Thoughts on TKE initiation at Whitman. Daniel’s honest account of his frat initiation experience (hazing, in my opinion) at Whitman College. Tons of great comments, too.
Daniel’s thoughts on TKE initiation at Whitman
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Tag Archives: college
Reflecting on my college experience
I’ve been a college graduate for exactly 90 days now.
Looking back, there are some words of wisdom I can pass on to current or soon-to-be college students.
You don’t need to do the full four years for the full “college” experience
Up to this point, I’ve kept fairly quiet about how fast I finished college. But now I’m going to be completely transparent about it.
I wouldn’t necessarily say I rushed through college, but I did graduate with a bachelor’s from a four-year university in just a little more than two years. It’d be better described as “finishing college at an accelerated rate.”
Upon learning about my early graduation, one professor even told me I was being selfish: “We let you into this program because you’re extremely talented, you come in and take our classes, then leave without even taking the time to give back?” was how the conversation went, to be exact. Some of my friends at four-year universities have given me a hard time about it too: “But, did you really experience college?” they’ve asked.
Yes.
For me, college wasn’t about making friends or majoring in a bunch of subjects I’ll never use, or joining tons of clubs. College was about developing a stronger work ethic and testing the limits of my personal ambition.
Although I didn’t take the traditional four years to graduate, I feel like I have the wisdom, maturity and experience that a four-year education would have provided. (I’ve never been one for traditions, anyway).
College isn’t about how much time you spend there. College isn’t about how many classes you take; it’s not about your GPA. In fact, I’d say that such standardized measurements actually detract from the college experience.
College is about finding yourself and learning what path you want to take. It takes some people six years. It takes most people four years. It took me two and I don’t regret a second of it.
How and why did I graduate so early?
I’ve always been a workaholic. I took full loads every summer, 20+ units a quarter, plus passed every AP test I took in high school (which gave me a full year’s worth of lower division credit when I got to college). I entered college with sophomore standing.
I always knew I’d be able to graduate a full year early. It wasn’t until the beginning of my second year when I was mapping it all out that I figured out that summer school plus one extra class each quarter could result in a nearly two-year-early graduation. So, there’s a tip: plan ahead.
Now, for the “why,” which is a little harder to pinpoint.
Part of it was financial. Taking 20 units costs the same as taking 16. You do that for three quarters straight and it’s like getting a quarter free. I also paid for my entire college education, making the financial incentive more appealing than if I had loans or if my parents were paying. On top of that, I knew that tuition and fees would continue to rise the longer I stayed in it.
But, quite honestly, college just wasn’t fulfilling.
This gets into a deeper conversation about what the true value of standardized education is in the Google era (a topic growing in popularity these days). How valuable is my education when 80% of my studying consisted of Googling terms, writing the Wikipedia answer onto a notecard, and burning it into my short term memory?
The most valuable class I took in my time at Cal Poly was an entrepreneurship class that had no tests and no textbooks. Taught by the brilliant entrepreneur/investor/consultant Jon York, the class was a series of real-world case studies followed by discussion. Jon didn’t lecture. At the start of every class, we moved our desks out of row formation and into a huge circle. He stood in the middle as a moderator and note-taker for our ideas. We watched YouTube videos of people like Guy Kawasaki. Jon brought in former students who work at start-ups and we interrogated them. We worked in teams to create business plans and pitched decks to the class.
As I packed up my things to move to LA, there were three trashbags of worthless papers and notes. But my binder of case studies from Jon York’s class still sits on the shelf of the desk in my LA apartment. I open it often.
The purpose of this tangent is to convey that traditional education is broken. I was lucky to get one of the last spots in Jon’s class. But aside from this one class, every other course was a test of how fast I could Google keywords from a study guide, how much coffee I could consume in one night, and how well I could memorize what I’d just Googled. Where’s the value?
I’m glad I experienced college the way I did
There are benefits to graduating college early. First of all, I got through with the standardized education bullcrap so that I could pursue what I truly care about. Although I was great student in college, as I mentioned above, it was never a truly fulfilling experience for me. Homework was busy work, lectures were ineffective, textbooks were a waste of money. So I took on as much as I could to make it more challenging, fast-paced and stimulating. I worked at the Mustang Daily starting the first day of my freshman year and didn’t stop until the end of the last quarter. I did freelance web design all of college, worked as a graphic designer for the university and served as the creative director for CoPress.
If you decide that college is the route for you, I encourage you to do the same thing. College will only be valuable if you can take on outside projects that keep you interested and intellectually stimulated.
I took on the design job because I knew there was a chance journalism wouldn’t work out for me in the long run. Instead of getting a second major or minoring in design (which would mean taking ridiculous classes about ink and printing that I couldn’t care less about), I took on a job that would challenge my creative abilities, teach me new skills, and still give me the experience for a backup job post-college.
I got lucky and made the right connections and those skills have come in handy. Now I’m a product designer at a journalism company, which is a win-win — and a good use of the skills I taught myself outside of college.
The point: find a passion and work toward it, college or not
What’s a college degree worth, anyway? After all, as my colleague Daniel Bachhuber (a college droupout) cleverly noted in a tweet recently, Orville Wright never had a pilot’s license. A piece of paper that confirms your ability to complete a set of standardized objectives is not the key to success. College is only a valuable asset if you make it valuable. And simply sitting through lectures is not the way to capture value.
Although I don’t believe that the current educational system is sufficient for the data era, I do think it’s one of the best ways for you to learn about the path you want to take. If you approach college the right way and take advantage of opportunities outside of textbooks and classes, college can be a time for experimenting with your passions and finding which one suits you best. I encourage you to use your time in college wisely, figure out who you are, then get the hell out of there and start changing the world.
Student newspapers: Don't be afraid to break the rules
At the end of last year, Emily Kostic (web editor of Rowan University’s The Whit) wrote a blog post about New Years Resolutions for college newspapers. A few things struck me on that list:
- #5 Get away from College Publisher
- #6 …and in the process go Web First
One I’d like to add to Emily’s list is: Don’t be afraid to break the rules. These days, that’s the only way to make it in this industry.
Getting away from College Publisher
That’s right: I said it. After a recent conference call with Adam Hemphill and Miles Skorpen of CoPress, it’s official. The Mustang Daily is switching to WordPress.
The switch away from College Publisher is something I’ve wanted for the Mustang Daily since before I was even a student at Cal Poly. Not that College Publisher is bad; it’s a great starting point for newspapers who are trying to learn the dynamics of the Web. We used to be that paper. Now we get it. Now we’re ready for new things. We’re ready to generate our own revenue and move on.
Plus, WordPress is open-source. College Publisher is far from it. If we want to make changes, we have a world of developers to turn to. With College Publisher, change comes in the form of submitting a query to their support team. That makes it less than easy to be innovative.
This summer I started seriously considering WordPress as a CMS and built a mockup. But there’s a huge difference between saying, “This is what I want to do,” and actually doing it.
Our former online editor created a Joomla mockup last year, just as I had done with the WordPress, and after getting the “Ok!” from our general mananger, his plans went nowhere.
Why? Fear. Fear of not being able to pass down an open-source CMS to future online editors. Fear of failing.
That was the same concern that came up when I proposed the idea of moving to WordPress.
To me, it’s a non-issue. If my future replacement doesn’t “know” the system, then he/she has to learn it.
We’ve all been new to it at one point. The fear of learning something new is possibly what got the journalism industry in the position it’s in now.
After news that CoPress would start hosting college newspapers, I had the final push the editor-in-cheif and I needed to convince our general manager that we’re done with College Publisher.
It’s really a great deal: cheap hosting (off-campus, so we don’t have to follow strict ADA rules and pay the school for space), a support network (so that we’re not relying only on me), and a solid relationship with leaders in college journalism.
Tentative plans set our launch date for March 14. Cross your fingers for us. We couldn’t be more excited.
Structural changes to the Mustang Daily
With our big redesign come huge structural changes. With College Publisher, we were limited to posting stories based on the date of our print issue (although, to be fair, CP5 has improved). With WordPress, we’re ready to move to a 24-hour news cycle where we’re posting news continuously.
Even if your newspaper isn’t planning a major overhaul, you should still consider ending your shovelware methods.
It’s what your readers expect from you. Most students are getting their news online from the local paper, CNN, NYTimes, etc. They’re used to getting news updates all day long, and it shouldn’t be any different with a college newspaper. News doesn’t stop during the day just because the print issue isn’t done.
Of course, the change isn’t as simple as posting news updates throughout the day. The way our process is structured requires copy editors to come in around 5 p.m. to start reading over stories. With their red pens, they sit at a table and edit stories that have been printed out.
Hours are wasted between the first Word Doc printout and the flat printout. Copy editors aren’t done with the final changes until 10 p.m. each night (which is when I post the stories. That’s just wrong).
I have a few problems with this method:
- Why are the copy editors only coming in at night? Future (meaning this spring or summer) structural changes to the Daily will require copy editors on duty all day long to edit stories as they come in.
- During a time when the Web dominates the news industry, why is it our last priority? The web should always be the number one priority on every editor’s list. Not a place to dump stories that don’t fit in print or an after-thought at the end of the night. And while most editors tend to agree, they sure have a hard time putting it into practice.
- Why do copy editors need to use a red pen on a printed Word Doc? What about a little thing called a computer? Editing on paper seems so primitive. Slowly, the Mustang Daily staff has started using Google Docs for assigning article and photo assignments. And WordPress makes editing articles online even simpler.
As Greg Linch wrote on the CoPress Blog, stories can be edited on WordPress, rather than through multiple Word Doc revisions. This means the copy editors don’t have to come into the newsroom to copy edit. All they need is a computer and internet access.
- Also, as Greg notes, when print designers are ready to layout their pages, they simply pull the already-copy edited versions of the articles from the CMS. It saves time and everyone wins.
Breaking an age-old tradition
Another way the Mustang Daily is breaking the rules this quarter is through implementing a “track” system for our reporters.
Because the Mustang Daily reporters are enrolled in a class (taught by student editors), they get credit for writing. So the syllabus is structured like any other class: you do a little of everything so you can be “well rounded.”
Traditionally, it’s always (and I mean forever) worked this way– Each quarter (10 weeks) every Mustang Daily reporter writes:
- Four news stories
- Four arts stories
- Three sports stories
- One feature story (1,000+ words)
- An opinion piece
- + four miscellaneous (from any section)
- Last year, we added a multimedia requirement to that list. Starting in summer 2008, it jumped to two multimedia pieces.
But now we’re breaking the rules. We’re switching it up. Reporters are now on a track system, which works like beats. We have sports writers, news writers, arts writers and general reporters. Each reporter will do two multimedia pieces for their respective tracks.
The system is seemingly common-sense. Reporters build up their contacts in their tracks and get story leads. They get the kind of experience they’d have in a real newsroom.
We made the switch because we had crap stories for our sports section. Reporters who knew/understood sports couldn’t write for the section because they had to fulfill news/arts requirements, and news/arts writers who knew nothing about sports were trying to cover soccer games. It doesn’t work that way.
Yet somehow, for uncountable years, the system continued. Not because it worked, but out of fear of change. Because the world supposedly wanted journalists who could cut out diverse clips to paste into their portfolios.
Well the industry is changing. Physical clips don’t exist (or at least they shouldn’t). Students need experience that reflects the real industry as close as possible. College newspapers need to mirror those industry changes, or even better — come up with innovative changes the professional industry hasn’t yet.
I challenge you to look at aspects of your newspaper that have always been the same, and ask yourself if those strategies still work. And even if you think they do work, come up with ways to make them work better.
Change is the only way to win. Are you up for it?