Sunday, October 21, 2012

Italian American Girl Goes To Rider University - All about Media & Writing


It's been almost 4 years since I launched the Italian American Girl site and since then amazing things have come from this labor of love.  I've been asked to participate in national commercials, been invited to celebrity events, asked to guest write for other amazing influential websites and most importantly guest speak at my Alma mater, Rider University.  Of all the events, this is one of my most favorite things to do.  To share what I know about something I love so much, which is producing, writing, social media and mainstream media.  Not to mention, I love my college and any opportunity to go back and actually teach, a serious dream come true.  I connected with Professor Kathy Magrino (a fellow Italian American Girl ) on social media one day when she posted an interactive question on Twitter for her class at Rider; it caught my attention and I wrote her back saying 'whatever I learned at Rider, has been applied to my real life career in so many ways..tell your students to pay attention..it will all matter once you get  a job in the work force...."  She immediately responded back and so we began an interactive engaged conversation on Twitter where then Kathy invited me to come speak about the Italian American Girl site and my experiences with my career.   The main focus of my talking points are to discuss the real elements that go into producing this site.  Writing is extremely important and you really have to be in the mood to write from experience and make it compelling enough so your readers don't get turned off.   What I think the students were most surprised about is that SPELLING AND GRAMMAR count.  When I went to college ( oh God I sound old) we were just getting savvy with Spell Check, now if you publish something with a mistake, it's really your own fault.. of which I have made plenty of those, but reading your work out loud will always help and re-reading is also important.
At Rider University
The biggest take away to writing is actually writing about what interests you, your passion.  My site, Italian American Girl is my passion, my goals are combined in the production of the entire site - video, writing, photos, social media these are the elements that help create the success of my site. 

Sometimes when you are caught up in your career, the daily grind, and deadlines you sometimes forget the joys of what make you tick and for me it's the success of this site- the media elements.  Being a guest speaker with such bright students who have such huge dreams recharges me and inspires me to want to do more with my own site and including my career. 


An amazing experience, and I always look forward to sharing my knowledge with such wonderful students and a great professor! Thank you Rider University!

5 comments:

Kathy Magrino said...

Margaret, you are always welcome to visit my classes! My students and I can't thank you enough for all of the information, inspiration, and "real world" experiences you share with us!!! And, speaking of my students, they've all started publishing their own blogs for our class. See my latest blog post at thewriteway.com to see some of their blogs: http://thewriteway.com/2012/10/digital-natives-my-students-are-natural-bloggers/. Thanks again -- and hope to see you again soon!
Best,
Kathy Magrino

Anonymous said...

It was awesome having you out and very inspiring! I hope my blog is as loved as yours.

-Amanda Wyckoff

Italian American Girl said...

Thank you Amanda, it was great meeting you.

Italian American Girl said...

Kathy, thank you so much as always for inviting me!

Unknown said...

Love your blog! As a fellow Italian American girl I can relate to your posts!