Author: Miles Perry Page 3 of 4

This past weekend I worked the class 6A and 5A basketball at the Lloyd Noble Center on campus. It was an exciting tournament. A lot of games went down to the wire. Del City won the 5A state championship, and Edmond North won the 6A state championship. Both teams are loaded with talent and have great coaches. Edmond North has the best player in Oklahoma for the class of 2024, and his name is T.O. Barrett. He is a 4-star according to 247 sports and the number one point guard in Oklahoma. Barrett holds offers from Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, and the University of Missouri.

Another player people need to watch is Edmond North guard Dontrell Yearby Jr. Yeabry is a great player and plays on both sides of the floor with a high motor. Yearby can score from all three levels. He also is a great on ball defender as well.

Edmond North is the premier basketball program in the state, and they are also coming off their second straight State Championship in the second straight year. The program also has a lot of D 1 talent on the team. This Oklahoma program has a very promising future in Oklahoma basketball.

Norman is a city of many things. It is a city of sports, education, and fun. Norman is a place where I am learning how to become an adult and live on my own, even though I’m only 30 to 40 minutes away from home.

Norman is a college town, and I feel like the pace of Norman is very mild. Now you have campus corner, where most people go to have a good time on the weekends. So that does mean the pace can be fast for some people. I think that people that have the right balance are probably enjoying that lifestyle a little bit more than others. however I don’t speak for everyone.

I think living in Norman has come to make me realize how much I love and appreciate Slim Chicken. That might be my favorite place to eat outside of the Mont. I think I go to Slims twice a week and get the mont every other week.

Although Norman is nothing compared to Northwest Oklahoma city, it is still home. It just needs a lot of development to happen to it. The City of Norman has much potential to be bigger than just a college town.

One thing that I have looked back on a lot and thought about is how much fun I had in high school. Don’t get me wrong, I love college and enjoy every moment, but high school was a good time. At some points in high school, I thought we were in college during my time at Heritage Hall in Oklahoma City. We had so much freedom.

Heritage Hall was a school where anything could be possible. Eight different sports teams could win a state championship in one year. Seniors could skip all of their finals if they had a B or higher in the class. Also, my social life was dope. Others would say it was a movie because something was always going on. Whether it be a party or just everyone would be hanging out at someone’s house.

In the middle of my senior, I started vlogging everything we did at school and outside of school. I even posted the vlogs on youtube. Kids at Heritage really enjoyed that and still watch the videos. It also made Heritage look like an excellent school to kids that didn’t go there. So basically, I gave Heritage some free advertisement, but it was worth it.

The media platforms I used the most during the pandemic were Instagram and Snapchat. These platforms were not different than the typical media platforms that I use. It’s just I ended up using them more during the pandemic. I think I was on social media 24/7 during the pandemic because that was the only thing you could do when you were forced to stay inside. Another media platform I used more during the pandemic was Tik Tok. I think was on Tik Tok for hours at a time. It truly was addicting and still can be. All of these platforms helped me cope with 2020 in different ways. Snapchat helped me stay in touch with my friends. TikTok kept a smile on my face and stayed up to date with the new trends. Instagram also kept me up to date on everything. It also was the most interesting because all the celebrities were getting on Instagram live and having little talk shows, and that is literally how I got the idea to start my own show. I still use the apps to this day, but I wouldn’t say they have helped me cope. I think they have honestly just made me not like social media as much as I did before. Now I feel like people live their life through a screen.

My father and grandfather have driven my interest in media. What keeps me interested and motivated to continue in media is the success I see them have in doing what they do in the field. It puts the question in my head about how successful I can be. I also ask myself whether I love this enough to move forward with it. Also, I love the networking that comes with being in the media world. Building relationships and friendships are the key to success. Being a people person has also made me more interested in media. Just interacting with people in a variety of ways blows my mind. Questions I am looking to answer are how much more I can learn about media. Is being in media my calling card? There are many more questions I ask myself. But, I hope to find the answers to these questions through this class, and the more I involve myself with media. An immense curiosity I have is why is the media world so cutthroat. Especially in todays media, one bad post about you can consider yourself canceled, and I am so interested in why that is and how it came about in the media world.