Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Procrastination

It’s 2:32 a.m. I have an eight page paper due on the performance history of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” due in seven hours, and I’m watching Rick tell Ilsa to get on the plane at the end of “Casablanca” for the umpteenth time. Eventually, during the tearful finale, the propellers will buzz and Rick will say the immortal line “We’ll always have Paris.”
I stare at the television enjoying the performances by Bogart and Bergman all the while occasionally shooting a glance at the blank computer screen with the cursor blinking like the remaining seconds of a bomb waiting to explode in my face. Yet I sit there, watching my movie, pondering what reason I can give my professor to get an extension on this paper. Maybe I just won’t show up to class, and get it done, and then email it to her later. It won’t be a big deal. I’ll be able to get it done. Now it’s 3:32 a.m. Marlon Brando is waxing poetic about how he “coulda been a contenda” in the back of a car in “On the Waterfront.” The paper now has an opening paragraph, but is truly no closer to eight pages than it was one hour ago.
I tell myself, “I can get this done. If I just write two pages an hour, I’ll be in the clear.”
I never once thought that these bad habits I had cultivated, over these nearly eight semesters of college, would come back to bite me in the ass. So, I learned to procrastinate with the best of them because I didn’t think I had to work that hard.
Procrastination is one of those problematic little phenomena that college students have created to make excuses for why our homework isn’t done, and why we stay up until 4 a.m. working on a paper. We’ve made up little jokes about it and create Facebook status updates about it, and yet it’s something that doesn’t go away.
As a young student in elementary school and high school, the actual day-to-day homework part was easy. I barely had to break a sweat to get things done because either I got it done at home the night before, or there was enough time during the day that you could easily get things done before that appropriate class period.
This ailment has never been limited to just me though. We’re a nation of procrastinators who desperately want our pleasures right away, but who take a laissez-faire attitude about getting anything accomplished on time. Professors would rather continue doing their own research for their upcoming journal article on the obtuse influence of Balzac on Faulkner for the Publication for the Modern Languages Association than grade a stack of essays, Congress takes weeks at a time to call a vote on Washington D.C. snow removal because it can, and students just wait until the last possible moment to finish a short essay on the Franco-Prussian War.
I am no different. Instead of doing my homework, I found other things to occupy my brain with that I found more important that accomplishing my tasks on time. I watched films, read books for leisure, watched television, and masturbated; anything that was an easy alternative to reading bullshit religion books or doing pre-calculus. I got away with it then because I was smart, and I could talk my way out of the potential problems that could occur. I began to believe my own hype. I believed that my contribution to the academic world was such that the world would be lesser for not having me in it.
That’s the trickiest part about procrastination; it’s not just limited to the unknowledgeable, the lazy, or the unmotivated. It can be the smartest kid in the class, because he doesn’t think he has to work that hard, or an extremely driven young lady who assumes that under the time crunch she can churn out the first chapter of her novel in four hours.
It’s never a clear cut-and-dry reason for why people do this either. In some cases, people just start too late. They assume they have a smaller task in front of them that ends up being a climb up Kilimanjaro. In my case, and I would assume in the case of many others, this pressure could be a fear of failure or even worse, a fear of success. I want reassurance that my work is adequate or even good, and I don’t want to feel the sting of a B+ when I know in my heart that the paper was a C-. Maybe we’re afraid to grow up? College is a time when we’re told to enjoy it, and savor each moment, because it all goes downhill from here. So why not try to prolong the experience. What’s another year of school when you could be out in the lousy world of mortgages, student loan bills, and no job?
So what do I do? I retreat; I avoid; I accept defeat. Many other procrastinators are able to break through their coulda, woulda, shouldas and get their work done. They can see the benefit of barreling through and accomplishing the goal no matter how haphazard the results may look or sound. But I can’t seem to. So I walk around the academic buildings like a feral cat; jumpy, disorientated, and anxiety-ridden. I take different hallways to avoid the potential confrontations with professors, who only want to help, but that I assume are out to reprimand me. Such is the life of a procrastinator.
Curing this disease is an on-going process. It’s hopefully something that won’t last me the rest of my life, but maybe that’s too unrealistic. I want to eventually be able to graduate from college, get out, and live my life. I want to work as a professional writer, and have children, but none of those things can happen until I finish the paper. And that will only happen when I finally stop trying to ignore that blinking cursor, put aside my insecurities, and get to work.

Gonna Make You Sweat

A couple years ago, during one of the university's big cuts of faculty and staff, they chose to let go Helen Martin, a Phys. Ed. professor and longtime adjunct. With her firing, she took with her all swim classes, all fitness walking classes, and a lessened department too.

Recently though, the faculty also had another big decision to make regarding this sometimes overlooked department. There was a vote whether to keep the phys. ed requirements as part of the general education requirements. Those against it complained of its cost and how difficult it is to have tenured faculty who don't teach that many classes and aren't contributing more than two minimal courses over the length of a college career. Those in favor spoke the most stridently to its necessity as necessary a part to a liberal arts education as history or religion

Thankfully in a measure that showed both smarts and an investment down the road, they voted to keep them. What a sad world it would have been if they hadn't. Higher education is an increasingly difficult balancing act of doing what's good for the students as well as doing what's in the budget. But if we would have eliminated it, especially the lifestyle sports, they instill a sense of ways to stay in shape later in life when the football field or the basketball court may not be available. In the most Buddhist of ways, the union of mind and body is one of the tent poles of a liberal arts education. How can we preach the importance of sociology or painting if we can't also promote and praise the importance of those who train and make our bodies better and healthier too.

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

What To Do With a B.A. In English



The above title comes from a tune from the Broadway musical "Avenue Q," but it might as well be he story of my life right now.

It's been five of the most tumultuous, life-changing years of my life, and other than actually getting things done earlier, I wouldn't have changed a damn thing.

This work for the journalism minor has been my saving grace and (nearly) my self-inflicted fatal wound. In four, short years, I quickly moved up the ranks from lowly contributor to regular staff writer, eventually to editor-in-chief, and finally as a sort of adviser emeritus. I wrote more than the required two stories a week, became a vocal member of the staff, managed a staff, and eventually in many ways, became the public face of the paper. It wasn’t always the best of circumstances. There was in-fighting, a couple near staff coups, enough blown deadlines to put Ben Bradlee into an early grave, and the never-ending problem with finding enough writers to cover all the things we want and need in a given week. But there were also successes. We successfully took the paper from an absolutely laughing stock on the brink of imminent disaster to a trusted source for information in an age when the campus rumor mill could never be stronger. We achieved some of the legitimacy that we struggled for years to gain, and the paper just became this new force to be reckoned with on the campus scene. We had a newspaper, and it looked and read like a newspaper.

We thought and believed that a dedicated, yet minimal group of writers, editors, photographers could change the world. Well the world, or maybe just the campus landscape. We would be looked at with new eyes, and people would look to us to get their news first. When the chatter moved from laughing at the Torch to rage by its lack of willingness to adhere to the administration’s pleading to avoid the big stories and the PR nightmares, we knew we were on the right track. This is also when my involvement became more and more monomaniacal. It became a poker game I was playing with my life, career, and future. I had a staff of dedicated people, but unlike them I couldn’t balance all the things I wanted to do, with the things I had to do. Then, I took the big step backwards. I had focus on me and do some of my best work in the classes and on the journalism trip to Chicago. Journalism has opened me up to the world in a way that I’ve never been more excited by and terribly scared as well. Never has there ever been more media circulation and never have there been fewer jobs to go around.

I desperately want a career in this industry! I have a voice and a particular nuance to the world that I know I must share. I’d like to go to grad school as well, but I know I need to work for a few years to gain some experience outside of the safe walls of the Torch office. There has to be arbiters of good writing out there in the world because otherwise there are more and more cheap hacks that don’t know what they’re doing and let their personal beliefs spew into the writing like the Ebola virus through the human body. Writing has made me a better person, and I know this is what I have to do. I have to; I don’t know what else I could do in this turkey burger economy.

Certainly Not Speechless: Three Speeches that Helped to Change America

In the last week Western Civilization has certainly had its share of memorable moments.

In what's being dubbed the Wedding of the Century, Prince William married Kate Middleton at Westminster Abbey, the same place of his parents wedding over 30 years ago. The Vatican beatified John Paul II pushing him even closer to sainthood, and President Obama announced the death of the world's most dangerous and hunted man Osama bin Laden.

But in between the wedding, the beatification, and the killing of the century, there was a trio of media events involving President Obama that helped to define the world and times in which we live and to help define him as a man who could still easily destroy in 2012.

Last Wednesday, the President spoke to the White House Press Corp to finally announce they were releasing his birth certificate to the public to prove once and for he is an American citizen. After years of mudslinging from the Right, assumptions of his Kenyan roots, and continued threats of challenging his presidency, it seemed it would eventually come out. And instead of trying to make a big to-do about it, our illustrious Commander-in-Chief used wit, charm, and a tongue-in-cheek mentality to express his distaste for the fact that even during the serious budget fights between his White House and Congress the dominant news story was about this birth certificate issue. As he said, he'd rather we as a country pay attention to the vast concerns we still have in front of us as a nation instead of bothering to discuss in vain where the President was born. In a quick five and a half minutes, he cut a deep hole into the favorite punchlines of the far rights, and reminded us why we liked him in the first place.

Over the weekend, the White House Correspondent's Dinner also took place. The grand fete of the major news outlets who cover the White House, politicians, and celebrities always brings a good round of laughter (Remember Stephen Colbert a few years ago?), and there's always some good ribbing at the expense of those in attendance. Obama, always up for a good joke, willingly took a good shellacking from comedians and dished one out just as well to both VP Biden, Donald Trump, and the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. He's a charming affable guy who knows how to take a joke better than anyone since Clinton. Yes he may be a celebrity in the best way since Kennedy, but he has also has a intellect and a wit that most recent presidents can't touch.

Looking back it's amazing, knowing now that he knew of the Bin Laden capture and death, that he was able to put on such a smiling happy persona and face a crowd ready to be entertained.



After all his frivolity and circus antics of the week had commenced, what came Sunday night was something we hadn't seen in a long time, and in many cases ever. What started as a normal Sunday night ended in a triumphant return to form for a man whose taken his share of beatings in the press and from his political opponents of late. In his address to nation detailing the death of Osama bin Laden, he staked a claim that he is a strong leader as well as a mind at work. He can lead a group of men, and he can make a tough decision under pressure. He reminded us of who the enemy is and should have been all that time ago, and defiantly stood in the face of history and said, "My name is Barack Obama and I am the President." It was a sober and stark about face from the silliness of his mock Lion King birth video from Saturday evening, but it showed the facets of a man whose still at the forefront of a national conversation. I can't fathom any of the yahoos who plan on trying to run for president next year for the Republicans will have a chance when a Democrat just proved his impressiveness when it comes to security matters.

Decisions are made by those who show up, and in the last few days, Obama has shown up and proved his worth in gold time and time again.



To Make You Feel Proud



It's been a year. One year ago Saturday, I stopped trying to hide myself behind the people I cared about and the version of myself I thought was more palatable for the rest of the world, and just said it out loud and proud. I'm gay.

It's certainly not a announcement I came to lightly, and frankly there are people in my family, chiefly my dad and my younger brother, who still don't know. It's still something that is difficult for my friends and family who do know to grasp and relate to, because well I've always just been Drew. Big, tall, lovable Drew. Constant shoulder to cry on, always the nice guy, and an asexual being for all time.

In the last year though, it seems the world and culture around me is trying to give as many opportunities as it can to make sure that I and thousands of other young people begin to understand that it's okay, and it will get better.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell was repealed in a stunning and grand statement made by the Commander of the Joint Chiefs, Congress, and the President to announce that no matter who you're boning, we can still be safe, corp morale doesn't have to be hurt, and heaven forbid we allow people to be who they are. Television and film has presented gay characters in all forms and levels of swishiness to suit even the most frustrated and easily grossed-out homophobe. The struggle of young teens trying to decipher the difficult waters of sexuality in the 21st century is on full display in a bold and brash way. Shows like "Glee" that reach a wide range of audiences in terms of age, are making their characters topics of discussion so parents and children can be more honest and think freely about how they feel.

Even after a rush of increasingly scary and increasingly heinous suicides of gay youths, Dan Savage, openly gay writer, activist, and sex columnist started the It Gets Better campaign to talk to the youth of the world to let them know that their pain and their eventual triumph is not in vain. Everyone from President Obama, gay-friendly celebrities like Kathy Griffin, and even the staff of Pixar Studios willingly put their voice where their heads are at on the rights of those who are bullied for being GLBT.

Even in my personal life, friends and I have been able to have serious discussions about the equal rights groups, what their preconceived notions are, how religion and politics work into this debate, and why they have reservations.

It's this willingness to improve our world and realize the importance of each of one its individuals that makes me hopeful that my eventual partner and I can raise children and we can honestly tell them that they can be whoever they want to be no matter what difference they have in the world that may try to encumber them.

Is There Anybody Out There?- Blogging to Cyberspace

For years, The Torch promised to join the 21st century.

It was using software so antiquated that the publisher had to dig up an old template from the first Bush administration to have the paper published. Even high school yearbooks with the most minimal of budgets were even using software that was more updated and more user-friendly.

But thanks to the hard work of a group of dedicated people as well as a tidy grant from the university, The Torch finally updated getting the most advanced and the best software for laying out pages, editing photos and creating art for itself. The problem was...we were already getting put behind the ball once again.

Having a solid, and I'll grant you sometimes glorious, print edition is good, but we needed to move into a different realm. We needed to move online. Well...we've begun to move online. With a web edition of the paper now available the nonstop media machine is able to access the Torch in its best ways and comment instantly rather than the arduous task of writing a letter to the editor. Hell, the way the Torch has been run this year, sometimes you don't get a letter in the letter because somebody may not like what you have to say.

But this insurgence of online press has begun to move into our journalism classes as well. This semester, as evidence by what you're reading, the Advanced News Writing class was required to keep a regular blog about what was going on in their beat...Wittenberg University. We were to give comment and do some makeshift reporting in this new and odd world of commentary news that still upheld the principles of good writing we come to know, respect, and expect.

Some of us have covered our spring break vacations, our brand new Twitter accounts, or even trying to smile more. (Yeah Shelly!) But we've also covered more serious topics such as a continually bigoted campus, drug use, and most recently the death of Osama bin Laden. Was it successful? Did it achieve its goals?

In many ways, I think it did. Forcing our writer brains outside of their safe and happy homes, forced some interesting and never boring results. The problem was consistency. Early on, we were fired up about the blogs writing about the dirty things like drugs and racism. And since we were excited about it, we discussed it in class. There was heated debate that may not have ended with resolution but at least with a better understanding of the views of your fellow classmates.

But then life and other work began to encroach. We got busier, forgot about the blogs, and they became for some, a burden rather than the exciting new potential they could have been. I wish we would have discussed them more, gotten into conversations about things that move beyond the Witt Bubble. Expanding our conversation about what's going on campus is important, but moving beyond that to discuss the world, it's issues, and how to cover them as journalists is important as well.

We as students should have been more intent on reading our classmates work. If we were, we would have moved more quickly to discussing them. Instead, after twenty minutes, some of us tried to get out of class and ignore the obvious things left to work on.

I can't wait to continue to blog about the things I care about, the things I wish more would notice, and things I feel an imperative to bring attention to.

Happy blogging everyone, and Mac definitely keep requiring it.

Monday, May 2, 2011

Lies, Tell Me Sweet Little Lies- Gossip Culture at Wittenberg

Being a newspaper reporter or a purveyor of journalism in any way, you learn to get your ear to the grindstone and be open to find a story wherever you can find it. Sometimes it comes in the form of a rumor. Like the Fleetwood Mac album title, rumors are the lifeblood of what I do. They fuel what could start as the mention from somebody's office assistant and end up being the next day's headline.

Wittenberg's especially good at this rumor-mongering. Especially when it comes to personal information after a night of excessive drinking. Everything from the sexual exploits of your sorority sister to the identity of that guy who drove his car onto Alumni Way, the rumor mill can be your friend if you like to dish the dirt.

But there is a nice side to the mill. It can get me the story, and it can help me track down sources. In some situations everyone's willing to tell you anything, but in some you have to be more covert. Journalists thrive on this. The Washington Post took down the Nixon White House using a secret, rumored source nicknamed "Deep Throat." If something is going on inside of a faculty meeting, some loose-lipped secretary or student worker turns into a spiraling mess of words, accusations, and eventual things that we can fill columns inches with.

But the downside to this cyclone of craziness is that with the start of any good piece of gossip comes the inevitable telephone effect. What starts off as WittFest being moved because of rain, ends up being WittFest is cancelled because Dean Kelly doesn't want us to drink. Is it that we want the salacious piece of news to carry on that we're willing to embellish a bit? How can we use these gabby people to our advantage if they keep changing the story? Boasters and overly talkative people: here's a message to you. Help me out! Get your stories straight so that I can get mine straight too. I want to be able to have story ideas that are founded on more than the potential you hear on the street. Get me a better story because you got the facts straight. Everyone should become a little bit of a reporter themselves, because then when I ask around it's not a series of "I don't knows" and "I'm not sures" but rather a well-informed "Oh well this is what happened." Give me an inch so I can make a mile of headway on it.