COMS 6003: WEEK_01
The UWI presents a unique experience. The first week of class and I was already lost in the UWI-verse trying to navigate its tangle of administrative rigmarole. I assumed that for the post-graduate programme communication would not be an issue. I was wrong. Signs to navigate the campus are poorly situated. Registration included a frustrating set of twists and turns that everyone else appeared to compass easily. This culture was lost on me.
Perhaps the UWI experience is meant to be disorienting for people with expectations like mine. I am found on the opposing side facing my first lesson: Lower your expectations and adjust.
Dr Wanda Chesney is our lecturer for the course COMS 6030 Media, Culture, and Society. I am happy to be in her class—it establishes the foundation for my research and it neatly fits alongside the media conference proposal I shared with her team. I am grateful that she saw the relevance in my independent research so that I may share it among academics and other professionals. Now, as a graduate student, I can refer to these people as my peers.
I was lucky to be included in the line-up of speakers at the THE INTERNATIONAL MEDIA AND COMMUNICATION CONFERENCE “The Digital Nexus: Media and Communication in the Age of AI”,
and was eager to share a long-held observation that technology is shaping Caribbean culture by way of social media and now AI. Existing scholarship in Communication Studies already justifies this and it fuels my ambition to contribute to its modern evolution. I have worked in the media industry for 16 years and was very lucky to start off as an intern at Toute Bagai Publishing (MACO magazines) at the precise moment social media formally entered the communication scene in the Caribbean. I casually blogged my musings all over the internet since then. Now joining this programme at the UWI at this post-covid-but not-yet-out-of-the-fire times (regional media industry crisis) makes these ramblings more purposeful. Luck (or should I say timing?) has found its way again into my professional journey.
I pursue this course of study to add leverage in my career. The media industry has stagnated regionally and it seems that the desperate need to innovate is a long way ahead of us. I am not confident that we have appropriately positioned ourselves to navigate our way out of this doldrum. We need more than a gust of wind to move our sails at this point. Regionally we need the collected enthusiasm to move the oars through the stagnant waters. We are lost at sea suffering in our own Odyssey.
These circumstances aside (lost on campus, UWI-verse culture, and lost professionally) the first class at FHE 14A appears as the crows nest I need to re-orient myself and thinking. Dr Chesney led a spirited discussion where I got to briefly share my thoughts on both local influencers and the Ian Alleyne Network. The class is small and the first day only saw two students in attendance (myself included). Still the first session promised an engaging atmosphere with a schedule of activities that are second-nature to my practice. And there is still room for growth. There is room for learning. The theories and required readings function as the missing maps.
The proposed exercises for the semester includes a review of media distribution by local companies. I’ve decided that I would review Ian Alleyne Network. And as luck would have it—or perhaps I said the man’s name too loud during that session—the following announcement from AMPLIA popped into my email.
If this isn’t a clear signal that I’m headed in the right direction then I don’t know if I am coming or going.
