(EDITOR’S NOTE: I try to keep the blog focused on stuff to do with the books, journalism, student media and more, following that 70-20-10 rule of blogging, with only 10 percent being some form of personal or promotional thing. For some reason, it feels like the last couple weeks were full of  those 10 percent days, so feel free to skip it if you feel I’ve already used up your willingness to tolerate me in promotion mode. -VFF)

The Fall National College Media Convention was everything I could have imagined and then some. Where else could a group of student journalists end up following the wrong set of directions to a prestigious newspaper, only to have the trolley they were on break down, just in time for them to see police cordoning off an area around a dead body?

They also apparently scooped the newspaper on this topic. When Steve Chappell reached out to a friend at the KC Star about this, the response was, “Well, THAT didn’t come over the scanner…”

If you ever attended a student media convention, you know Steve well, as this hall-of-fame member of CMA has been everything from an award-winning adviser to the technology coordinator for myriad conventions to a board member to a convention organizer. He’s also been one of the best friends anyone can have, and I say that having known him more than half my life.

Steve nominated me for this year’s Dan Reimold Student Media Champion award, which “is given to individuals, organizations or institutions who go above and beyond to champion the cause, importance and joy of college media in general… Reimold was a champion of the idea that college media is a space for anyone to learn and develop life skills – not solely those expecting to practice journalism after graduation.”

Dan and I were both in that “up-and-coming” group of advisers back in the early 2010 era, and it absolutely stunned me (and many others) when he died in 2015 at age 34 after suffering a seizure. To have my name attached to anything related to Dan is one of those honors I’ll treasure forever, given how much he gave to student media and how he did everything possible to make student media a wonderful place for everyone.

(I don’t know how other people view awards like this, but for me, I think of them as less about what I’ve done and more like the establishment of a standard I need to live up to. It’s like, “OK, we said you’re good at this. Now, go prove you really are.”)

The convention itself was a blur of wonderfulness, as I flew in Wednesday and flew back out Friday night. The only real problems were with travel, as is the wont for life these days. On the way back, I got stuck in O’Hare when my flight got cancelled, only to rent a car and drive the rest of the way home in the middle of the night.

That paled in comparison to my travel to the event, when, $55 into a cab ride, the cabbie turned around and asked, “Do you know where we are?”

Regardless, the goal was to be as helpful as possible to as many people as possible in as many ways as possible. When I wasn’t giving a session on crime reporting, blogging or newsroom burnout, I was hunkered down at a table in the main convention area, cramming as many publication critiques onto my schedule as possible. I got to see newspapers and magazines from all over the country and spend time with some of the most dedicated people I’ve ever met.

Advisers give so much of themselves to help students find their way in life, all while dealing with inane academic bureaucracies, funding problems and the general chaos of overseeing a media outlet. The students sacrifice so much of their college lives as they become part of these incredibly strange, yet perfectly wonderful, surrogate families that are forged in the fire of deadline, god-awful energy drinks and AP style books.

Being around these folks fills me with this childish glee that reminds me of how incredible student media is and why I have loved it since my first step into a newsroom. Going to a convention with them is like hooking into an energy source that makes me feel like I could run forever.