In a senior year full of “first-lasts,” real lasts, and several creative attempts to attach the word “last” to just about everything, there’s one last thing I am feeling particularly nostalgic for this fall: course registration for classes.
While it sounds dramatic, and I may invoke the anger of a few underclassmen who have fallen victim to Stellic in the last few weeks, there’s something exhilarating and perhaps character-building about fumbling around for my laptop at 7:56 a.m., eyes still halfway shut as I scramble to myFSU and put myself, once again, at the mercy of the powers that be. Having just finished my final course registration, an underrated senior year “last” that happened way too quickly (and way too early in the morning), here are five classes I’d do it all again for.
- ADV 3352: Mass Media Law
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As a lover of true crime, Legally Blonde, and the fleeting thought that maybe I should look into law school (a thought that never lasts long), I found this class offered the perfect fix of legal intrigue without committing to three more years of school. This communication elective explores the legal considerations underpinning the media industry, from copyright and advertising laws to the wonderfully murky world of the many different ways to call someone a liar: libel, defamation, and slander.
While your grade in this class is primarily exam-based, the entertaining content helps make the exams less daunting. You’ll also leave this course with the added perk of being the designated “legal expert” of your friend group. While you definitely shouldn’t dole out legal advice (a tenet you will learn quickly in this class), you’ll be able to explain why all the girls on TikTok might want to think twice before posting their next story time. - COM 4560: Social Marketing
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This class came as a pleasant surprise and a charming reminder not to judge a book by its cover; in the first 10 minutes of the first day of class and on a fateful syllabus quiz, I learned that social marketing is, in fact, not the same as social media marketing.
This course explores the application of marketing techniques to change people’s behavior in a way that promotes social good—the kind of marketing you often see done by non-profits and government agencies. If you’ve ever played Dumb Ways to Die or listened to its blob-like, Australian emotes sing about the many ways you could meet your untimely end, then you’ve engaged with a social marketing campaign.
While social media may be used as one marketing strategy, this course covers a broad scope of how marketing techniques are brainstormed, researched, applied, and evaluated across different mediums, an approach that left me with a more holistic understanding of how important causes advance within our society. - ENG 4815: What is a Text?
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This class, dressed up in a very meta and philosophical bow, was actually the perfect combination of English and communications curricula. When I took this course, we examined different forms and genres of “texts,” from words on paper to multimedia campaigns, to understand how the conventions of communication vary across mediums.
As someone aspiring to a career in PR, I loved projects where we could break down various marketing or corporate messaging efforts to assess their communication value. In one unit, I reviewed the marketing techniques of a major non-profit, from their website to their social media posts and television commercials, to see how these mediums worked together to impact audiences.In another unit, I analyzed a business’s public apology to see how it affected its stakeholder relationships (surprise: it wasn’t great). These assignments felt interesting and meaningful for a future communications professional, and it was certainly entertaining to finally unpack the Notes app celebrity-apology trend.
- ENC 3416: Writing and Editing in Print and Online (WEPO)
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This class, which reviews methods of writing and composing for different mediums, is super transferable for those wanting to go into marketing or content creation, and it’s perfect for all my fellow ex-Video Star directors. In this course, you can choose from a variety of platforms to create your major projects; I ended the semester with both a website and a byline designed for publication in The New York Times.
My favorite assignment in this course was definitely the feature article. This piece gave me experience composing in a medium new to me and provided a built-in soapbox. You know that one topic you could write a book about? Now’s the time to do it. I peer-reviewed articles on new music releases, fashion shows, and family lore; nothing is off limits, whether you’re channeling your inner Vogue beauty insider or Pitchfork album reviewer. - ENC 4212: Editing Manuscripts, Documents, and Reports
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With a combination of majors that is defined by word counts, I love this course because it offers a reprieve from essay writing to focus on the mechanics within the papers themselves—the commas, semicolons, em dashes, and en dashes (because dash length is now a hill I am suddenly willing to die on).
If you’re someone who cringes at the misuse of “their,” “there,” and “they’re,” you’re primed for success in this class. And while you may think you have mastered the art of comma placement, hyphenation, or subject-verb agreement, there are 47 other style guides waiting to inform you of new ways to use your favorite punctuation mark—and they’re all different.This class will push you while enhancing the quality of your own writing, sharpening your attention to detail, and permanently changing the way you see text message typos.
For all my fellow women in SPAM, consider these five classes when preparing for your next course registration—it might make that dreaded 8 a.m. date with Stellic just a bit less daunting.
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