I know now why...

We have a 7 day countdown until registration for our courses! I've just learned how to check my program syllabus online, which is exciting since, until this point, I've really not known much about the specific courses comprising my eventual degree.

The MSc Design and Digital Media basically has 6 courses and a Final Project over the course of a year. Course titles include: Dynamic Web Design, Interactive Design Media, Introduction to Design Media, Media and Culture, The Digital Marketplace...the program seems to have a wide scope, ranging from theory and design concepts to actual implementation and integration in a rapidly changing industry.

Moment of truth: Until my second year of college, graphic/web design was no where near my radar screen. Even then, as a sophomore at FGCU having somehow landed a job as production manager for the student newspaper, design was not a talent of mine nor an ambition...but it's all coming together now.

See, since high school I had made up my mind that I wanted to be a writer, a journalist to be exact. I wanted to travel the world and document culture. After accepting Christ my junior year, the Lord expanded my desires and gave me a vision: To build an international, documentary-style magazine that would better connect God's work abroad with the homefront. It seemed to me that there was a real need in the way of equipping missionaries with the communication tools they needed to relay news of their ministry to the international audience of supporters they had spent months and years developing.

Throughout my college experience, however, doors were gently closed on my journalistic ambition...for instance, my freshman year I couldn't get a job at the Ball State Daily News since I had no prior experience, and at FGCU, well, they didn't have a journalism major, only communications (which included broadcast, TV, film, etc.). Within a semester, I was promoted from production manager to managing editor of the student paper, where I enjoyed delegating stories, interacting with section editors, and training designers. At the same time, I took a job working for Vocal Minds, Inc., which is a relatively small internet advertising, marketing company. For them I wrote articles, developed an industry magazine, and began dabbling in web design.

Since then, I've been (as most web designers do) taking on freelance jobs that demand more than I know, therefore forcing me to teach myself and learn on the job...which has in turn, expanded my vision for that international, documentary-style magazine I mentioned earlier.

A couple weeks ago, before we got our flat, we spent a couple days with Mike and Andrea Sanders (they're AG missionaries planting a church in Glasgow). I was asking Andrea about their media: how they're getting a website, buying sound equipment (learning how to use it), sending home newsletters, working out video needs...the list goes on. She said something like, "It's just amazing how much missionaries have to all of a sudden be a jack of all trades!" I honestly think God used her to hit me upside the back of the head.

Right there, God gave me goosebumps and a new, improved vision: Not a magazine dummy, a full-fledged international media organization focused on equipping missionaries and churches abroad with equipment and know-how. An organization that takes in interns, trains them in multimedia (web design/development, video production and editing, photography, sound, print design...) then SENDS THEM OUT to developing churches in need of a massive media blessing. The interns will go with a crate packed with essential media department equipment and stay for a set period of time to train the church's media team so they can operate it all on their own after the intern's assignment ended.

THAT is the vision God has given me; THAT is where this degree is taking me; and THAT is why I couldn't get a job or a major in journalism...the need is bigger than that.