Almost Springbreak...

SPRINGBREAK! Actually, we’re not quite there yet. Let me first give you a recap of the last couple of weeks.

Snowy driveway of the Commons

Last Monday Professor Garrett came to town. Not exactly the nicest time to pay us a visit, after temperatures hit an all time low at -27° on Thursday. However, all GLC students were eager to meet him after we had skyped with him two weeks ago and of course so were we (=the Leipzig students). This year’s GLC project is actually three single projects, covered by six groups and focusing on the conflicts in Nigeria, Afghanistan and Ukraine. Prof. Garrett gave us a brief summary of his research on the U.S., Germany and Russia and their respective foreign politics. He introduced us to the narrative of Russian "National Injury”, German “Ostpolitik” and U.S.’ “Progressive Realism”. It was very interesting and informing to see how their respective pasts shape their current involvement in the Ukraine crisis. My group is actually working on the Ukraine crisis, so I was lucky to have had the chance to hear about his research. The next day, Professor Garrett invited us to dinner at Jacky O’s (local brewery with over 10 different kinds of beer and also really good food) and inquired about our impressions so far. We talked a little about our studies, first impressions of the American culture and people and our internship prospective. All in all we had a really nice evening.

Saturday morning I went to the Social Media Summit that was hosted by the Scripps Public Relations Society of America (Scripps is the School of Communication at OU). It had snowed all night long (no one had cared yet to plow the streets or clear the sidewalks), so I fought my way through the snow storm; having finally arrived I looked like a snowman. Unfortunately, one guest speaker could not make it due to the street conditions. However, she was eventually able to present over Skype and talked about “Defining, Delivering and Demonstrating Social Media Strategy”. The other presentations I heard were about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Paid Social/Ads, which were both very informative. Bob Benz talked about how Facebook status updates of organizations only reached about 2% of their “fans”, while two years ago the reach was still about 16%. The only chance to be seen is thus to pay for an increased visibility (You might have noticed that some status updates have a little “Sponsored” tag). Funny fact: Facebook increased their total revenue from $1.9 billion in 2010, to $12.5 billion in 2014. 

Well, let’s talk Spring break! In a couple of hours Theresa and I are leaving for Columbus, because we’re flying to New Orleans early in the morning! I can’t wait for finally being able to wear t-shirts again, not to slip on icy sidewalks or freeze my fingers off when getting groceries!