Elaine

Welbourn

Cavan, ON
HBASc Media Studies Graduate

The reasons I chose Lakehead four years ago have never wavered. I value the strong sense of community, vibrant learning environment, and the comforting atmosphere that has truly become my second home. 

I love the natural setting of the Lakehead University campus. Last year I can recall students standing in the common area, craning their necks to see out the window. There, sitting on a pile of logs in the back field, was a snowy owl. To view an endangered species in the wild is an opportunity many people never have in their lifetime. 

While Lakehead has certainly offered me an enriching education, what I value even more highly are the personal development opportunities I have been so fortunate to receive. Being at a smaller campus has enabled me to form a bond with the students in my program that transcends the typical relationship of peers. We have laughed together, inspired each other, and empowered each other. In many cases, academic conversations that began as in-class discussions have carried over to lunch, study breaks and personal gatherings. 

In a filmmaking class during my second year of university, students were given the opportunity to "pitch" the topic of their final project to the class and professor, for the purpose of receiving constructive feedback. In the real world of video production, this process is replicated on a larger scale, and thus introducing it at an early stage of the Media Studies program is valuable experience. When I heard one of my peers describe her topic, I remember a sense of immediate inspiration. While I have a strong background of technical skills in media production, I struggled with creative direction and had suddenly found a project which excited me. It was at this point that the university became a platform facilitating learning of my own chosen focus, rather than a school dictating the knowledge I receive. That was the beginning of a fabulous collaborative effort which ultimately led to a project I am still proud to show.

In my final year, I completed a thesis project under gentle supervision from one of my professors, who was dedicated to supporting me without overstepping my creative process. The topic was entirely my decision, and thus I settled on something very personal: a study of the extent to which hand gestures are signifiers of one's gender. I created a set of fourteen hand poses -- seven typically associated with masculinity, and seven more that would be associated with feminine traits. Sixteen models were photographed performing each of the poses. Later, the photographs were converted to monochrome and assembled creatively so that the results could be analyzed side-by-side. Lakehead supported my learning by allowing me to choose a path which fit my interests, providing me resources to achieve my goal, and giving me the opportunity to prove to myself that I was prepared with skills I would use in my future.