A really sparkly reason to major in journalism

I teach college journalism. It's my passion (see also: the job doing yoga and making handicrafts wasn't full-time). As our industry has evolved, the revenue base has suffered. But the need for well-trained reporters is still critical. Our need for skilled truth-tellers who ask the hard questions abides. When I have the privilege of seeing a student's talent for storytelling align with a desire to shine a bright light in dark corners--it's fantastic. Not only because our passion and paths are similar, but because the world has gained another accountability keeper. The stream of such students is unsurprisingly not busting down my door. But I teach wonderful, curious young people and it's a privilege.

And sometimes it's deliciously life-changing.

In fact, just today, I've had my first student do something pretty remarkable as a result of an assignment she completed in our Advanced Reporting class.

At the time, this student, whom I'll call Lulu, was in a long-term relationship. For her trend story, she wanted to explore local attitudes toward cohabitation before marriage. She isolated her interview pool to twentysomethings, which included a fellow who worked at a local establishment she frequented. We'll call him D.

She sat down with D. and she said the interview lasted four hours. She learned so much about this person; he became that clutch source that helped to shape her story. His candor gave her the direction and courage she needed to interview others.

Later in the semester, I asked Lulu how her relationship was going. She said things were complicated. And also, that she was mad at me. That it was all my fault, because I had assigned her a story that had made her open her eyes to the fact that D. was everything she had prayed about and hoped for.

Today, D. asked Lulu to marry him. And she said yes.

If that isn't reason to major in journalism, I don't know what is :)

Congrazzles, Lulu and D.

photocredit to Lauren's crew

The Wonder Years

The wisdom of the sitcom series "The Wonder Years," now streaming on Netflix for my procrastination enjoyment, is the parallel between the main character Kevin Arnold's coming-of-age and the U.S. as a young nation navigating some tumultuous times. If this were a literary essay, I would generously bandy about the words bildungsroman and juxtapose so that I sound very proffy indeed.

But this is not for a grade.

[showmyads]

As I rewatch Kevin Arnold fumble as an adolescent, scored by his retrospective as an adult, I see how the opposite is mostly true for me. I was not a young person who stammered or who minced words. I look back at my younger life and I regret more the things I said than the things left unspoken. As Jane Austen writes in Sense and Sensibility (This is not a literary essay? Surrrre, Kennndra.), I didn't know how to govern my tongue. I was blunt and often biting. I thought sarcasm was a high shelf brand of humor, rather than the lowest form.

There was one time in high school, in particular, when there was a boy who was interested in me, and let's be honest, I think he was interested in getting some action, which--c'mon. Barking up the wrong tree, bro.

He dropped me off after taking me to a horror film (1-800-CLICHE) and I think he was expecting something from me. So, I said. "Yeah, I think I'm gonna go inside because I just put flannel sheets on my bed."

Which to him probably meant, Oh, you guys, I can't even imagine.

But I was just over here, YAAAY, I'll be warm and toasty in my flannels all night long!

That relationship sort of fizzled a couple weeks later. What I congratulate myself for that time was a resolve to just be true to myself.

This has not been the problem, however. Being true to who I am has not been my struggle. It is more the words that I have used to convey the truths that have been so troubling. There are so many words I wish I could catch with a butterfly net and cast back into the ocean. I trust that my God can do the work I am not able to do....

Take a wild guess --who am I? ***

Yesterday Baby Girl and I were talking to one of the high schoolers who works at the gym. After the high school gal passed, Baby Girl implored, "Mama? I notice some spots on her face. Why are they still there?" I asked if she meant freckles. "No, they're red." Ah. Those are called zits, I explained, and I said that sometimes people's skin gets them but then they go away.

That was probably a poor explanation. Seriously, it was all I could do not to say, OH honey. Mommy's skin is still an oilspill in her twirties. Do you SEE this? But one thing struck me. My girl asked me privately as to the blemishes of another. There was so much wisdom in that moment and I wanted to place my girl on a conveyer belt headed toward adulthood and say, Just stay on this track of judicious and well-timed words, my sweet one. And just step to the right if others need to get by.

But she's still has a few wonder years ahead of her to figure all that out. I just pray that those who stand in front of her continue to keep her on track. And I pray that she'll allow herself to look back every now and again from whence she came.

Running my guts out

Every six months or so, I take up running again, which in this curvy petite body looks like this: For a month, I reappreciate running and all of its benefits, and for at least a couple of those weeks of running, I do not totally feel as though both my lungs are going to collapse and I am not going to have some kind of reverse-intestinal upchuck fiesta on the track. Running is a great outlet for stress but I do not live in a body that can endure running on the regular. My long history of pounding out Irish step dances has netted me ankles that are predictably unpredictable. Also, my lust for change does not a good endurance runner make.

Right now, I am back at track practice. Running my ever-loving guts out. I need running to work for me right now because the stress I am feeling is not the stuff of checklists and bills to pay. I am back on the identity carousel, trying to figure out which pony I want to be riding for this go-round before they start the ride and before the siss-boom-bah of the merry-go-round musicmaker starts playing. Is it this one? This one with the ruby reigns or this one with the long and flowing mane? Or is it that one over there that bobs higher and lower than all the rest? Or this one that just stays put for the entire ride.

I have an enviable career. I get to teach bright people in a resource-rich, spiritually-gifted community, close to where I live and where my children school. And I? Only have a master's degree.

I am oh so lucky and yet I question the stability of this when I feel so unstable. I know God's hand was in every detail of our move here. I just want to feel a touch of the divinity in what I am doing here now.

We all want to do work that matters, right? It's a universal cliche. Teaching has its rewards, but on a day-to-day basis, I see some long faces in the classroom. Teaching is a give, give, give business and the return on investment might not be known for many years henceforth. We prepare and prepare and we teach and jump around the classroom; we run our guts out. Unlike a chef or a hairstylist, our "product" is often not immediately recognizable. The reaction to learning or developing a nascent skill? Is not the same as reacting to a California sushi roll or a new body wave perm. So we teachers wait in hopeful expectation of a reaction, a response to this gift of active learning and oftentimes we get blank stares, a deep and abiding disinterest in favor of a cellphone screen, or an evaluation that says, Errrmmm, yeah, maybe you should get out of this business altogether.

I will not worship at the crumbling altar of the evaluation, but I will look inward and upward and continue to run my guts out and hope that as I make another lap around the track, this now my fourth full year of teaching college writing, that I can know that I am in the right lane, running in a fair heat, that with more training, I'll only improve my time and my stride.

Rather than grow weary, I want to grow more fit for this race and I want to know and see and experience the outcomes of this work that I believe matters.

At the end of track practice, though, I know I'm still okay. If my career dries up tomorrow, I'll still have the love of this little family. Their hugs and affirmations and little teeth to brush and deliveries of coffee when I left my mug at home are pretty amazing. I feel equal parts unworthy and totally whole as their mama/wife person. They are the ones for whom I am running this race. They keep me running strong.