About me

Let’s start with the basics. My name is Allan Lewis, and I am a 22 year old mass communications major at SIUE. I have lived in Edwardsville my entire life. At first, going to college in the same town I grew up in immediately felt like a bad decision. Like most people, I wanted to experience new things after high school and become a more independent and well-rounded individual. I didn’t think SIUE could offer me this. Fact of the matter is, it has exceeded my expectations. Before I ever attended a class at SIUE, I was hired by the Alestle as a reporter. At the time, pursuing a career in journalism, either print or broadcast was appealing to me. I have always been more of a left-brained type person who enjoys writing and doesn’t like anything dealing with numbers. I hate numbers, math, science and everything of a similar nature. My real passion is sports writing. Sports are the reason I got into the whole journalism thing to begin with. It fascinates me. It took me awhile to get into covering sports. After being a reporter, I became the opinion editor. After a while, I convinced somebody to give me a shot at sports, so I covered my first volleyball game. Having never seen a college volleyball game in my life, it was a little bit of an overwhelming experience. I figured it all out, and worked my way up the ladder to today. I have been the sports editor at the paper for over two years now, and love what I do. Over the years, my perception of the news has changed, and I have became bored with the labors of journalism. Working around college athletic departments, I determined somewhere along the lines I wanted to do that instead. I want to be on the other side in public relations. I like cheering for my team too much. That’s essentially why I am in this class. I am trying to transition from journalist to PR robot. Outside of class, I have many hobbies and interests. Hobbies and interests I really don’t have the time to enjoy, but still have. I love sports. I love covering college basketball, but I also enjoy watching games my school isn’t directly involved in. I am a strong advocate for the so called “mid-major” schools, and try and follow them more than anything. I could honestly care less about Duke or the Illini. I like to travel as much as possible, and would like to take a cross-country road trip at some point during my life. I play video games in my down time just to maintain some sanity and clear myself from the world. Usually, it’s Madden or some other sports game. Usually though, I am spending time with my girlfriend Larah, who I have been friends with for over a year and have been dating for five months. In this course, I expect to become more knowledgeable about public relations, and am excited to apply the things that we have learned over the years about public relations into real-world scenarios. I plan on getting a job in this field, and although I have plenty of experience within the media, I lack that experience on the other side. I think the concepts applied in this class will suit me well for my future endeavors. It is not going to be a hard transition for me to make, but one I need to become better at. I expect my classmates to work well with me, be on deadlines and critique my work fairly and above all, honestly. Being successful in this class means treating it as if it were a job. While it is nothing close to a job, and classroom experience is virtually wiped out by potential employers when compared to real-world experience, I need to learn these concepts in order to be successful. Being something I am interested in definitely helps, and I am looking forward to the rest of the semester in SPC313 and SPC315.