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Have you ever stared Jay Leno in the face? “I don’t think
I’ve ever had so much fun learning,” Tami Gardner, a senior from Newhall,
California, at Brigham Young University-Idaho said recently after working
for the legendary comedian as a photo intern. Seeing celebrities such as Tom
Hanks and Matt Damon only added to Gardner’s experience.
“When I decided to become a Communications major Brother Warnick was my
advisor. He is a great salesman,” Gardner said. “After discovering that I’d
done photojournalism in high school he convinced me to join photo staff.
From then on I was a ‘Scrollie’.”
It didn’t stop there. After photo staff, Gardner joined the photo
scholarship staff. She then became photo assistant editor, then Design
Editor, now A&E editor. Next block she will become the Editor in Chief of
Scroll, the school’s student newspaper.
“Sometimes people with talent are the last one to find them,” Lee Warnick,
BYU-Idaho faculty said. “Tami is a bright, hard-working, multi-talented
woman. We need more people like that around here.”
“It’s not me, most of the credit goes to the Lord, and the rest goes to my
parents and the amazing support they are. The extra bit left of credit is
because of the people I’ve interacted and worked with over the years. There
have been some amazing people on Scroll that have taught me more than any
class anywhere ever could,” Gardner said.
Her internal drive may be what landed her the internship with Leno. She
covered the set of The Tonight Show and edited photos for publicity. "I
would be given a digital photo card with about 200 photos on it, run
upstairs to download them onto computer, color edit them, and then
‘photoshop’ the good ones, all in about 20 minutes," Tami said.
"I loved it. It was so much fun. It was a ball. I don't think I've ever had
so much fun learning! I’ve never met so many stars, they were all so nice
and helpful at NBC, they taught me everything they could in a three month
period," she continued.
"Every semester in a writing class you see students who write and their work
jumps off the page. [Tami] can do whatever she puts her mind to and knows
how to put publications together and be successful,” Warnick said. “A strong
organization is made up of who you work with. She’s a wonderful person to
work around, a hard worker.”
Gardner plans to graduate in August of 2005 and serve a mission for The
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She wishes to get a Masters and
possibly a PhD. “I love taking classes and learning all that I can. I have
so much to learn and the moment I think I know something well, I discover a
new aspect… a whole new adventure is opened up to me,” Gardner said. |