentary seems to be how severely addicting all social media platforms are and how these networks manipulate their users to purposefully become addicted to their phones for the company...

As I promised last week in my blog, I want to walk you through the opening weekend of "9 to 5"! Since I posted my last blog we finished our last two nights of tech rehearsal on Thursday and Friday. On Friday night we had our traditional invited dress rehearsal. This is where anyone in the theatre arts department is welcome to come watch our rehearsal and the cast can invite close friends. This allows the cast and crew to perform for a small audience before we officially open a show. It is very helpful and gives us a way to get our nerves out before having a full audience.  Invited dress had a few bumps along the way, but we worked through them and it helped prepare us to open the show on Saturday night! After the last dress rehearsal we fixed what went wrong and went over our director and choreographers notes and got out of rehearsal at 12 a.m. It was a very late night, but they got through everything we needed to so we wouldn't have to come in early before the show the n...

We are officially at the busiest time of the semester! The last month of school is insane and I find myself struggling to keep up at times. I have been dealing with a mystery sickness for the last two weeks and it has really taken a toll on me which hasn't been helpful at all! After three different appointments at the health center, they finally put me on antibiotics so I am hoping that it helps get whatever this sickness is out of my system. On top of being sick, we are now in the busiest and most crucial part of "9 to 5". We began tech week this past Saturday and spent our weekend in two 10-hour rehearsals. For those of you who are not well-educated in the theatre world, tech week is basically the week leading up to the opening of a show. The cast and crew spend this week in very long rehearsals and many late nights working on putting all aspects of the show together. This includes working with lighting, sound, costumes, spacing, orchestra and more. It is a giant proces...

As we are nearing the end of the semester we are approaching the final chapters in our textbook for this social media class! One of the newest platforms in the social media world is TikTok. This platform is among the most popular for teens and the younger generation. Many spend countless hours daily scrolling through the latest trends and new content posted by popular creators.  For those who may not know what TikTok is, it is a video-sharing content platform. It has grown over the last few years and now has many different features. TikTok is a Chinese-owned platform that was released in August of 2018. After 3 months of being released, it became the third most downloaded app in the world. As of last year TikTok reached over one billion monthly active users worldwide. It hosts the majority of the 18-24 age group and has more female users rather than male.  TikTok users average about 95 minutes of daily usage and is the #6 most popular social media platform. An average user spe...

YouTube is a very popular video platform and has been for as long as I can remember! I remember as a kid I would watch so many different creators all the time. It is a platform that hosts one-third of the entire internet and is only getting more popular with time. According to YouTube, their mission is "to give everyone a voice and show them the world." They do exactly that by letting each user post whatever content they would like to, which helps entertain many different audiences. Today I specifically wanted to talk about how to optimize your YouTube videos. In order to use YouTube to its fullest capabilities, you have to be sure to optimize each video to get the most views possible. According to our textbook the first 24 hours are the most crucial to a video's success, so it must be fully optimized before being published.  Some key things to help optimize your video are as follows; keywords, titles, descriptions, closed captions, tags, thumbnails, cards, end screens an...