As a senior undergraduate student, I've come to realize during my four years at Southwestern that you will come across professors you love, and of course, those you hate. Luckily, this article is about a professor who is dope AF (but for the purposes of sanity, shall remain anonymous).
Any Southwestern student will tell you that Capstone (our version of a senior thesis project) lives up to its infamous reputation of being the tallest mountain one must climb before experiencing the sweet reward that is graduation. I'm a communication studies major, and while some might consider that a strong deviation from the more "realistic" and "money-making" majors that exist, I chose the right major for me — as well as the right major to write a sick Capstone research paper.
I won't bore you with specifics, but I'm studying emojis. You know, the characters on a keyboard we use to express any little thought that pops into our head. My overall argument is that emojis are more than cute little symbols we can add to our messages for the sake of "aesthetics" or plain boredom. Emojis possess profound qualities that warrant serious attention: they carry intense emotional and sensory appeal, while causing us (the emoji users) to better utilize our creative and analytical skills as we make and attribute meaning(s) to the emoji messages we send and receive.
One of the examples I used is the KIMOJI — a true gift given to us in app form from the iconic and incomparable, Kim Kardashian West. The reaction to KIMOJI's release was overwhelming to say the least, reporting over a million downloads a minute on its release in late December 2015. As a niche form of emoji communication, we are able to use symbols that are nowhere near available on the regular emoji keyboard, such as the elusive flying pig kimoji, the red solo cup/beer pong cups, moving GIFs of a shady Kim sipping her tea, and more. All I can say is, thank you, Kim.
Fast-forward to today, as I conducted research for Capstone, I received a random text from my professor on Saturday, February 13. The rest is history. Enjoy the screenshots below of a student/professor KIMOJI convo below. Who says professors can't be cool?
When it all began:
We then got into some serious academic talk:
When I got hit with a dab by said mentor/professor:
I then had to explain to said professor what the dab meant:
(to be honest, not sure I know it well myself)
It gets better:
Speech bubble time:
Finally:
