Unknown Territory

Hi everyone!

My name is Alex and I am in my second year at Texas State University studying mass communication. I chose the strategic communication concentration, because I am really interested in advertising and public relations. I would love to eventually combine those two with my love for traveling.

I grew up in Vienna, Austria with two sisters, who are six and seven years older than me. After High School I followed them to the United States and became an Au Pair. I lived with a family in California for a year and was basically their live-in nanny. It was mostly a really fun year and I decided to stay in the States and study. I settled on Santa Monica College where I got an Associates of Arts Degree in Business Administration. After my two years there I wanted to move, but stay close to the ocean. I decided on San Francisco and attended San Francisco State University for two years. I graduated in May 2010 with a degree in marketing.

At that point I was not ready to enter the real world and decided to just stay in school and get my master's degree. I felt that a degree in mass communication would complement the one I already had nicely and since I heard that the program at Texas State was really good, the decision was made. I had never really been to Texas before, but was excited to start a new chapter in my life. I packed everything I owned into my car and began the road trip to my new home in San Marcos.

I never regretted that move. Yes, it is very hot here, but I would take that any day over the fog and rain in San Francisco. I love the rivers in this area, going floating with friends or just jumping in to cool off.

I am planning on graduating next May and by then I will hopefully have a slightly better idea of what kind of "real world job" I want to pursue. Until then, I am excited about this class. I am new to blogging and designing things online, but I think in this day and age it is necessary to be able to navigate around the web and create blogs and websites without a problem.

The video about the history of the web was really interesting in my opinion. We talked about it a little in another class I took last year, but there are always new ways the material is presented. I especially liked how the observation of mice in a maze led to the development of a system where packets of data would eventually find an available path to reach their destination. I also thought the information about the issues the engineers encountered while first trying to make it work were interesting. People almost cannot imagine life without the internet anymore, but this invention could have failed at so many stages. It is intriguing to see how eventually it all worked out and then developed so rapidly in the last 10 to 15 years.