The big move as been accomplished! For the last five months, KMSC was moved to the third floor of Lewis Hall due to the construction on the back of the Library Building and the construction going on around the building, but we are finally back in our old home! We were stuck and crammed in this no bigger then 8 feet wide by 30 feet deep closet, with no windows, no air, and machines that ran 24/7 and heated up the room an extra 20 degrees, not to mention the flights of stairs that had to be climbed just to get to this closet. I had to work in this closet five days a week for four months, spending anywhere from two to three hours in this room.

I’m apart of KMSC for my major, so as a mass communication major I have to have a certain amount of hours on air, this summer I worked for KMSC so I was paid to be on air for a certain amount of time in a week, this summer I was on air six days a week, two hours every day, now I’m only on four days a week, for a total of six hours. At first I wasn’t about to be on air, I was so scared and nervous; I was going to do anything in my power to stay away from being in front of a camera or behind a mic. I even had meetings with Doc and he eventually helped me through it.

Now we are back in the original studio, where it gets hot yes, but because the room is bigger, and we can keep the door open since there aren’t students just hanging out talking loud in the hall waiting for their next class to start. There’s also a window, which although the window just looks into the production room it still makes the room feel a little less lonely, and bigger.

My first shift back in the old studio on air wasn’t the smoothest, can’t expect much when everything has been moved from one building to another, unplugged and plugged back in. We also have our old soundboard back so we are still setting those setting back to normal. When I walked into the studio I instantly was nervous that after five months of using a completely different soundboard that was four times less complex then the soundboard in the normal studio, I forgot how to use this soundboard, and I went on air in four minutes! I didn’t know what to do, I couldn’t go bug Doc about for a couple reason. One I didn’t have time. Two, I didn’t want him to be like “really Caitlin come on, just look at it and figure it out. It wasn’t that long ago”. So instead I just sat down, found the right mouse (there’s two computers with two different mouse, so I had to make sure I had the right one for computer one). I took a deep breath and just started to think. What I needed to know right away came back, but some things like recording a voice track didn’t come back and I figured I’d just worry about that when I need to make a voice track.

By time I remembered what I needed to remember I had about two minutes left before I needed to go on air. So I put the headphones on, grabbed the right mouse and opened Virtual DJ picked Welcome to Paradise by Green Day and dragged that into slot one, then I dragged Ain’t It Fun by Paramore and dragged that into slot two. I was good to go, now all I had to do is watch Zara, which is the program we run when someone isn’t actually live in the studio on air. And watch the time tick away on the song that was currently playing. With about ten seconds left I turned the mic on on the soundboard and raised the fader of my mic, quickly thinking about what I was going to say, before I knew it the song was over and I just started talking.

“You’re listening to Fusion 93 KMSC, I’m DJ Shy I’ll be in the booth for the next two hours, to start off my show here’s Welcome to Paradise by Green Day.”

I hit play on Virtual DJ, faded my mic down and clicked it off. The song was playing yet I was freaking out. I sounded horrible! It sounded like I was getting reverb and I was talking in a very hallow and echoy room along with my voice being deeper and more raspy. But I didn’t know if it was my headphones or me! I walked around the corner and down the hall to Joan’s office and asked if they could hear me.

“I wasn’t paying enough attention to be able to hear it, I’m sorry hun. I bet you sound amazing though!” Joan said after I asked her, I said “I don’t think so, I thought it sounded off when I was talking on mic.” She doesn’t know enough to help me out but Doc was in his office and he came and looked at it. He worked his very confusing to me radio magic and figured out it wasn’t me. It is just a bad connection in the headphones and had to just ignore it. I played the next song. Still getting major feed back I changed the headphones. Continued playing music and talking after every three to four songs, yet it still sounded bad! Of course right when Doc left it went back to sounding bad, so I just gave up and left it. I knew I was the only one hearing the weird noise so I just stopped worrying about it.

After a while I realized it was a deep hum that the audience could hear if I either a song was too quiet to start or finish or if I was talking too quietly and the hum would over power my voice, so I just turned my mic up when I talked and made sure that I never had a real quiet moment. Moving forward with my show I wasn’t worrying about the sound problems and what not I just sat back, played Hay Day and texted. I paid just enough attention to know when to talk, and know when to play the next song. I had to keep log of all the songs I played and I had to at some point do a PSA, and weather and I had to watch the clock so that at every top of the hour I made sure I said the legal ID.

For example at 12:00 I said, “That was Ash Tree Lane by MRMS, and you’re listening to KMSC Sioux City the Student Radio Voice of Morningside College. Coming up next is Forever by Papa Roach.”

Going into my first shift back on air in the original studio I knew there could be problems but I wasn’t complaining the problems I had where simple problems that didn’t effect me and my show so I was able to just let it go. It’s a college radio station the listeners can’t expect us to be perfect every hour of the day. We are learning every day. We aren’t pros…just yet.