On The Road 2 College Knowledge, NY. 1pm. Tuesday, November, 6th, 2001 -- Seat belts fastened, highway road ahead and about an hour or so to go, HarlemLive staff members are well on their way to visit New House School of Communications, one of the most highly accredited communication schools in the country. A school of Syracuse University, Newhouse exists at about a good 4-5 hour ride from your round-the-way HarlemLive office down in New York City. As a result, a group of HarlemLive staffers have all found themselves rubbing their eyes at wee hours of this Tuesday morning, committing themselves to meeting down at HarlemLive by 7:30am on a morning where the majority of them weren't even required to be in school [Election Day].

So here we are, on the road to Syracuse University. Apparently, there just happened to be about four road accidents this morning, so finding ways around those accidents, dealing with newly futilized directions, along with having to come up with new routes to our Syracuse U. destination placed us back in time a little. I must say, it's been a cross between a hilarious road trip movie and a "oh no..what ELSE can go wrong" ride, thus far. Coincidentally unnerving, every other exit or route has been either closed or cut off short as we've continued to find solutions to every obstacle placed before us. Mind you, time is winding down as our original arrival time was set for 12pm. It's 1pm now. That's right. It's 1pm right now. So yeah, we COULD be stressed...we COULD be upset...but ironically enough, we've been laughing and smiling for a large portion of this trip. We've been enjoying each other's humor and company, and it's odd really... how something as simple as a "stupid joke" can keep your apprehensions in tact.

Anyway, anticipations for the trip to Syracuse are yet to be fulfilled or realized. We're still on the road...updates to come later on tonight.

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On The Roaaaaaad Again... 9pm.
Tuesday Night -- Back 2 The City. Syracuse was great! This day has been so enjoyable; despite whatever roadtrip difficulties we've been forced to endure on our way here, it was all worth it. Any travel or time problem on the way to Syracuse seems so minuscule and insignificant now. We've been shown around the Newhouse School of Communications, and I'll have to admit, I'm kinda impressed. "Classrooms" at Syracuse are largely set up as professional studios, giving their students a level of familiarity and mastery with the very equipment and environment that they'll inevitably be submerged into as soon as they find themselves in a professional communications workplace. The entire concept of taking the initiative towards grabbing what you want out of life, or "thinking out of the box" comes across as an innate implementation into the school philosophy of Newhouse.

As one Newhouse junior told me, "One of the great things about this school is that everyone has DONE something. Yeah we have really bright students, and yeah we have students who've gotten impressive SAT scores, but something that's even a little more important...something that everyone can attest to...is that they've actually ACCOMPLISHED something. Maybe you were an editor of your school newspaper, president of your Humanitarian Club...whatever it was...You showed some sort of initiative and action in what you were doing BEFORE Newhouse, and it's great to just be surrounded by all of this talent, potential, and ambition now." Keep in mind that this was an idle Newhouse junior minding his business by a random snack machine, not a tour guide who's "supposed" to tell you that, or someone who's prompted to encourage interest in prospective Newhouse freshmen. Nope. I went up to a random Newhouse student and asked a few questions, as he responded by being COMPLETELY. Interestingly enough, this was the case for a range of students; I didn't hear one apprehensive, mediocre, or even "so-so" review of the Newhouse school; everyone who goes there apparently loves it. Wow.

According to Newhouse admissions directors, Syracuse University has been ranked by the Princeton School Review as "the" college with the most student activities on campus. The student spirit within Newhouse is enthusiastically optimistic and ambitious; I liked that. I got the impression of "go-getter"-ism there...students were confident, outspoken, amicable, and intently focused on their work, and that's a great educational environment.

Another thing I noticed while on the tour through Newhouse were the random professor-student huddles. We'd be walking into a new classroom or studio, and we'd pass a professor conversing with a small circle of students, apparently guiding them through personal projects and/or additional concerns that they had external of the classroom. There was a genuine feeling of a "hands-on" ambiance as we even passed a few students setting up camera lights and equipment along a nearby staircase to the Alumni Hall.

Passing the "lights, camera, action" of the students hard and apparently happy at work, we came upon the Alumni Hall, a wall full of well-known communication professionals with contact/graduate information, open and welcome to any Newhouse student who'd find themselves in need of a good reference or mentor in the varied field of communications. The S.I. Newhouse School of Communications curriculum offers its list of possible undergraduate majors in broadcast journalism, advertising, graphic arts, magazine journalism, print journalism, photography, public relations, as well as television, radio & film. These are all illustrious and exciting fields that may prove difficult to penetrate; the connections made through a school like Newhouse appear to adjust that penetration problem by bringing it down to more of an interpersonal and attainable medium.

Recently, as in the past two months, I've been learning more and more about Syracuse, specifically Newhouse, a school that I'd previously known almost nothing about. Upon finding out about the reputation of Newhouse, I added it onto my list of college choices, but because of the external skepticism of it possibly being "only a communications school", with lack of a solid educational program outside of the communications arena, I wasn't sure of how strongly I'd really be interested when it came down to college application time. What I've found out as a result of this trip however, is that 3/4 of the Newhouse education isn't even based around communications; it's liberal arts. It's 1/4 of your education that's strictly communications, which is good. Essentially, you're getting the best of both worlds; the educational foundation you'd need as a highly productive citizen of contemporary society, as well as the strong communications training by one of the top communication schools in the country. This is important to me; yes I'm enthustiatic about communications, but a solid educational foundation is also paramount in my concern for college. Newhouse is more than "just" a communications school; I learned that first-handedly.