Earth Day everyday.

Did you celebrate Earth Day, friends?

I confess, my activities involved no switching of light bulbs, no eradicating of invasive plants. Instead, I spent the day bustling around campus with an audio recorder and a camera, documenting our students as they presented their Senior theses, as Earth Day coincided with the highly-anticipated Senior Projects Day at the University I work for.

Now this documentary deal is not work I typically get to take part in, but our multimedia director saw how excited I got after lending a hand on a short video he was creating last week and invited me to help him with this project. Awful kind of him, eh!?

We gathered audio (birds singing...the bells in the administration building...students introducing their subjects...the loud chatter at the Senior art exhibit) and we'll lay it over the massive amount of photos we snapped to create an audio/visual journey through what is perhaps the biggest academic event in these students' undergraduate years.

The trembling hands holding hand-lettered note cards...parents who arrived by plane to smile proudly from the back row...bouquets of flowers waiting to celebrate the sigh of relief after the room erupts in applause. It was nothing short of awesome. To top off the excitement, two students from my design course shared their projects to full rooms and much fanfare...what a great feeling to see them take the stage. The best part was watching the anxiety melt from their shoulders when it was all over.

It was really exciting to try my hand at something completely outside of my typical nine-to-five.
I have to admit that I really enjoyed being away from the computer for the day...I told my boss I'd be in danger of wearing a smaller dress size if this was actually my job. All that running around...whew! Good stuff. And being so close to the action reminded me again why I love working in academia...it gives me pride beyond words to bear witness to the journey of our students.

I'll keep you posted on the fruits of our labor. Until then, I'd better go change some bulbs and buy some carbon credits for the trip home I'm about to take. (Hi Mom!)

Here's hoping you had a spectacular Earth Day. Yesterday and everyday.