By Julia Jenne

Dear Admissions Committee,

 

My name is Julia Jenne. I am eighteen years old and I am currently studying Arts & Culture at Dawson College.

 

I chose the Arts & Culture profile for its interdisciplinary structure. Within my program, I've had the chance to get a well-rounded feel for many areas of the arts – communications, philosophy, literature, visual arts – yet during my course selections, I've always seemed to gravitate most towards the field of communications. Some of the most enriching courses I've taken at Dawson since I started in September 2014 have been Alternative Media, Communication & Culture, Advertising, and Methods of Cultural Analysis. I have found that I'm very interested in media and communication theory, yet, at the same time, I appreciated balancing those studies with courses in other areas of arts and culture. I hope to achieve this kind of balance within the Communication & Cultural studies program at Concordia. For me, the “cultural studies” element is what really ties this program together.

 

In March 2015 I began writing articles for Dawson's student-run newspaper, The Plant. In September 2015, I became editor of Arts & Culture, one of the Plant's biggest sections. Since then I have been writing, editing, sharing ideas and helping to establish The Plant's online presence on our new website. Collaborating with my staff on this ongoing project has been a blessing throughout my time at Dawson. It's enhanced my practical knowledge of communication and media, and has provided me with a place to publish my articles, essays and creative pieces to a potentially massive audience.  I continue to discover how valuable and powerful it is to have access to these kind of outlets for mass communication. I have learned this both with The Plant and through my own personal Tumblr blog, which began as an emotional and artistic refuge and is now a platform on which I can share my world with a following of 14,000 people and counting. My Tumblr blog has allowed me to self-publish my writing, my photos, my thoughts; it's helped me with entrepreneurial projects such as opening an online Etsy store in that it's provided me with free advertising. Social media has given us all the potential to be “self-made”; to communicate and network autonomously, which is something I'm extremely interested in and hope to utilize throughout my future career. I think that the Communication & Culture studies program will help give me the knowledge to fully realize the potential in effective autonomous communication.

 

Since taking an introductory media course in my final year of high school, I've known that I both enjoy and am skilled within the areas of media and cultural analysis. As my studies in communications continue, I further realize the self-empowerment of being able to look at media with a critical eye and understand the subtle ways it affects society: I like to think of myself as ad-resistant, but I know that there are endlessly influential nuances within media and advertising of which even I am not aware. I look forward to learning how to interpret those elements in a real-world setting. Programs like Journalism or English Literature might have suited me on the basis that I love to write, but learning to write effectively about news or literature isn't what I want to do. The cultural analysis aspect of Communication & Culture studies is what sets it apart from other programs. I want cultural knowledge that will give me a leg up in whatever field I choose to pursue, whether it be marketing, entrepreneurship, creative directing, professional writing, blogging, global development. I have not yet carved out a definite path for myself, but I am certain that Communication & Cultural studies will help me along the way.

 

The essay I am submitting with the first stage of my application can be found here.  Please enjoy browsing the other creative and creative nonfiction work I've featured in this portfolio.

 

Sincerely,

 

Julia Jenne