Freshman
Conor Kelly from Bedford, New Hampshire, in photo at left, is sharing
his first semester at Notre Dame with millions of Internet users
through video diaries he's posting at America Online's "Red" website.
Project:
Freshman, as the website calls it, gave digital video cameras
to freshmen at six colleges - Notre Dame, Missouri, Florida, Dallas
Baptist, Marshall and Wisconsin. The students are supposed to
be using them to show and tell about what they are experiencing
during their first semester at college. Each is paid $200 a week
and gets a year of free AOL and the camera to keep.
A week before he arrived on campus, we e-mailed Conor to find
out what he expected the experience to be like.
Why did you want to do this?
I first heard about this AOL job from Shannon Chapla at the
University's news and information department, and I was absolutely
thrilled. It sounded like a lot of fun -- I mean come on, who
wouldn't want to broadcast their freshman year over the Internet
for millions of viewers worldwide?! In all honesty, though, I
really wanted to do this because I find Notre Dame to be a very
special place, and I would love to show that to other people,
and I thought, if they're looking for someone to represent Notre
Dame, I would be the best person to do it. I've GOT to do it!
Do you know how or why you came to be nominated?
To be totally frank, I have no idea how my
name came up when the powers that be were trying to pick a handful
of freshmen from the nearly 2,000 that are starting this fall.
I can only assume it was my good looks and exceptional charm.
Do you have any experience with a project of this type?
No. In fact, I think that was a slight attraction
for the producers: "Haha, let's give this expensive video equipment
to a kid who has absolutely no experience and make him tape a
documentary about his first semester in college. Oh, this is going
to be great!"
What was your reaction when you heard you'd been selected?
When I found out I had been chosen, it was
a pretty even combination of excitement and nervousness. I was
really excited, because I had been interested in this project
from the beginning, and I was really keen to participate, but
I was also equally nervous because I didn't have a strong understanding
of everything that this would involve. So I was a little worried
that I might be in over my head. But let's not tell AOL about
that.
What do you think it will be like?
At first I thought this was going to be all
about me, sort of like the reality series of my first semester
in college. After talking to the producer who's assigned to me,
I have a much better understanding. Most of what I will be doing
is the video diary kind of thing, where I will simply be talking
to the camera in private, explaining my life and talking about
what it's like to be at college. Then I'll need to get supporting
footage for everything that I talk about. For example, if I talk
about the Gold Dome, I should get a shot of the Gold Dome. Or
if I say that the work load is really hard, I'll probably go around
asking a few other people whether or not they find the work load
to be difficult. Mostly, I'll need to think about the editing
that they will be doing at AOL and give them footage to edit with
my confessionals (the video diary part of things).
Are you an AOL subscriber?
No, I had AOL for a while, but once our family got broadband
internet, it was cheaper and easier to just use the broadband
connection. However, I will be an AOL subscriber now, that's part
of my job too, I need to keep an online diary, and for that I
have to be on AOL.
(October 2005)
