A Student’s Point of View: My Final Post
Hello, I am Emily SuDock and I am the RIT Photo student blogger. I am a rising senior studying advertising photography and I am working on a minor in public relations. Writing this last blog post is so bittersweet. Michael Peres, the former RIT Photo Associate Director is completing his term in that role and will no longer oversee the RIT Photo Blog that he started September 2013. These past two years have been a wonderful journey for me! In my last blog post, I thought I should write a letter to Michael and share my favorite moments as a blogger for RIT Photo. At the end of this post, Michael will share a few thoughts about his experiences with the Blog during the last 8 years.
Dear Michael
Working under you has been collaborative, supportive, and so exciting for me! You believed in me from the day I had the interview for this job. I had no experience with this type of work but I am fortunate that you saw my ambition as important. I worked hard to improve my writing skills and with your assistance, I can see such growth in me. When brainstorming for future blog posts I searched for stories that people would enjoy and especially benefit from! I am a HUGE advocate for the RIT Photo program and the people that are in our community. I know our work has helped get the recognition we deserve via the outward reach of the blog. Creating bi-monthly content has been fun and rewarding! Thank you Michael for believing in me and giving me this special chance to spread my wings and explore new things!
My favorite moments as a blogger have been weekly meetings with you, getting your honest feedback about the writing, and especially hearing about the good feedback we receive from readers, students, alums, professors, and parents! The most memorable blog for me was the meeting I had with President Munson and getting to know him! The picture of me and Dr Munson was your idea and remains a very iconic image of me. Another blog post I really enjoyed writing explored How to Find Internship/co-op. In my job, I learned so many things. I learned these things from other people’s experiences and I will take much of the advice for myself. I really had fun interviewing Sam Cannon. I was honestly fangirling hard but executed the interview professionally! I really enjoyed getting to know her and learn about her process. It was inspiring and exciting! I want you to know that I poured my heart into this job and appreciate what I did. Thank you for your trust and providing me freedom to try new things and gain much needed self-confidence.
Respectfully Submitted
Dear Emily
Thank you for your thoughtful letter and for the seriousness you brought to your job. In two years, you produced more than 30 stories. That is just terrific and confirmed what I saw in you more than two years ago. It has been great fun to mentor you and see you follow a story to completion and dig out good things to share. You never missed a deadline and your commitment was evident in everything you created.
As Emily shared, in her intro, both she and I will be completing our roles with the RIT Photo Blog. I started the Blog in 2013 because at the time, the College of Imaging Arts and Sciences website required a third party to make changes to our website and add new posts. It was frustrating and inefficient for us to share our stories in a timely way. With the help of the CAD IT group, a WordPress blog was created so RIT Photo could easily share its stories with our ever-growing community. In 8 years, 321 stories have been published. Even I am surprised by that number. The Blog could not have succeeded without content and interesting stories provided from so many both near and far. The stories came from RIT Photo faculty and staff, they came from alumni, and they came from students. There are countless contributors to our stories in this time.
I also want to give a special shout out to Ashley Crichton, who as a sophomore, introduced herself to me because she wanted to create a post. Her interests grew into the role Emily has held for the last two years. Ashley and Emily vastly contributed to the School’s posts of “A Student’s Point of View”. Ashley was the original student photo blogger for 3 semesters. She was talented and produced exceptional work investigating things that interested her and she felt told our story to prospective students. For the last 4 years, I have been fortunate to have worked with such talented and interesting young people. I will miss sharing the RIT Photo stories with you and I look forward to seeing where the Blog goes from here.
Last words – We thank you guys for reading our blogs, writing blogs pre pandemic and during has been enjoyable and a learning experience, a fun one! May these blogs live on forever ! Stay safe and have a great summer!
