As the end of the semester draws near, grades tend to become a topic of consternation among students and professors. Students tend to worry about the outcome of their course work as it relates to their ability to graduate, move on or keep that ever-important GPA on the up-slope.
Professors, on the other hand, find themselves buried in grading, often wondering why we didn’t just show movies and mark attendance for 15 weeks. As we slog through the work we brought upon ourselves, students are questioning, begging and cajoling, all in desperate hopes of nudging grades just a little (or in some cases, a lot) higher.
I can’t solve every problem (or most of them) on the blog , but here are a few random ideas I have for making life a bit easier on all of us in regard to the grade debate.
Take them as seriously as they seem…
The “Peace with Honor” grade: I’m sure most students have failed to put in an appropriate amount of time on an assignment at some point in time. I’ve noticed this usually happens on essays or longer-form writing pieces, where the student figures if they pour enough BS into a Word document, the professor will decide to give them at least a few points.
The problem is that professors are often stuck when it comes to grading these papers, even with a quality rubric. We don’t know if you were having difficulty with the assignment, so we need to point out the errors in detail to help you for the next one, or if you just didn’t give a crap, so we’re wasting time telling you things you knew, but just didn’t do.
Thus, I propose a “Peace with Honor” grade approach.
When a student knows they are behind the 8-ball on an assignment, instead of BSing us to high heaven and having us wade through your BS, a student can write something simple like, “I know I should have dealt with this assignment better, but I’m not wasting your time trying to fake it.”
The professor, in gratitude, will fail the student with a specific amount of points (I’m a fan of 40-50%), with the idea that not having to comment on every stupid thing the student could have written will save time and defer carpal tunnel surgery.
The “I’m Better Than This” cease fire: In journalism, we care what you can do, not what your grades are once you graduate. To that end, many professors will encourage students to participate in student media to sharpen their skills and gain experience.
In more than a few cases, this is like encouraging someone to “just try” some cocaine so they can get a bunch of stuff done quickly. The students quickly become addicted to the newsroom and their GPA heads downhill like a stock market graph of the Great Depression.
Professors often start getting weaker work from those students because they’re running the paper or the radio station or the TV station. Suddenly, classes have become something of an fifth or eighth priority in their lives.
For some professors, this can become irritating because we KNOW you can do better at this work. For some students, this can also become irritating because they KNOW they are better than what the grades they get keep reflecting.
A potential solution is this cease-fire approach: I’ve told more than a few students, “Look, I get it. I once skipped six weeks of classes because I was dedicated to the student newspaper. I know why you’re disappearing like a kid running after a red balloon in a Stephen King novel. I also understand I’m not a top priority, so let’s try to make peace with this.
“I will promise not to ride you mercilessly about how crappy your work is in here, if you promise not to piss and moan about your lousy grades. We’ll get you through this alive, and once you end up running a professional newsroom, just make sure you keep your alma mater in mind for potential internship candidates. And don’t make GPA a requirement for successful applications when you’re running the show.”
The “One-Point, Death-Grade, Elevator-Pitch Shimmy” Approach: At the end of a semester in which we grade hundreds of papers across multiple sections and various courses, the computer will eventually spit out a number that correlates to your grade. In more than a few cases, that number will be riding juuuuuuuusssst on the line of a potentially life-altering edge.
For example, if 75 is the demarcation line between a C and a C-, and you need a C or better to continue in your program, you might find yourself sitting at 74.89. The difference between having to start all over with a course or be able to take what you’ve likely scheduled for next semester hangs in the balance of a professor’s attitude regarding rounding, grade-grubbing and the degree to which they want to tolerate you again.
Here’s the best I got for what I would consider “death grades,” the line between pass/fail, advance/retake or B-/C+ (It’s hard to sleep at night knowing you were THAT close to a B of any kind and came up short.): If you’re within a point or two of that death grade, we professors promise to tell you before we file. You have 24 hours to make up a 30-second elevator pitch that would convince us to buy your argument for a better grade.
If you use the words “deserve,” “worked hard,” “need this to graduate,” or any other whiny bull-pucky, you’re done. Gimme at least one or two concrete reasons that I told you were relatively important to this class that you learned or did that make you worthy of me shimmying up your grade a tad.
My discretion in the end, but I gave you a chance.
And finally…
The “But I Tried Really Hard In This Class” Resolution: When your grade is somewhere in the vicinity of the Mendoza Line and you missed so many classes that I almost called in an Amber Alert on you , it’s kind of ballsy to make the claim of effort.
That said, numerous students do this every year, so here’s the best solution:
Good luck with finals and we’ll see you next time!
Musk wants to maintain this “free speech” status for Twitter so that he can, for all practical purposes, continue s%$t posting on the platform without consequences. If he owns the platform, he also does not need to listen to governments’ grievances. For example, what would Musk do if the Indian government demanded (again) that certain tweets be deleted and accounts blocked?
His acquisition quest appears to be less about increasing the company’s profits—“This is not a way to sort of make money,” he has said—than preserving Twitter’s capacity for chaos as a tool for himself and others to continue influencing their vast audiences without interference. “I think it’s very important for there to be an inclusive arena for free speech,” Musk said, during a TED-conference interview in Vancouver, on April 14th. “Having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization.”
Musk has said he prefers to stay out of politics, but there are good reasons to suspect a Musk-owned Twitter would reactivate President Trump’s account. Beyond saying at TED that he wants to be “very cautious with permanent bans,” Musk applauded the former president two years ago when Trump supported Tesla’s plans to reopen a California car factory during the Covid-19 lockdown. And in a few recent tweets, Musk appears to embrace the right-wing, Fox News-bingeing perspective on various cultural flashpoints. (“The woke mind virus is making Netflix unwatchable,” Musk tweeted last week.)
But many on the frontlines of the fight for democratic spaces online have questioned whether Musk’s move – if it is indeed serious, and if he can raise the required cash, and if the offer is accepted by the Twitter board – would undermine, rather than bolster, democracy. Employees of the platform and other experts have also spoken publicly about their fears that Musk may try to erode Twitter’s recent moves to protect marginalized users and tackle harassment and misinformation.
Since the explosion of social media usage more than a decade ago, researchers and technologists have forged an understanding of the ways that the design of social media sites has an impact on civic discourse and, ultimately, democratic processes. One of their key findings: sites that privilege free speech above all else tend to result in spaces where civic discourse is drowned out by harassment, restricting participation to a privileged few.
What is lost in all of this, at least for the moment, is the full understanding of what free speech is, how it works and why our traditional checks against some of the worst abuses will be lost in this move.
First, and we’ve only said this 10,242 times on this site, free speech is not the ability to say whatever you want, however you want and without consequence. From at least the U.S. perspective, it’s the ability to express yourself without fear of government interference. Private definitions of “free speech” vary widely based on who is making the definition and how speech is policed, censored or punished. I’m sure if you asked a citizen living under a dictatorial regime right now about free speech, that person would say, “Oh we totally have free speech here. We just have to watch what we say about XYZ.” Thus, the problem with this blanket term.
Second, people feeling like they’re given unfettered speech freedom are unlikely to think before they use it. This reminds me of the documentary I saw on the old “Action Park,” where the owners basically built a bunch of insanely dangerous rides and activities and told people, “You’re in control. Go for it.”
Thus, all sorts of things that Twitter’s guardrails used to prevent will now be unleashed in the name of free speech, leading to a ridiculous number of harmful things that none of us can stop, but most of us can foresee. When someone disagrees with someone else about anything from the political prowess of Joe Biden to the length of the foul lines at Milwaukee’s old County Stadium, we’re going to see the rage machine start to redline the engine. Suddenly, we’re all wondering how six people got stabbed to death in real life because nobody wanted to say, “Look, it was 315 down the line and stop calling that guy a lib-tard.”
Third, and perhaps most importantly, we have Musk in a position where his wealth overrides the free-speech system as it was intended to operate. In most cases, free speech carries with it responsibilities and consequences: We need to act responsibly in what we say about people, for fear of suffering legal consequences.
Thus, if some kid writes on Twitter that I’m taking money for grades, and this really gains traction and I get in trouble, I can sue that kid. If I prove the kid was negligent in his speech (or in some cases he knowingly lied), I can recoup financial losses and a court can assign punitive financial penalties to that kid. In short, free speech, when done poorly, can cost you.
Now, look at Musk. First, he’s probably got a function argument that he’s protected under Section 230 of the Communication Decency Act, which tends to hold platforms blameless for user content.
Second, let’s say he screws that up and encourages bad action on the platform, what’s the penalty? If you sue him, he’s got enough money to legally bury in motions and documents you before you get anywhere near a courtroom.
If you manage to survive all that and win, a ridiculously high bar to clear, then what? He buries you in appeals until you go broke. IF you manage to get through all of that and still win an financial award from him, it’s not really a consequence for him.
This guy has what people who report on rich folks call “F— You Money.” It’s the level of wealth that essentially allows you to tell everyone around you “F— you” and not care. He literally had enough money to send himself to space because Earth is so last century… You think he’s going to worry what you’ll do to him if Twitter lead to the end of modern civilization? Gimme a break.
It’ll be interesting to see what all this leads to, much in the same way it’s interesting when you find that you left a Tupperware container full of noodle salad in your backpack in the back of your closet since freshman year. God alone knows what we’re dealing with, but it’s probably not something we’re all going to be thrilled with.
If you have been following the story of UW-Oshkosh and how its University Marketing and Communications department has forced student journalists to route all interview requests through its staff, the story continues later today. Chancellor Andrew Leavitt, Editor-In-Chief Cory Sparks, UW-Oshkosh’s head of marketing and communications Peggy Breister and several other interested parties are meeting this morning to discuss this situation and try to figure out how best to move forward. If hear how that meeting turns out, I’ll make sure to let you all know.
Breister denied that the school had a policy like that or that she ever vetted any questions from the student newspaper, The Advance-Titan, before they were given to potential sources.
If you have the inclination, you can help with this situation by reaching out to the following people:
This is Chancellor Andrew Leavitt. He’s the head of UWO and a really all-around decent guy.
He prizes student press freedom and he was exceptionally helpful to me when I was advising the paper. I also know that he’s listening to people, as several folks have emailed him already and told me he was nice enough to respond to them.
His email is: leavitt@uwosh.edu
Please feel free to email him and explain to him why the approach UMC is taking here is problematic to you. Also, feel free to explain what you think the “best practices” should be for the relationship between UMC and student and/or all media.
This is Peggy Breister. She is the head of UMC at UWO and the person who wrote the emails I screen-shotted above.
Her email is: breistep@uwosh.edu
Please feel free to email her your thoughts about her approach to UMC, student media and other similar topics. Also, if you are displeased by her actions regarding the Advance-Titan, please feel free to respectfully explain how you think things should be handled in the future.
This is Cory Sparks. He is the current editor of the Advance-Titan and, in the interest of full disclosure, one of my students.
I’ve done my best to keep him out of the danger zone on any stupid thing I write on the blog and not ask him to comment on any of this, lest there be questions about entangling alliances.
That said, he and the A-T crew have been dealing with a lot of garbage these days because of this situation, so please feel free to email the kids at: atitan@uwosh.edu
Please let them know you’re supportive of their rights and that you are behind them.
In the mean time, I’m going to offer an unsolicited proposal for how best to make the UMC/A-T situation work so that both sides can get some work done and peacefully coexist.
Let’s start on the UMC side:
OPEN THE GATE, STOP THE GATEKEEPING: The first crucial thing to do is to unbottleneck the portal of information on the campus by eliminating UMC as a “must-stop shop” for all sources. Journalists, as noted in the earlier posts and basically every introductory reporting text ever written, work hard to build trust with sources and to create relationships with them. This whole approach of gatekeeping that provides only the sources UMC wants with ONLY the questions they vet in ONLY the timeline they see fit doesn’t jibe with the free and unfettered press elements of our Constitutional rights.
UMC can start by basically saying to the A-T, and any other journalist who wants to hear it, “You do you. If you want to go find sources on your own, contact people via whatever methods work for you both and work the field like the professionals you are, that’s cool by us. Go get ’em.” That’ll be a good first step to establishing trust and transparency.
OFFER SERVICES ON BOTH ENDS: The true goal of public relations practitioners is to facilitate relationships. That’s where the UMC should both start and stop, if the folks there want to be really successful. This means that the UMC folks should be there when a journalist needs an expert in the stock market or the situation in Ukraine or the history of UWO. When a journalist needs help, UMC has the ability to be an excellent matchmaker.
The same is true when sources want their stories told. Pitching stories to outside media outlets or developing content for publication on the university’s website can draw a lot of good attention for the students, faculty, staff and other folk at the university. That’s a great use of time, energy and skills to make UWO shine. Just knowing what some of my intro reporting kids are finding on the campus has given me some great insights as to some really cool things happening here that I’m sure folks would like to report in their media outlets.
PROVIDE TRAINING FOR POTENTIAL SOURCES: Here are two things I’ve heard from some weak UMC folks over the years as rationale behind their desire to control information or limit sources:
“If we let journalists wander around on campus, they might report on things that make the university look bad.”
“If we let anyone talk to journalists, who knows what those people will say?”
OK, well, for the first one, if you don’t want people to report things that make the university look bad, maybe fix the stuff that’s out there you fear people finding out about. This approach is akin to me locking the basement door because I’m afraid we’ll discover mold down there. The mold is either there or not, but it sure as hell isn’t going away just because we don’t see it.
Second, if you are really worried that people will have awkward conversations with journalists, try to help them feel more comfortable about talking to journalists. Again, avoiding something doesn’t tend to make things better.
Have a program with some professional folks (read: like our PR faculty) and give the UWO community the opportunity to get used to talking to other people about what’s going on. It’s not about keeping a lid on anything but about making it so these people are not putting everyone into a jam if they talk about stuff they don’t know about, get worried about saying the wrong thing (which usually leads to saying the wrong thing) or getting fired for talking to the press. The goal here is education so the right people can talk to reporters and deliver the most accurate message possible for the audience of the media outlets.
TAKE THE STAFF OFF THE LEASH: A couple things that bothered me in the emails I posted yesterday and in the conversations I had with former staffers was the idea that only a few people were strategically allowed to talk to the A-T on any given story. The folks who work, serve and learn here should all have the right to speak as they see fit. Of course, if they’re told “Don’t talk to the media,” they’re going to fear what could happen to them, even without an explicit penalty or threat.
(When my father or mother said, “Do something-or-other OR ELSE!” I was at least smart enough to know I didn’t want to know what the “or else” was. I have a feeling that’s where a lot of folks find themselves on this campus when told not to talk to the student journalists.)
Make a blanket statement to the campus community that they are free to talk to whomever they want without a papal blessing from UMC. If they choose to do so, there will be no harm and no foul that will befall them. If they feel uncomfortable about doing so, they can either get some advice from UMC, training through that future training program proposed above or beg off without concern. It’s their choice.
If the chancellor, the provost, the police chief or other “top dog” folk who are constantly running from pillar to post need UMC to help play matchmaker, that’s something that could be easily established and would make sense if need be. However, eliminate the blanket policy of nobody gets to talk to anybody without UMC’s say-so.
LEARN WHAT HILLS YOU ACTUALLY ARE WILLING TO DIE ON: The emails and the stories tell me that UMC personnel had no compunction about complaining vociferously about stories, headlines and other such things. Anyone has the right to complain about anything, really, as that’s also part of the free expression approach we are pushing on this blog.
That said, learn to let a few things go. Good grief, this is worse than when my mother-in-law was arguing with me over the importance of salted butter.
If there are true fact errors (The paper spells the chancellor’s name wrong, a professor is said to be “murdered” instead of “honored,” etc.), absolutely feel free to reach out with a “Hey, I just saw this and you might want to fix it.” Explain that you have no say over content whatsoever (because the law dictates that you have no say over content whatsoever) but that you wanted to let people know what’s up.
If it’s more nuanced, debatable, limited in scope or otherwise not that damned important, it’s worth understanding that every hill isn’t worth dying on. The more you complain about every little thing, the less likely people are to listen to you at all.
Let’s look at the A-T side:
ACCEPT THE RESPONSIBILITY: Perhaps one of the best experiences I ever had was when we took a group of student journalists to the Minnesota Twins game as part of a media convention. They were given a daily press pass and told by the PR staff there: “Batting practice starts at 4. You’re just like every other journalist here. Act accordingly.”
In a few cases, the students screwed up here and there with protocol and such, but for the most part, they made a reasonably good accounting of themselves. That’s what happens when you get responsibility and take it seriously, something I know the A-T staff (and every other student-media staff I’ve hung around with) understands.
Still, few things were more upsetting to my editors and fellow advisers over the years than when a staffer tripped over their own ego and fell on their ass, embarrassing the rest of us along with them. Editors realized that the more freedom they had to go get stuff, the more they had to be careful in training and reporter selection. Not every Johnny or Janie Freshman with an attitude and two clips from the Beaver County High School Tidbit could be sent to interview the chancellor or cover a shooting.
Knowing what I know about the A-T folks I’ve met, they know this and are more than capable of establishing this as a credo in the newsroom.
WORK WITH UMC: Working “with” someone means that there is shared understanding of goals, roles and equality. It’s two professionals, making a go of a relationship. This is what PR is all about and it’s what we teach here in the department.
When I worked cops and courts, I often met with a public information officer. We’d chat about things he thought were interesting and I’d ask questions about stories I had upcoming. If I needed something, I knew I could trust that person because we had a relationship that didn’t so much mirror the one in “Mommie Dearest.” I also worked with PIOs at the sheriff’s office, fire department and more in this same way.
The relationship between the paper and the PIOs wasn’t adversarial. It wasn’t a case of “us versus them.” It was the idea that, for the most part, we pretty much could agree that we wanted accurate information getting to the public in a way that was relevant, useful and interesting. Sure, we occasionally disagreed on how that was all supposed to work, but that’s what often happens in a relationship, so we worked it out.
ESTABLISH GROUND RULES: The key to working with UMC comes down understanding what the ground rules each side expects the other to play by. That’s a conversation the paper needs to start so there is no confusion about how this relationship is going to function.
One PR person at another university told me she would always answer my questions accurately and honestly. Then, she flat-out lied to me and when I caught her lying to me, her response was, “Well, in that situation, I decided it wasn’t something you should know.” That has the same internal logic as Amy telling me she’s never going to cheat on me and when I catch her in the act, she tells me, “Well, we’ve never had a pool boy before…”
Another person told me, “I’ll never lie to you, but I’m not going to tell you everything, either. That said, if you ask the right questions, I’ll always answer them honestly.” In other words, he wasn’t going to come out and tell me, “Hey, did you know the provost is running an ultimate bum-shock fight club in the basement of Academic Hall with homeless guys each weekend?” That said, if I knew enough of what was going on to ask him about that situation, he was going to tell me that it was happening. I got used to that.
The point is, you need to know how honest someone is going to be with you, and if what I’ve seen over the past couple days is an indication of where we stand, there’s going to need to be some serious bridge building on the UMC side of things. At this point, if Breister walked in to my office drenched to the bone and told me it was raining outside, I’d probably call at least six people and take a walk outdoors myself before believing it.
I have no idea if any of this helps, but I can’t imagine implementing any of it would make things any worse at this point.
In any case, we’re all pulling for you folks to get this thing done well. Have a great meeting.
“There’s two kinds of dumb. The guy who gets naked and runs out into the snow and barks at the moon, and the guy who does the same thing in my living room. The first one don’t matter. The second one you’re kinda forced to deal with.”
Journalists at universities are essential to keeping the public informed on campus activities, whether through reporting on mundane affairs or acts of impropriety.
Administrators at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh have impeded this function, imposing an onerous process on reporters, including student reporters, who want to interview university employees.
Journalists at The Advance-Titan, an independent student newspaper at UWO, maintain they must go through particular steps in order to secure an interview with university employees. While university officials have refused to outline the details of this process in writing, these hurdles have been in place for at least two years and impose a constant barrier to the work of the paper’s journalists, whose reporting focuses on UWO and its personnel.
FIRE stands for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and its mission is “to protect fundamental rights on campus concentrates on four areas: freedom of speech and expression; religious liberty and freedom of association; freedom of conscience; and due process and legal equality on campus.”
I’ve worked with them on a couple occasions in various areas of student press and found the organization to be really interested in making sure people’s rights don’t get stepped on just because they work or learn on college campuses. The folks there aren’t above being a tad hyperbolic, but I haven’t known them to be flat-out wrong on something. I’d heard rumblings similar to those FIRE described from former and current students about “having to go through UMC to get an interview” with pretty much anyone on campus.
Still, journalism is the field in which if your mother says she loves you, you go check it out. So, I read the article, dug into some research, talked to a couple students and then reached out to the head of the University Marketing and Communications department, Peggy Breister.
Breister has worked in UMC for about five years at UWO, currently serving as the department’s executive director. She also has news chops, having spent 25 years of reporting and editing experience in our state and having earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Minnesota. I asked for an interview, but added that I knew she was busy, so I included a number of questions about the FIRE story, the university policies and the situation at hand in case she wanted to type up some stuff.
She responded via email and here’s a chunk of her response:
We ask media to contact us when they would like to do a story about the University. We are here to help reporters connect with the individuals who can best respond to their questions. We have not changed our practices. Since the A-T is the media, we feel we should work with them in the same way that we work with other media.
We don’t require the A-T to provide us with written questions, but that is often the way we receive their initial requests, often due to deadline, or it is what is requested of us by the individual they are seeking to connect with. Reporters are welcome to request interviews, send questions via email, etc. We do not pre-approve questions or responses. We do try to clarify vague requests to help us identify the topic and appropriate source.
We try to make connections so requests can be responded to quickly. I think we have been very responsive. The A-T also does many stories that we are not involved with.
Several things concerned me with this response:
THE NON-ANSWER: I know I don’t always ask the best questions, but I think I was pretty clear with this one:
What is the explicit policy regarding student journalists and access to university employees? Is it true that all their requests must go through your office?
I spent at least five minutes playing a game of “Where’s Waldo?” with Breister’s response, trying to find a simple yes/no answer to that second part and some clarity for the first one. In regard to the first part, Breister responded by pointing me to this part of the university website, which isn’t so much of a policy as it is set of vague tips on how faculty can talk to media folks about stuff.
In regard to the second part of the question, I got about four half-answers to completely different questions: We prefer if media folks contact us. The A-T gets the same treatment from us as we give to other media outlets. We never ask for questions from them in advance. We’re working really hard here.
All of those things might be true and yet none of them really addresses the important issue, which requires a simple yes or no answer. Or, as I explained it to a equally peeved colleague: “It would be like if you asked if I thought you were a good classroom teacher and I responded with, “Well, there’s no doubt you’re here at a University, and nobody ever questioned your research skills and I know you think teaching is really important.”
Eeesh.
THE NON-DENIAL: The FIRE article really lays it on thick when it comes to allegations of First Amendment denial, information hoarding and generally weaselly behavior. As someone who prizes objectivity and fairness in journalism, it was a bit disturbing to me to see no mention of trying to get UWO to comment or trying to check this out with the university. I appreciate the heat FIRE likes to bring, but let’s play fair. So, I gave Breister a shot:
What is the rationale behind limiting access in the fashion the FIRE article describes? Or if you feel the article is inaccurate, please feel free to explain the inaccuracies here…
Nowhere in her email did she address the FIRE article, either to agree with it or to refute it. The closest she came was this:
I guess if a national organization dragged me to the middle of the internet and started smacking me around, I would like to think I’d stand up for myself. Or, if they were right, I’d issue some sort of explanation as to how sorry I was about it or that I’d do better or whatever it is we make people say these days so they don’t get put in Twitter Jail.
Maybe that’s just me, but not hearing a full-throated defense of my own institution made me a bit queasy.
THE RAMIFICATIONS: In reading through that email, I saw the lack of a clear policy, and that created problems for me on two fronts.
First, as a student-press advocate and journalism educator, I was concerned how this was going to impact my students. I don’t advise the paper anymore, but I send plenty of kids into the field for class assignments that get published there or elsewhere. I train them to go to sources for interviews and get answers from people who have them. Any restrictions that prevent these journalists from getting to those sources is worrisome.
Second, as an employee of the university, I know I’m governed by a lot of policies and rules. I also know that I’ve been interviewed for more than a few stories over the years, both through UMC hookups and from folks independently reaching out to me. If there’s a rule as to how I’m supposed to deal with something, I’d like to know what it is before I accidentally violate it.
Also, I’d like to know what the penalty is for breaking that rule. Contrary to popular belief, me having tenure doesn’t mean I can show up dressed like and acting like Rahad Jackson. Even more, there are plenty of people out there without tenure who would be operating under this policy, so that’s a concern.
So, I pushed back with two pointed questions that sought yes/no answers about the university’s policy regarding interview-seeking behaviors and the veracity of the claims of FIRE. I also provided this simple explanation for my concerns:
I guess what concerns me most is that student journalists (even those in my classes who aren’t operating student media outlets) are being told they HAVE TO go through UMC for anything on campus.
If that’s not true, let’s disabuse them of that notion and make it clear that UMC’s job is to help facilitate interviews when journalists need that help. I’ve worked with UMC many times at multiple universities over the years where some TV station wanted a professor who knows X and the UMC played matchmaker. That’s totally acceptable and makes sense.
If, however, it is a situation where the students ARE being told that public employees at a public institution are being actively withheld from them unless they go through UMC, lest some form of punishment (whatever it is… lack of access… a stern talking to…) befall them, that’s different.
If you can more clearly answer those concerns, it’ll make things a lot easier and simpler for me when I’m teaching the students and working with student journalists in various capacities.
Breister was clear in her response:
Hopefully this information will help you in your contacts with students:
UMC has guidelines related to media relations that we ask people to follow.
There is no policy, nor is there a penalty for not working through us.
OK, fair enough. I have worked in journalism, student media, education and parenting long enough to know that a lot of wires can get crossed over time and what I say isn’t exactly always what someone else hears. Let’s give each other the benefit of the doubt, right? Bygones be bygones and all that…
So, I forwarded this to the one student who had been helpful to me as I tried to iron out what was “suggestion” and what was “required,” hoping this would close the book on the situation. If nothing else, it’s a good note to have on file for any future staffers.
Then, someone forwarded me this email between Breister and a former editor of the paper that just pissed me off:
Well, shit, sheriff, I guess this changes things a tad…
TOMORROW: What has happened, what needs to happen and what should be done about this situation.
I got one of the biggest thrills of my career Wednesday, as one of my former students asked me to speak to her journalism class at the University of Central Missouri. Dr. Julie Lewis teaches digital journalism at UCM while also advising the student newspaper, The Muleskinner. Half a lifetime ago, though, she was one of my police-beat students at Mizzou, grinding out copy for the Columbia Missourian.
It takes quite a lot to do the mental calisthenics necessary for me to reconcile that this incredible, accomplished educator, adviser and parent is the same kid who was known for walking around the newsroom without shoes on and chasing down every police scanner call.
At the end of the Zoom session, after her students had asked me everything from how I got started to what I thought about the media’s coverage of Ukraine, she got the final question:
She pointed to an article I had pinned on my wall and asked, “Can you tell them the Miracle on Ice story?”
For as long as I can remember, when I needed a mental lift or needed to inspire something in a student, I turned to the story of the 1980 U.S. Olympic Hockey Team. The kids, average age of 22, took to the ice in Lake Placid that February, predicted by their own Olympic committee to finish sixth or seven in the Games. Instead, they had a run for the ages.
They took on the Soviet Menace, the Red Army team that had won 42 games in a row, defeated the NHL All-Stars and bludgeoned pretty much everyone in their path and cracked them in half. Driving this team of unknowns against the best team in the world was Herb Brooks, the last man cut from the 1960 Olympic squad that won the country’s last gold medal in hockey.
If you wanted the ultimate in “uniquely said” quotes, Herb was your guy.
In gratitude to Dr. Lewis, today’s throwback post includes my five favorite “Brooks-isms” that nicely apply to student journalists:
“You don’t have the talent to win on talent alone:” 5 quotes from Herb Brooks and how they apply to your life as an up-and-coming journalist
In an odd twist of calendar calisthenics, Feb. 22 fell on a Friday and Feb. 24 fell on a Sunday, the same as they did 39 years ago when a team of relative unknown hockey players took the ice for the United States at the Lake Placid Olympics. The average age of the team members was 21 and the team was coached by the last man cut from the only U.S. team to ever win a gold medal in hockey to that point in history.
A guide to the Olympics put out by its own committee that year picked the U.S team to finish sixth or seventh. Instead, it toppled the greatest team in the world in a “Miracle on Ice” on Friday and finished off Finland on Sunday by scoring three goals in the final 20 minutes to secure the gold.
Woven among the various stories, legends and myths surrounding that team and its journey are a few of what the team called “Brooks-isms.” These often-caustic sayings from coach Herb Brooks kept the players motivated and often shaking their heads, wondering what the hell it was their coach was trying to say.
A much younger version of me and my friend Allison with the great Herb Brooks.
“You don’t have enough talent to win on talent alone.”
Brooks use to yell this at his players when they decided to coast against inferior opponents instead of really taking the game to them. In one infamous incident in Norway, his team loafed its way to a 3-3 tie against a really weak Norwegian squad. After the game, Brooks refused to let his team leave the ice and instead forced them to conduct skating drills until the guy running the arena shut off the lights.
Then, Brooks had them continue skating in the dark.
His point was a good one in that if you rely solely on your talent, you will often fail because talent only gets you so far in life. If you think you’re “too good” to cover a speech or a news conference, it’s at that precise moment that you will screw something up and end up in a whole lot of trouble. You need to treat each time you ply your trade like it is the most important thing you will do and make absolutely sure you give it everything you have. Failing to do that means you’re setting yourself up to fail.
“And maybe I’m a little smarter now than I was before for all the stupid things I’ve done.”
I found the other day this among the various quotes attributed to Brooks and I never realized he said something like this. However, I’ve told students something similar for years: “I’ve learned more from the things I’ve done wrong than anything I ever did right.”
I noticed that my students these days tend to fear mistakes and stress over failure to the point that they miss the point. As I have written more than a few times, you will screw up here. You are not on the side of a lunch box. That said, you have to know WHAT you did wrong, WHY it went wrong and HOW to make sure you don’t screw up that way again.
If you end up in a situation where an assignment goes to crap or you failed a test or something else goes horribly, horribly wrong, worry less about the grade and worry more about the WHY behind the grade. There are always professors out there who want to torture the heck out of students just because, but those are few and far between. If you go to the professor with the idea of, “I need to understand what went wrong so I can get better at this,” you will improve your future work and you probably will gain some serious respect.
“I’m not looking for the best players. I’m looking for the right ones.”
This is a bit of a cheat, as it was a line from the movie “Miracle,” but Brooks said similar things throughout his career in a variety of ways. He talked about looking at talent second and people first, as well as finding players by looking at who they are more and what they can do less.
Brooks understood something that is important for you to know: It’s not about your pedigree, your fancy internships, the degree from the “Lord Almighty School of Journalism and Deification” or anything else that has that shiny patina of “Look how important I am” that matters.
What matters is the way in which you will work to succeed, how hard you will push yourself to make yourself a valuable commodity, how badly you want something and to what degree you will sacrifice part of yourself for the greater good.
The “right” players are always going to beat the “best” players, as his team proved during that 1980 Olympic run.
“Risk something or forever sit with your dreams.”
People always tell you that life is short. It’s not true. Life is long, especially if you don’t decide to live it. When most of you are getting out of school, you’ll be sitting in that early-20s area of life. The average life expectancy of people in the U.S. is about 78 years, and that’s accounting for the fact that we’ve seen a decline in it over the past couple years. This means you have more life on the “coming up next” part of your life than the “I’m done with this” part of your life.
You have time. Take a shot at something.
Risk is scary and in some cases it’s not worth it, but you need to at least consider what it is that would make you happy and try it out. Eventually, you will have more responsibilities, more things weighing you down and more reasons not to do something. Take a calculated risk on a career path. Try a job that’s going to give you a chance at something unique. Do something that you said you always wanted to do.
If you don’t, the regrets will eat you alive.
“Play your game.”
With 10 minutes to go in the semi-final game against the Soviet Union, Mike Eruzione scored to give the U.S. a 4-3 lead. Goalie Jim Craig said once that it was “like banging a bee’s nest. All we’re gonna do is piss them off.”
The Soviet team had the ability to score five goals in three minute. Ken Dryden, who added commentary for the game, said in later years that in situations like this you dared to hope that you could win and then the Soviets would just crush your hope and leave you for dead.
Brooks knew this and he knew his team might panic and this whole thing could fall apart. He just kept telling his team, “Play your game.” Cameras during the end of that game caught him repeating that phrase like it was a mantra and it apparently worked. The team kept playing the way it knew how to play and it gave the Soviets fits.
The key here for you is pretty simple: Play your game. In a lot of cases, students make the mistake of chasing someone else’s dream or trying to prove themselves to be better based on other people’s standards. That’s crap. Play your own game and stick to what you do best and what make you happy and you’ll be fine.
He looked at the team and said, ‘If you lose this game, you’ll take it with you to your (expletive) grave. He turned around to walk out, stopped, look back and said, ‘Your (EXPLETIVE) grave.
After the week that was, I needed something humorous and I’m imagining more than a few of my friends have that same vibe. I dug this up partially because it made me laugh and partially because I imagine we can all determine how bitingly accurate I was in some of these predictions.
Have a good, safe end to your week.
May the Odds Be Ever In Your Favor: Coronapocalypse University Edition
We start school today and that always feels weird, given that most of my colleagues have already got a couple weeks under their belts by this point in time. I usually feel like the guy in “Spinal Tap” who can’t get out of the pod, watching the rest of you deal with what’s going on while I’m stuck in limbo:
That said, this year, I feel like the last miner into the shaft, looking around me and seeing an awful lot of dead canaries, and thinking, “Hmm… maybe they’ll decide I shouldn’t go in there….”
Thanks to the coronavirus outbreak, pretty much everything we’ve watched this year has involved numbers, percentages, odds and more. With that in mind, here are some odds and numbers to consider as we continue our college/university journey through Coronapocalypse 2020:
87 – Percentage increase of students who request a completely online version of your 8 a.m. class when compared to your noon class.
4 – The over/under mark for number of weeks you are doing in-person classes before a COVID spike moves you completely online. (Take the under.)
5:1 – Odds of the student who asked for online accommodations for “health-related concerns” ends up on a YouTube video licking a doorknob at a frat party.
2:1 – Odds that despite your school’s edict that only essential personnel are on campus, and that nobody come to campus who isn’t needed, and the proclamation that “We are all in this together,” Parking Services will ticket you for being 6 inches over the line in a semi-empty parking lot.
10:1 – Odds that your university will create a mandatory two-hour weekly meeting of some kind that is supposed to help you deal with all of the extra work and anxiety you are feeling right now.
1,001:1 – Odds that group will make things better for you.
9:2 – Odds the carrots you left in your office before everything shut down in March have developed language skills by now.
8 – Number of professors who will be fired for accidentally uploading a sex tape instead of a lecture file because they never bother to label any of their video files and they stick them all in a file folder marked “Stuff” on their hard drive.
1,020 – Percentage increase in successful Title IX complaints, thanks to Zoom lectures providing video evidence of what everyone at your school has been complaining about for years.
247 – Dollars you will spend out of your own pocket to record your lectures and post them after your university has stated it will “provide any and all equipment you deem necessary for online learning, free of charge.
0.03 – Percentage of students who are old enough to understand that reference.
3:2 – Odds at least one student forgets a mask each class period.
47 – Percentage of faculty members looking for “that adapter thingy that came with my recorder” before every live lecture.
0.47 – Percentage of faculty members who will find it.
87,351,842:1 – Odds your school makes national news this year for anything other than a coronavirus outbreak or a student getting stuck in a Taco Bell drive thru window after being shorted a chalupa.
754 – Number of times your university president or chancellor uses the word “unprecedented” in every email or speech this year.
Even Money – Odds the student who skipped every lecture, swore they saw them all online and “worked really hard” in this class, will fail with a score almost too low to compute.
8:1 – Odds you will be able to identify at least half of your students after the mask mandate is repealed.
7:1 – Odds you are able to identify at least half of your students in any given semester.
12 – Percentage of professors who will ask, “Instead of using (fully supported video software program the university has used for years successfully), why can’t we use (glitchy video program only six people know about on Earth, but they read about in The Chronicle of Higher Education and think will somehow be better)?”
5:2 – Odds the professor on a video lecture isn’t wearing pants.
83 – Percentage of professors who want to do live streaming lectures because “they’re more authentic,” that will be interrupted at least four times by pets, kids, the mailman or a door-to-door Bible salesperson.
96 – Percentage of students who say they watch every video lecture entirely.
0.96 – Percentage of students who actually watch every video lecture entirely.
92,249:1 – Odds your school stays open all year without a single problem.
100 – Percent of school administrators who will “express surprise and disappointment” that they were unable to keep their schools open all year, even after watching dozens of other schools crash and burn all around them.
A number of folks asked if there was a recording of “The Last Lecture” I did for the UWO Greek community. Adviser Angie Zemke was nice enough to send me the file of the event and I did a cut-down of it to make it work on YouTube.
Here’s my 38 minutes of fame in all its glory. I had a fantastic time doing this and from what I heard, the students laughed a lot more than I could hear up where I was. Of course, all I heard was the blood pounding in my ears as I tried not to curse, so there’s that.
This will be the last post until after Thanksgiving, as a couple important events are conspiring to keep me off the blog for a bit. I have a trip to Arizona this week to see my grandfather, a massive maelstrom of grading and the annual “How did Thanksgiving get here so fast?” trek of visits to family and friends.
The big event, however, is happening before all of that.
On Wednesday, Nov. 17, at 6 p.m. Central, I’ll be delivering a “Last Lecture” to the fraternity and sorority folks out here at UWO. I was invited based on student recommendations and I have to admit this is one of the biggest thrills of my professional life:
To make this a bit more fun for some of you, especially those of you who know me well, I’ve created two BINGO cards you can use to keep track of my “eccentricities” during the speech:
Hope it helps. I’ll be back after the Thanksgiving break to help close up the semester. As always, though, if you need me, hit me up through the contact page and I’ll be there.
A friend and colleague of mine from my student media days posted this on Facebook last week just to take the temperature in the academic room:
FILL IN THE BLANK: Three of my 32 first-year journalism majors had heard about Anita Hill’s accusations against Clarence Thomas. That’s ____________.
What followed was the general “tsk tsking” from people in our age group, noting that this was sad, unacceptable or Exhibit A as to what’s wrong with kids today.
I went another direction, noting that this event happened about 12 years before these students were even born. I received a couple messages telling me essentially, “That’s not the point. They should know stuff like this. Shame on them.”
The implication I often get from youth-shaming posts is that by not knowing IMPORTANT THING X en masse based on events that happened more than a decade before they were a “twinkle in their daddy’s eye,” the students don’t value the lessons associated with it.
(In the case of Hill/Thomas I’d argue that they probably DO value those things (probably even more than the Senate did back in 1991, or 2001, or 2011…) but they have their own cultural touchstones like R. Kelly, Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein to (unfortunately) name only a few.)
The truth of the matter is probably more about us than it is about them: We got old really fast and we really don’t like it.
Journalists and by extension journalism professors are storytellers. We use examples to help people understand things, often relying on the newsworthy events that are happening around us. We also tend to recall things that had an impact on us, thus allowing us to feel more connected to the example and better able to use that “for instance” in a meaningful way.
What happens, however, is the longer we use examples or the more often we rely on certain ones, the less relevant they become, because they are no longer at the forefront of everyone’s minds. What “just happened” in our world NEVER happened in theirs.
If you want to depress the hell out of yourself, follow me down this rabbit hole:
Let’s say you are a professor who has just gotten tenure and you are a real hard charger who has taken the most direct path to get there, so that was seven years of your life.
2021-7 = 2013 is when you started as a professor.
You had to do your Ph.D. and a master’s degree to get that job and you were lucky enough to get that job right away after graduation. In journalism, a Ph.D. can take between three and 817 years, but let’s just say it was four for the Ph.D. and two for the master’s.
2013-6 = 2007 is when you started your grad career.
You probably didn’t take the grad-school plunge until after you had been in the “real world” a while, doing jobs in the field. Let’s say you did the six-year approach of two three-year stops for jobs (a decent “stay-awhile, learn some stuff” couple of gigs.)
2007 – 6 = 2001 is when you graduated with your bachelor’s degree.
You were one of those miracle kids who got the four-year degree in four years, so…
2001-4 = 1997 is when you started your degree at age 18. That means you were born in 1979. Subtract 12 years from that and that year (1967) is exactly as relevant to your students as the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas hearings are to your students.
I did the math for my life journey and landed on the 1962-1963 era, so around the time of the Kennedy assassination (which I would argue everyone gets taught at some point in school). Beyond that, here are things that I’m guessing the “Tsk, Tsk, Damned Kids,” people would expect me to know at age 18 based on what was big news or cool stuff at that time:
Barry Keenan’s trial
The quote: “If we’ve been telling lies, you’ve been telling half-lies. A man who tells lies, like me, merely hides the truth. But a man who tells half-lies has forgotten where he put it.”
Not only do we get old, but what also happens is what I call “Wooderson Syndrome,” in terms of keeping track of who is in our classes. I don’t mean this in the creepy “alright, alright, alright” sense, but more in the “age-gap” sense:
I really started coming to grips with this about two years ago when I started to write an intro to mass com textbook. I was putting in references to things that seemed both new and relevant and my editor kept sending my chapters back with notes about needing to get “more current examples.”
At one point I got exasperated and asked how in the hell it wasn’t relevant to put references to media coverage about 9/11 in there. He responded, “Your readers weren’t born yet. You should think about the things your daughter would remember and stick with those for examples.”
Zoe? That’s ridiculous. I remember changing her diapers, teaching her how to read, taking her to kindergarten…
Annnnd when the book is set to publish, she’ll be exactly the same age as the kids taking a class that would assign the text…
Dammit. “Old” caught me.
I don’t like the fact that my students don’t get my references to the Miracle on Ice, “Reality Bites” or Duran Duran lyrics. I also don’t like that my music is now on the “oldies” channel, or worse yet, PLAYING ON (EXPLETIVE, EXPLETIVE, EXPLETIVE) AM RADIO STATIONS. I hate that I’m getting mail-order fliers for hearing aids and AARP memberships. I really dislike the fact that my attempts to remain “with it” are met with comments like this:
Me: I heard this “One Direction” song, and…
Student: Oh, Dr. Filak! It’s so cool that you like the oldies, too!
So, since we’re all here in comfortable “Dad jeans” or “maxi skirts” and we can’t fully explain the true magnitude what it meant to have a car with a cassette player in it when we turned 16, let’s work the problem. Here are a few simple ways to do it:
If something is important, explain it to them: Instead of being incredulous about what students know or don’t know, let’s work a little harder on telling them stuff and helping them understand why they should care. It’s easy to look for superiority high ground; it’s a lot harder to help other people climb up there with us.
Have a simple explanation in your pocket for when students stare at you with a look like, “Is this going to be on the test?” and give them the 30-second version of what happened. If you really want them to to hang onto it, feel free to touch on a few of the more memorable details. (I still find it amazing that somewhere in the congressional record, Orrin Hatch is quoted dropping the N-word multiple times and referring to porn star “Long Dong Silver,” thanks to the Hill/Thomas trial.)
Then, explain WHY it matters in regard to the class they’re taking or the situation they’re discussing. If they get the “why” aspect of something, they’ll remember it more often than not.
Case in point: I put a simple sentence diagram on the board at the beginning of my intro to media writing class. It’s the same thing the nuns used to torture me with that I had no real use for until much later in life. I explain how they can use this to improve sentence structure, find the main idea of their lead or generally make sure they keep a focus on what matters most to them. I’m often gratified when I find scrap paper after a midterm and that little diagram is scratched out with a few nouns and verbs surrounding it.
Look for better and newer examples: I get that not only is it more fun to recall things that mattered in my life than to try to learn new stuff, but it’s also something that feels as comfortable as well-worn shoes. However, nobody really likes slipping into someone else’s old, nasty sneakers, so let’s go shopping for some new things, OK?
Again, I don’t want to have to look at TikTok videos or learn what the hell BTS is:
(I mistakenly referred to this group as BTK once, which would have been a serious problem if the kids were old enough to remember who the hell BTK was. it was one of the few times, I’m glad they lacked historical perspective…)
That said, the whole point of journalism is reaching an audience with content that is relevant, useful and engaging, so I’ve gotta practice what I preach. There is literally no shortage of current examples of people behaving poorly, so dig around and see what you can find.
If you can’t find something good, stick with the classics. There’s a reason James Bond always can carry off a dinner jacket. However, in most cases, you’ll find an example that’s newer and quite good.
Take it easy on the kids: I often refer to the Johnny Sain Axiom of Old Timers’ Day: “There sure is a lot of bullshit going on around here. The older these guys get, the better they used to be.” I’m quite certain that there were a few “Young Sheldon” types in my field, who scoured the newspapers, magazines and cable news shows to get full updates of every important thing at the age of 18 or 19.
However, most of us were probably more concerned about an upcoming test, if we had money in our meal account or whether that person we met at a party would “call us back.” (Yes, even that now is an ancient adage… Zoe: “You mean you would call girls you liked on the telephone? And they didn’t know who it was because call ID didn’t exist? Oh my GOD, Dad!”)
The person who posted the original item that started this rolling weighed in after we all had kicked in our two cents and it’s clear he gets this point better than most:
I don’t really expect them to know it. About the same number knew what Watergate was when I mentioned it a few weeks ago. I, personally——as both a journalism major and one of those all-A students——didn’t understand Watergate until I read All the President’s Men as a junior in college, and Watergate occurred about the same time I was born. I still don’t understand the Teapot Dome scandal, partly because it’s so dang complicated and partly because I’ve never seen it as being relevant in my life.
Part of the reason I use the Clarence Thomas example is so I can make connections to Kavanaugh and make the point that they need to understand history in order to be good journalists. Not seeing the Anita Hill situation as relevant for a profile shows a lack of news judgment to me. The fact that Anita Hill is all over the news because of her book tour also shows me that they need to be paying more attention to current news.
And, also, only about a quarter of them knew what NPR was. But they’re only 18. They’ll get there.
Especially with good folks like this guy teaching them.
For one week starting today, I am taking a break from The Michigan Daily. I’ll be stepping back from the entirety of my job’s responsibilities, deleting all of my social media and staying away from any contact related to The Daily.
This is not a decision I make lightly. I wouldn’t be doing this unless absolutely necessary, because since my first day here I’ve cared about The Daily more than for myself.
But after almost going to the hospital when leaving The Daily’s office alone late Monday night, I refuse to keep allowing severe panic attacks as part of my day-to-day routine. I refuse to keep losing more hair, weight and blood and as nearly as much sleep.
Yesterday, I told a friend my work at The Daily is ever-so-rapidly destroying my physical, mental and emotional health, not to mention my interpersonal and intrapersonal relationships or my dedication to my academics. He replied this destroying can lead to a “violent and deeply entrenched burnout.”
The various things she describes in the piece resonate with me and probably do with many folks who spent any part of their collegiate career in the insane asylum we call a student newsroom. Back when I was in student media, we didn’t have conversations about mental health or key stressors or emotional exhaustion. We just were kind of told to suck it up. When other people did notice stuff like this, the response was basically, “God, that guy is being a total a–hole today. What the hell is his problem?” instead of “Gee, I wonder if they’re doing OK in terms of their mental health.”
Clearly, things are changing for the better in that regard.
I plan to dig into the concept of burnout and student journalism later in the month, but for now, enjoy my brief foray into the topic of what not to do if you want to feel less like a piece of journalistic toast.
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Learn from the worst! The 3 top tips for balancing college and journalism (and the ways I failed at them but still hung in there)
These are also the three HARDEST ones to really accomplish, at least they were for me and the majority of students I have encountered over the last 20-plus years in higher education. As “Knish” said in “Rounders,” here’s a chance to learn from the bad beats I took in these areas:
TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF:
Truth be told, I never really took care of myself in the way in which the Poynter piece explains. I often thought a balanced meal was a bag of Doritos in one hand and a can of Coke in the other. I would stock my desk drawers with protein bars and Girl Scout cookies so I wouldn’t starve while working on a deadline. I’d often get light-headed at certain points in the day, only to realize, I forgot to eat at all that day.
“Vegetable” was an obscenity and I only ran when I was being chased. I knew the guy who opened and closed the campus McDonald’s by name and he knew me by sight. After pulling an all-nighter, I’d head over there and wait for him to open up so I could get my two Egg McMuffins and hash browns, which always sounded so good at the time and yet wreaked havoc with my digestive system for the rest of the day. When Big Macs went on sale at 2 for $2, I bought four, eating one right away and metering out the other three throughout the day. I can’t think of anything as disgusting as a 16-hour-old, room-temperature Big Mac. Unless it was a 16-hour-old, 99-cent Whopper from the campus Burger King.
Sleep was what other people got while I was working on a story for the paper or trying to fix its finances. “I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” I told people who asked why I looked like something out of a zombie movie. My friend Tony once replied, “That’ll be sooner than you think if you keep this (stuff) up.” It was also what a few of my fellow journalism students occasionally got in class, sawing logs loudly in the middle of lectures. There was nothing quite as embarrassing as the time a professor in a pit class asked me to “kindly wake the gentleman sitting next to you.”
There’s no “Behind the Music” story here, though. I made it through just fine. However, I know that I was sick a lot more often in those days and illnesses tended to linger more. I can blame my baldness on stress, but I’m sure hereditary issues played a major role as well. I will confess, however, that I was a raging a-hole during that time and the lack of sleep, good nutrition and stress reduction probably played a major role in that. I’m an awkwardly social human being to begin with, but I know I wasn’t making friends and influencing people with that kind of behavior.
Treating yourself better leads to feeling better and that helps you in acting better. In short, you become a much higher quality of human being and most people will appreciate that. At least, that’s what other people tell me…
LEARN TO SAY NO:
The “Just Say No” phenomenon was a big deal when I was a kid. I said no to drugs, just like the First Lady told me to, but almost nothing else. To borrow another quote from the 1980s:
Between the standard Catholic guilt and the constant refrain of “this is going to look GREAT on a resume,” I think I participated in about 912 things, all at the same time. In addition, I couldn’t say no to the student newspaper when it needed a story written or a financial overhaul. I couldn’t say no when the State Journal offered an extra shift or an extra assignment. I wouldn’t say no to almost anything that looked like it would give me an inch up on the competition within the school, the job market or anything else.
Years later, I found out from a conversation with a hiring manager at a major sports website that most of those things probably didn’t matter all that much. (OK, the extra State Journal shifts kept me from going broke, but in terms of making me a Golden God of a candidate, none of my actions got me there.) The reason, he noted, was that most people in his position don’t care about what I did or how much of it I did. Rather, they cared about what I could do for their company or their organization.
In other words, working for work’s sake didn’t help a lot. What would have been better would have been a more strategic approach to doing certain things well that would have showcased my talents to the people who did the hiring.
I always felt like I gave my best effort each time I was trying to do something someone had asked of me. However, the more things I juggled, the lower the bar was for “my best” and I usually found myself hampered by a lack of focus or other impediments. I can’t even remember the number of times I was sick with a cold or something, but I took on an extra shift or agreed to stay late at work or something. I was practically mainlining DayQuil or whatever the cheap gas-station equivalent was to keep from hacking up a lung. My head felt like it was floating above my body and I was nowhere near “my best.”
At least once I answered the city desk phone at the State Journal in such a state and forgot where I was, only saying, “Uh… Hi?” to the person on the other end. My editor sent me home in one such situation and I panicked about how this would “look on my performance evaluation.”
The point is, even if you are awesome (which I wasn’t), you can only do so much. You might be able to do one or two or even three things at a top-notch level. However, once you get past that in terms of commitments, you’re going to slip here and there and nothing good is going to come of that.
On occasion, just say no.
DO YOUR BEST NOT TO COMPARE YOURSELF
If I could figure out a way to get all my students to abide by this rule, I could solve any other problem on Earth, including world hunger and how to avoid getting sucked into a “Real Housewives” marathon for no good reason.
Social comparisons happen all the time, so much so, there is literally a psychological theory based entirely around this concept. I remember reading about psych experiments where people were offered X dollars but if they took it, another person in the study would get Y dollars. What researchers found is that some people would take less money overall if it meant the gap between what they got and what the other person got was larger.
In other words, instead of taking something like $100 and letting the experimenter pay the other person $90, the subject would take $50 if the other person only got $5 or something. It makes no sense financially or logically, but it clearly demonstrates how people get locked into a comparative value struggle and do their best to “win” it.
I’ve seen this way, way, way too many times with my students over the years, particularly at some of the higher-ranked J-schools. If Bill got an internship at a top 50 marketing firm, Suzie felt the need to get an internship at a top 25 marketing firm. If Jayne got a job at a 100,000 circulation newspaper, Bobby felt the need to get a job at a 250,000 circulation publication.
It led some of my best students down the rabbit hole, going after jobs they hated or pursuing careers that didn’t fit their skills. I had a lot of sobbing seniors in my office, complaining about how someone else was clearly better because of a better internship or something. I had a lot of “quarter-life crisis” kids dropping by my office on random week days, asking me if they were wasting their lives.
I get that social comparison is a big deal, and I know it took me a while to figure that out as well. However, you should just do you to the best of your ability. The sooner you figure out that life isn’t perfect for your friends or peers, regardless of how often they self-aggrandize on FaceBook, you can relax and just enjoy the weirdness that is your own path through the jungle of life.
I tried a new exercise with my freelancing class on Thursday. It wasn’t an unmitigated disaster, but there were a few things that I would have done differently that might help you if you wanted to take a shot at this.
The lesson was on what people who hire freelance writers across all disciplines say they MOST wanted from the freelancers they hire. I’d looked through a couple books and about two dozen of the “Top 5 things” listicles that populate the internet to see if I could find any themes. The stuff broke down into three basic categories:
Stuff they wanted to see in the product itself.
Personality traits or personal habits they wanted in people they hire.
Work-product failures or personal habits that made people unworthy of hiring.
So, I built several lists of these, based on what was most common in the lists and books and turned it into a “Family Feud” -style game show. Answers were assigned point values. The team with the most points won 10 extra credit points.
Since we didn’t have a buzzer, we flipped a coin to see who would answer first and decide if they wanted to “play” or “pass.” When someone guessed something wrong, I gave them an “X” like in the show, but wrote it on the board to discuss later in the lesson. The other team could “steal” the bank as was the case in the show after three wrong answers.
As you can see in these photos, they were clearly thrilled to be doing this:
After the “show” was over, we did the lecture and some of what they picked ended up being right on the money, which meant that they had a general sense of what people expected of them as freelancers. The ones they missed seemed obvious to me, but I also was the one who made the questions.
In the post-hoc analysis of this event, here are some things that went right and some things that went wrong:
THE GOOD:
I didn’t try to get cute: I did not do the weird, lecherous Richard Dawson thing of kissing everything that moved, the hyperactive impression of Ray Combs or try to impersonate Steve Harvey, lest I get sent to HR for sensitivity training. I just did “weird me” which was more than enough weird for them.
I incentivized play: They got a little more into it when they realized they were playing for something of value.
I had a singular theme for the event that matched the lesson: This wasn’t a game for a game’s sake. It blended nicely into the rest of what we were doing that day.
THE BAD:
The categories weren’t concrete enough: A number of times, students guessed answers that were valid in the broader sense (stuff people want) but didn’t fit the exact theme. For example, they guessed “deadline” multiple times, but it only fit in one of the categories. That told me I didn’t describe what I wanted to see clearly enough to make it work.
We hadn’t touched on the theme yet: It’s hard to guess answers for something you don’t know anything about. Maybe next time, I’d have them scout around online before the class for things that people wanted or hated in regard to freelance hires so they’d have some grounding in this concept. In any case, they had a confusion about them that wasn’t normal in that class.
Practice: I should have worked on my script more and practiced it a few times. I figured I could wing it. I was wrong.
It was damned early: I teach almost exclusively 8 a.m. classes, meaning that in most cases, these people need a defibrillator to stay alive during my lectures. Trying to be all “Up With People” on them first thing in the morning didn’t work out all that great. In the future, they politely suggested, I might want to do some lecture stuff from 8-9 and then after their usual break, do the game while they’ve had time to caffeinate and come to life.
In the end, it could have been worse, but I know it could have been better. If you have more questions on how I did this, feel free to reach out. If you have suggestions on how to improve it, I’m all ears.
This is Chancellor Andrew Leavitt. He’s the head of UWO and a really all-around decent guy.
This is Cory Sparks. He is the current editor of the Advance-Titan and, in the interest of full disclosure, one of my students.
