What? You think I’m going to bitch and moan about how awful graduate school was for the fourth straight week in a row? Come on now – there were some good things about that school year.
I was still working in radio. That’s why I sought out graduate school. A surprisingly large number of people told me the summer before I started that graduate school was a time in their life when they found out just how much they enjoyed what they were studying. “You’ll get to see your interest from a whole new angle and find new ways to appreciate it,” or words to that affect, were how I whisked off to Allaphellan. But after that school year I really didn’t want to “do” radio anymore.
I now had the ability to teach others. Back at my undergraduate station, training was often looked at as an inconvenient necessity – we had to make sure the staff knew what they were doing but so many came across dumb as bricks or just as hard-headed that the novelty wore off quickly. Perhaps sensitive to the psyche of some students, I attempted to not talk down to them or use too much jargon early on or even scare them by reminding them that their audience was everyone in Morra County and beyond. Because of my method, I remember being thanked for spelling out complex issues in simple terms or making the new student feel at ease in their first few weeks. But after that year of graduate school I didn’t really want to try to make students understand anymore – especially those that didn’t want to learn.
Hmmm....
I guess when all was said and done, that school year didn’t turn out the way I expected.
Was it a waste of time, of money? Some might say so. I didn’t. I still don’t think it was. I think some of what I took away from the coursework and my lessons from interactions with students and faculty has come to serve me in later endeavors. Goliard’s management course was a nightmare at the time but I’ve often found myself thinking back to some of what was discussed and some of the lessons Goliard shared with us (his number one nitpick was to never hire someone who smokes...).
Then there was Merle O’Brien’s class where we had to draw up assessments of ourselves and business and then create improvement plans for each entity based on those assessments. Over the years I’ve found myself assessing and thinking of ways to improve the circumstances I find myself in. Mind you, I don’t go all out and create a multi-page, spiral-bound document detailing the minutia involved...but I’ll be honest there have been times that I thought it would help....
And while the lessons of the communication theory, ethics, and research classes don’t really come into play anymore, I smiled a little when I heard George Gerbner had died a few years ago.
It was an interesting year and, while it may have been a bit a painful at the time, I think I would go through with it again if I could do it all over.
Still, it’s hard to believe it’s been ten years.
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Awful
(Auf der Maur/Erlandson/Love/Schemel)
Hole
From the album Celebrity Skin
1998
Swing low sweet cherry
Make it awful
It's your life, it's your party, it's so awful
Let's start a fire
Let's start a riot! Yeah it's awful
It was punk
Yeah, it was perfect now it's awful
They know how to break all the girls
Like you
And the rob the souls of the girls like you
And they break the hearts of girls
Swing low, cherry, cherry
Yeah it's awful
He's drunk, he tastes
Like candy, he's so beautiful
He's so deep like dirty water
God, he's awful
You're lost, oh, where's your daddy -it's so awful
And they royalty rate all the girls like you
And they sell it out to the girls like you
To incorporate little girls
Hey, run away with the light
Run away its divine
Let's run away, yeah, tonight, and
We'll steal the light of the world
Swing low, sweet cherry, yeah its awful
You're gonna ripe for the picking, it's so awful
You've got your youth
Don't waste your money
Yeah its awful
I was punk!
Now I'm just stupid
I'm so awful
Oh, just shut up you're only 16
If the world is so wrong
Yeah you can break them all
With one song
If the is so wrong yeah you take
It all
With one song
Swing low sweet cherry
Make it awful
They bought it all, just build a new one
Make it beautiful...yeah