Unlikely Gifts in Unmarked Packages
February 2, 2024
Beneficial Blunders
April 2, 2024
The best formal education I received was while pursuing a journalism degree. Print journalism, not broadcast journalism. Radio deejays and TV personalities got all the attention, but their careers seemed to fizzle once the public declared they were no longer young and cool.
What I specifically wanted was a public relations (PR) degree, but the best I could find within the state of Nebraska was a journalism degree with a PR emphasis at what was then Kearney State College (KSC), which is now part of the University of Nebraska system. So, I throttled ahead. As a print journalism major, I learned to write hard news in accordance with Associated Press (AP) style, citing sources and confirming facts. References to numbers one through nine are generally written as words, and anything above nine is generally written as numerals. When referring to money, use numerals. After that, AP style rules get mind-blowingly complex.
All the structure, with all its rules, was good for me. News reporting classes taught me to listen and observe body language. Somehow my brain transformed into a receptacle that retains stuff most people never even see or hear.
Since I was in training to be a newspaper reporter, something I already knew I didn’t want to be, I had to serve time on KSC’s student-run newspaper, The Antelope. We were, after all, the KSC Antelopes, also known as the Lopers.
During my last two semesters at KSC, I was the copy editor for The Antelope. All our stories had to be completed a week before the paper was printed so it could be laid out—manually—which took days. Which meant that as copy editor I had to edit and compose headlines for something like twenty stories over the course of a Thursday afternoon and evening for the following week’s paper. The worst part was I had to give up my Thursday nights, which was absolutely heartbreaking since Thursday night was THE party night at KSC. No more penny pitchers, no $5 all you can drink specials. Such sacrifice.
I also had to write news stories for the paper, and one in particular is a laugher. Not only did I write this story, I wrote this embarrassing headline:
In all fairness to me, “escort service” was the term used by KSC’s Residence Hall Association. I repeat, I did not coin that description specifically for the article. My, how things have changed over the course of a few decades. Words do matter!
Once I got my degree in hand, I bypassed the newsroom and headed straight for corporate America, where I ended up in whatever departments needed writers: marketing, public relations, corporate communications, administration, executive, or my personal favorite, editorial services.
One time, I was tasked with hiring an assistant, and we received over 400 resumes. My favorite line from one of the resumes was this: “I would like this job because I really really really like to write.”
Yes, all these events did happen . . .
To a lifetime of really really really memorable stories!
