I finished college.
Well, technically, I finished a college course, but the original statement sounds so much more profound especially because I haven't even graduated yet. As a part of the Johns Hopkins CTY Talent Search, I was given the opportunity to take a course at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in upstate New York. For a school with a lot of options in engineering and the sciences, it would be logical to assume that I took a physics course or something similar. I did not. Instead, I decided to try my hand at something I figured nobody in the class would have ease in completing, genius or otherwise: public speaking.
Speech and Communication with Terry Gipson from 4-7pm, three days a week, was exhausting. However, I learned a lot about speech and communication in the class, mainly from outside the lectures. College is an environment that seems so foreign to me as an incoming senior in high school, but it is so close. The thought of going terrifies me. Getting to interact and even make friends with students and professors alike was a huge stress reliever, and I'm incredibly thankful for the experience. College students: they're just like us! They might be even more tired, actually!
You might be thinking: why even bring this up? What does speech and communication have to do with RPG psychology? Maybe you're smart and realize that speech and communication have everything to do with how role-playing games function, but you don't get where RPI factors in. Here's how games like these work: have nerds, will travel. That's a very simple way to put it, but it's the truth. RPGs are still stigmatized by many (the history of which is an SDA, or self-designed assignment, in the making) and so the nerds of the world pick them up alongside their computer science courses, they play with their friends who all are from relatively nearby on study breaks, they use their characters as a break from the high-stress environment they live in. College nerds like all the wonderful people at RPI are basically one of the best demographics for games like Dungeons & Dragons to appeal to. In my class of ragtag speech-givers, multiple people struck up conversations with me about RPGs and some even have plans. One student plans to streamline an entire game into a format that is accessible online. Rolls, spells, damage, the whole shebang. He isn't even a computer science major. It's awesome! My point is that I now have a great environment in which to test things and get advice/information. Woohoo!
We'll see what happens next!
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