It’s hard to believe it’s been ten years.
It was just over ten years ago that I decided that it might be “fun” to pursue a master’s degree in communication and that it might be “fun” to use my combination of education and experience and teach students about the basics of audio production. Yeah...that just sounds like a hoot. Really now, come on – I was just fresh out of undergraduate classes and knew firsthand the attitudes and aggravations that we caused. Why on earth would I want to put up with it on a regular basis?
Why indeed.
The catalyst for my desire to attend graduate school seems to have been lost to the ages. I do remember working alongside John Fletcher (of “What’s New Wednesday?” fame) during what would have been my junior year and discussing our futures. He was originally from Lima Valley, a town about an hour’s drive west, and commuted a couple times each week to a radio station he’d been with for close to a year. This was to be his after-college future: getting his feet in the door with commercial radio work all the while knocking on doors to cater his audio production know-how. My future wasn’t as clear as that, nor was that a future I totally wanted to chase, either. I remember being somewhere with my parents around this time and the salesman asking what I was in college studying. When I said “radio communication,” he answered back quickly with the comment, “ah, goin’ to be a DJ – that’ll be cool.”
No, it wouldn’t. It would be moronic to think that I would spend four years of my life gazing giddily at the stars so I could be one of those knee-biting shills. I didn’t want to settle for that sort of mediocrity and knew I could do something more with my talents. But there was the looming question of what it was I would be doing once I graduated. The answer was painfully obvious: I didn’t know.
I also knew I didn’t have any problems leading classroom discussions, as I found myself doing a few times my senior year. For example, during the fall semester I took the required Program Planning course whose final project was doing the necessary “legwork” to put together some sort of television program. We didn’t actually produce our programs but instead learned what all it would take to put something together (i.e. budgets, rights, scheduling, scripts, etc.). However my project must have hit a nerve with the instructor because he invited me back the following semester; instead of the class putting together their own programs, we would all work together to accomplish the program I envisioned the prior semester. On more than one occasion that instructor turned the class over to me to discuss our mission and what we needed to do to meet our goals. It wasn’t teaching per se but it gave me a chance to be in the shoes of those that led and figure out some of what it took to be in that position.
So it was through these and other channels that the idea slowly formulated in my head that “you know, this graduate school thing would give you the chance to teach and allow you to stick around a university setting.” On paper it sounded like a grand idea; perhaps not an easy one, but I had come out road tested on other challenges so I wasn’t too hesitant at this point.
It was just that my expectations collided with reality in the worst way.
Speaking of other mistakes, Better than Ezra put out a quite contrary album in 1997 called How Does Your Garden Grow?. My undergrad station practically had the core singles from Deluxe and Friction, Baby in constant rotation and they were always well received. And then came this album...one that no one seemed to know what to do with. We put the first single in rotation but its sound was not “Good” or one that was “Desperately Wanted.” We were disappointed. Apparently we weren’t the only ones: Elektra Records dropped the group and it would be three years before their subsequent album surfaced, Closer (2001).
Of course, I don’t consider my year of graduate school a mistake....
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Beautiful Mistake
(Kevin Griffin)
Better Than Ezra
From the album How Does Your Garden Grow?
1998
photo stills
in your wallet with the unpaid bills
and you show it like it means something
you could never know the pain it brings
and here you are
standing in our drive
(when absence suits you best)
letters and your cards
with no return address
now you come around
now you come around
your familiar sounds
we are your beautiful,
we are your beautiful mistake.
waiting for this day
well i memorized the things i'd say
how you broke her when you disappeared
how i hear her say,
"you'd make your father proud."
it echoes through the years
as if i could forget all a mother's tears
no, don't say a word
leave while you still can
put out your light
now i guess you're going
a figure through the door
and your taillights faded
like twenty years before
