“Blogging is a communications mechanism handed to us by the long tail of the Internet.”
— Tom Foremski
My name is Cydney Black. I am a 21-year-old junior studying Communications and Media Arts with a minor in Public Relations at Montclair State University. A tacky introduction at best, I know. However, I believe it is important for me to introduce myself, as such, for the possible audience that may be reading this and for the future Cydney looking back at this blog and reflecting on what I have learned and how much I have grown throughout my college career. In reality, this blog is my final project for my Writing for the Media class, but I have done several of these for a plethora of different classes and I love looking back on them and seeing how my writing has changed and what I have learned and how my views on different things have changed. I know future Cydney is going to have an issue with that run-on sentence, but hey, this is my blog and I’ll write as I please.
For the assignment, Professor Kaplan asked for five blog posts on basically anything involving the news or media, which is broad but allows for a lot of freedom and creativity. I have started this assignment a little late as we were asked to write these blog posts throughout the semester, but the semester is not over yet and I still have much to say. Let me be clear, this is not one of the blog posts. I just thought it would be nice to give a little insight on me and my back story, so let’s get back to me.
My interest in communications began in high school. When asked what field we wanted our career to be in, I did some research and found about 20 jobs in communications that interested me greatly. From there, I had to narrow it down. I originally went into college with an interest in news broadcasting. I loved my classes but hated my gen eds. That hate resulted in me not showing up for them and ultimately failing a class.
I knew I was not ready for college, so I joined a domestic Peace Corps program, known as AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps. In that program, I traveled all around the U.S. performing national and community service. From the program, I gained an addiction to travel and helping others. I spent the summer after graduating from the program traveling to different countries and doing local community service.
After that summer, I enrolled at Montclair State University. However, transferring was hard and though I still traveled, I didn’t have a lot of friends and wasn’t performing any community service. I joined Tri Sigma on campus as a way to get more involved, make more friends, and helps others, which changed my whole college experience.
I am now balancing all the things I love in life and doing much better in school maintaining a 3.9 GPA. I am excited about my future, hopefully working in public relations, but we’ll see. For now, let’s dive into some media.
Walking on the streets of Valletta. Photo by Liz Black 
Hiking Arches National Park. Photo by Delaney Voorhees 
Hiking the mountains around Lake Tahoe. Photo by Carly Geremia 
Kayaking in Palma de Mallorca. Photo by Chris Black.
Writing for the Media 