My First Podcast

            One of the most interesting things I’ve ever done happened last week and that was making my own podcast. It was something I had never tried before and never thought I would do in my lifetime. It came as sort of a shock when I heard we had to make a podcast, but it turned out to be a lot more fun than I originally thought so let’s walk through my creative process of my first ever podcast.

           

            The first step in creating my podcast was picking a topic. I wanted to pick a topic that I was passionate bout and wouldn’t mind talking about for five minutes, but also, I needed something that I knew a lot about but could also use some outside advice for my expert source. After a lot of weighing pros and cons, making lists, and talking to outside sources, I chose to do my podcast on Phonathon. It is something that is still new to me because I’ve only been working here for a year and a half but it’s also something I’ve found myself to enjoy more than I ever thought, and I became very passionate about what happened here at Phonathon and what it provided for the school.

            Talking about Phonathon was super easy once I got comfortable with talking to myself into a microphone. I started off my podcast with a script of what I thought I should talk about. I started with my introduction of who I am, what I do, and the basic gist of what my job was. I was so stressed. I messed up so much trying to read off of the script and I had to restart so many times just because it wasn’t natural and I wasn’t comfortable with what I was saying. I sounded like a robot and I knew something had to change. Once I gave up the script and just spoke from my experiences here and how I felt, thoughts just started flowing and ideas came from everywhere.

            My podcast ended up being 10 minutes long even though it was only supposed to be five minutes. I just started talking about how much Phonathon had changed my experience here at ONU and how it flipped my perspective on those pesky phone calls. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from working here is that those outgoing calls are so important to everything we have here on campus and that there are alumni out there that love this school and are so passionate to help out with this campus and stuff to get us involved.

            Most of my podcast was spent talking about that passion and drive of alumni and the importance of the phone calls once you graduate. Another important part I stressed on and something that I really hope was taken away from my podcast was how good of an experience this job is for students here. It allows students to get the chance to connect with alumni and gain opportunities in ways they never thought they could here on campus. I hope my point was portrayed well and gave those of you who tuned in to get a glimpse of what it’s like to work in annual giving and get a chance to see just what annual giving does for our university. If you haven’t gotten a chance to check it out you can find it on SoundCloud at https://soundcloud.com/adotsharp. 

            Feel free to share that link and comment down below to let me know what you think of the podcast and how you feel about giving back to your alma mater.