Brian's story

My journey to Communication has been a little more circuitous than most, itseems. Going into my undergraduate work, I was one of the few people who knewexactly what he wanted to major in - English Literature. English was always myfavorite subject in high school (I was always the type of kid who waspermanently attached to a book growing up) and I never even questioned what mymajor in college would be. That being said, I was also a huge pop culturefanatic (I had a subscription to Entertainment Weekly in the third grade). Butit never even entered my head that you could study pop culture in college. Myeducation seemed fairly clear on that matter. Reading books was what one didfor work, and watching television was what you did for fun. This all changed,of course, when I met the professor who would eventually become my advisor formy undergraduate and master's work at FSU, Dr. Edwards. Like me, she came topop culture studies through the back door (she began as a specialist in globalliterature before a paper on the multicultural limitations of Disney cartoonsopened her eyes to media studies). Needless to say, this completely changed myacademic track. Rather than studying contemporary literature (as I had beendoing), I completely shifted gears to television studies. Of course this wasall from an English perspective. I was basically taking the textual analyticaltools that I had been trained in from my previous classes and applied them totelevision texts. It didn't take long for me to discover that this practicewasn't exactly favored within my English department (or most Englishdepartments, for that matter). Media studies is still something of a contestedarea within the English discipline, and although the discipline certainly has astake in media studies, it still is quite marginalized. This became ratherclear when I began applying to English programs for my Master's degree and wassoundly rejected from the vast majority of them. After that experience, I satdown with my advisor to reassess my future in academia (I was convinced that Ididn't have one), and she suggested that I think of switching gears (again) toCommunication departments. Media studies, it seemed, was much moreinstitutionally accepted within Comm departments than in English Departments.And so during my Master's work I began taking more and more classes within ourCollege of Communication to begin building up experience within that disciplinein preparation for my Ph.D. applications. It seemed that the decision to switchto Communication was a smart one, since I was accepted to those programs (a muchnicer feeling than the mass rejection from two years ago). Of course, now thatI'm here I'm swinging even farther away from my English background, as I'm nowlearning that you can explore the types of questions that I want to exploreusing quantitative methodologies (which is a much better fit for my admittedlyanal-retentive personality). My academic journey, then, seems to be more like aperpetual exclamation of "I didn't know you could do that!" rather than a structured plan.