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Some students come to Eau Claire knowing exactly what they want to do with their lives. Others come in undecided or have a few ideas and try out different subjects until they find one they like. But what if the student’s major of choice doesn’t exist?

For junior Mike Jacobs it was only a matter of time.

When Jacobs first came to UW-Eau Claire, he decided to pursue his love of writing and became an English major with a focus in scientific and technical writing. For fun, he chose to take a photography class and really embraced it. His new interest in photography combined with a life-long love of music and the arts sparked Jacobs to try something new. He decided to create his own major.

“I want to be a translator between multiple mediums,” he said. “I want to produce new ways to mix them.”

Jacobs decided to take advantage of UWEC’s program to create your own major and began to formulate a major to fit all of his interests into one cohesive study.

“I don’t think students realize know how awesome this school is,” he said. “I mean you can create your own major, how cool is that?”

However, creating your own major is not easy, Jacobs said.

“I had to do a lot of research because there are so many elements I want to include,” he said.

His focus is to get as many perspectives incorporated into his major as possible.

“It’s basically an interdisciplinary study,” he said, “because I go into computer science, art, journalism, English and music, all across the board.”

In order to get all of the classes he will need he said he must prove to the faculty that their class is necessary to his major.

“I have to convince every department to let me take their classes,” he said. “Even if it’s for majors only, I have to try and get around some of the prerequisites.”

Tentatively, he named his major the study of Multimedia Production and Modern Publication. He is in the process of solidifying all of the requirements for his major but is looking toward an interdisciplinary study that incorporates music into many other subjects.

“I took a religions and music class and a math and music course with Professor Walker,” he said. “Also, Professor Walker has submitted a research grant proposal for the summer which means I would be working to produce spectrograms videos to post on the web for Professor Walker’s upcoming textbook on the subject.”

However, before Jacobs knew exactly what he wanted to do with his school career, he chose to take a year off after his freshmen year and moved to France where his uncle arranged an internship for him in a jazz studio.

Jacobs said he had always been interested in the production process but it all really began when he was a teenager.

“I was about 14-years-old and I had written a song for a girlfriend, which by the way you should never do,” he said. “But my uncle, who is a musician, let me record it and I absolutely fell in love with the recording process.”

His uncle, Marc Farre, who is a musician in New York, has always been his biggest supporter, Jacobs said.

As a member of Seventh Level Productions, an independent film organization on campus, Jacobs and other members of SLP went to his uncle’s studio in New York where they were hired to produce six music videos in three days for Farre’s music.

“They weren’t the normal music videos you think of,” he said. “It wasn’t something that was meant to support the band but it was about creating an image for the music.”

Seventh Level Productions will be posting all the videos on their Web site when they are released in summer.

Currently, Jacobs is working on a large-scale exhibit that will incorporate all aspects of his new major and his experience with production.

A project he calls the Sight of Sound, Jacobs said he hopes to introduce people to different visual themes in unison with music.

“I want to force people to really hear music,” he said. “Music is one of the most unifying themes in humanity, it connects people, I want people to exist completely in the music.”

Jacobs plans to build walls to guide the audience through a selection of still photographs that would eventually bring them to a slide show of pictures timed in sync with music. The music will get progressively louder the closer you get to the music video, he said.

“The music is there to support the images,” he said, “but also some images are combined to support the music,” he said.

Jacobs is going to produce a song he feels will be specifically representative of his work.

“The music will be special,” he said. “It’s not made for listening but experiencing.”

Jacobs doesn’t plan on writing the song himself, but hopes to audition some local talent to fulfill the job.

“I’m big on collaboration to create music,” he said. “I like to rely on different specialties.”

Even though Jacobs is the artistic talent behind this project, he feels this is an opportunity for him to be the guy in between.

“I’m on the border between people who create what we see and those who see it,” he said. “Creative people are not good at explaining why their art is important and I know how to do that.”

Jacobs’ goal on top of producing his exhibit, which he plans to open at the end of fall 2010 or early 2011, is to continue on to graduate school.

“I’m really considering becoming a professor,” he said. “In my field you need new people with new ideas and in order to really change the world you have to teach.”

Jacobs said he would like to stay in academia because it is the only place where you can be a professional artist.

“I could go back into producing music, maybe go back to France, but sometimes the things you love to do don’t make the best jobs,” he said. “When you add money into the process it tends to ruin everything.”

Jacobs remains focused on establishing his major and creating new ways to experience the world.

“We create our reality,” he said. “So why not do it actively?”