With a title like that I better bring my A game to this post. Yet keeping up; with work, with school, with this blog, has been a bit of a challenge for me the past two weeks. As much as I enjoyed the three week break following the summer session, I fell into a series of bad habits that I’m finding hard to shake. No…cross dressing while carrying a brief case on a tight rope is not one of them.

First off, I haven’t been budgeting an appropriate amount of time for sleep. Mix that with too much caffeine to compensate for the drowsiness, and you have one antsy Matthew Miller on your hands.

Secondly, we are in the process of switching to a new CRM at work, which requires a revamping of our communication plans. Taking our existing plan and making it fit into a system that can automate many of our processes is a good thing, but it requires a lot of work up front that I’ve been putting off until now.

Method to my madness?

Why am I telling you this? Good question. My point is that to be a success in the IMC program, or any endeavor for that matter, you need to make sure you are in the right frame of mind. Get some sleep, recharge your batteries, plan ahead, and don’t procrastinate. And if you find a way to get around these tips, please let me know ASAP. Maintaining a perfect balance between work, life and school is a challenge for us all. The format of this program really enables you to have much more of a balance than the majority of master degrees that I am familiar with. But that flexibility can be a trap if you don’t learn to manage your time properly. Most of the time, I do this fairly well, and I’m sure I’ll get back into my normal rhythm very soon. In the mean time, I’ll keep fellow IMCer Scott Cuppari happy by purchasing Diet Coke in bulk. Here’s a depiction of what’s happening inside my stomach at approximately 11pm on most week nights.

619 Update

On the class front, me and my fellow IMC 619 students have begun writing our blogs on the ever changing new media frontier. If you just can’t get enough of my blogtastic musings, you are more than welcome to check out my other blog, Mowing the Digital Landscape. You may notice a slight difference in tone and content (that’s intentional; it is for a grade after all). Hopefully over the next nine weeks you’ll find it to be a useful forum for debating the validity of the various forms of emerging media. But that’s not all! So that your thirst for emerging media does not go unquenched, my classmates’ blogs are listed under the Blog Roll. Most of them put my work to shame, so I would encourage you to peruse them as well.

Country roads, take me home…

As mentioned in last week’s post, my wife and I are preparing for our inaugural trip to Morgantown for the WVU vs. Villanova football game this Saturday. As an alumnus of Ohio University, I am looking forward to diving head first into the WVU football experience for two reasons. The first is that I take great pride in having completed my undergrad degree and subsequently working on my graduate degree from two prominent members of The Princeton Review’s Top Twenty Party Schools. WVU is number 4 and OU is number 5 in the 2008 ranking, respectively.

Secondly, I distinctly remember tearing down the goal posts after my Bobcats beat a Div. II team early in my freshman year. It had been almost two seasons since the team had won a game. What can I say; our emotions got the best of us. We were just glad to have a reason to stick around after the Marching 110 finished their stellar half time show. And while former Nebraska coach Frank Solich has made the Bobcats respectable for the first time in a century, my undergrad alma mater still can’t hold a lick to the pigskin tradition of the Mountaineers. Win or lose, I guarantee my first WVU game will be a cultural and social experience that I won’t soon forget, and will hopefully get to replicate. We’ll try and take a few pictures and report back on the event.

To close this post, I would like to thank my fellow IMC students that took the time to read and comment on my first blog report. Denil, Angela May and Jean Paul, I appreciate your feedback. If anyone else has a response to anything I’ve written, or suggestions on what you would like to see presented, I hope you’ll follow their lead and let me know how you feel.

How many widgets do you have to sell to pay your tuition?

Image courtesy of bittbox.com

Well, I’m off to get caught up on my week two readings. Can’t wait find out when a widget actually went from a generic term for a fictional product used in the business fables of my father’s generation to a hip tool for the savvy marketing professional. Your probably using them right now and don’t even know it. Unless you’re on Facebook. Then you can’t escape them. Anyone find an IMC Bumper Sticker yet?

Till next time,
Matt