School and Education

It’s that time of year again! Even if you graduated from college too many years ago to count, we figure it never hurts to rely upon sage commencement speeches for a job search pick me up.

This one, however, struck a chord: Not only is it different, it’s realistic! And no, it wasn’t part of a real speech though the author wishes someone would have told it like it is to the Class of 1988. The Wall Street Journal published an adapted piece by Charles Wheelan based on his book, 10 1/2 Things No Commencement Speaker Has Ever Said.

For instance, he implied some of your worst days are ahead of you! “Graduation is a happy day,” he wrote. “But my job is to tell you that if you are going to do anything worthwhile, you will face periods of grinding self-doubt and failure. Be prepared to work through them.”

Although it’s a grim reality, sometimes reassurance is helpful. Yes, the job search or career reinvention time is grueling and tough but the key is expecting it won’t be a walk in the park and deciding to continue walking ahead anyway.

In another point, Wheelan ascribed to the notion of not trying to be great. “Being great involves luck and other circumstances beyond your control. The less you think about being great, the more likely it is to happen,” Whelan wrote in his book which will be released on May 7.

The man has a point. Instead of focusing so much on being great and making strides, focus on the strides themselves. Enjoy the journey, not the destination and you might be very well surprised!

In another tip, he pointed out we shouldn’t take anything for granted. Although morbid, if you get hit by a bus tomorrow would you have any regrets? Better yet, he offered this advice: “And the important corollary: Does this path lead to a life I will be happy with and proud of in 10 or 20 years if I don’t get hit by a bus?” Just some food for thought.

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In this piece for The Atlantic Wire, journalism student school alumnus Alex Abad-Santos calls Jeff Jarvis a “lanky guy who barely fills out his suit,” “Dumbledore or Gandalf,” “a soothsayer,” and “a guy who must have the last word.”

Others quoted in the piece say he’s a shameless self-promoter, a fast-talker, frenetic, smart, and Doc Brown from Back to the Future.

One thing’s for sure: being in his class sounds nuts.

He teaches entrepreneurial journalism for the CUNY graduate school of journalism, and students either love it or hate it.

“There’s a syllabus, it’s loose but there is one,” Collin Orcutt, a 2009 graduate, told Abad-Santos. “You practice your “elevator pitch” every day and we talked about business models every day…And how to make yourself and your business sustainable.”

When Jarvis originally proposed his course, all but one of the members of the school’s curriculum committee (composed of students and faculty) voted for it. The lone dissenter told Abad-Santos: “I found his proposal for the entrepreneurial program at CUNY to be half-finished and didn’t seem to show what the students would be doing, exactly, except listening to him…like a TED talk except you pay for it.”

He’s got a good track record, though: right about Twitter, right about entrepreneurial journalism (so far), and he’s got tons of former students who think he’s more than just a shameless self-promoter. Sign us up.

Two posts today highlight the importance of getting started early if you want a job in journalism…the advice here could apply to any media industry, though.

Clay Duda at Center for Sustainable Journalism writes that “my biggest regret is letting graduation sneak up on me as quick as it did….the earlier you can start networking the better.”

So if you’re heading back to J-school (or any school) this fall, start thinking about making those connections. You don’t want to wait until graduation.

Mindy McAdams, a journalism professor at the University of Florida, saw Duda’s post and concurred. “From my observations as a j-school professor, a lot of students have this problem. Graduation seems to sneak up on them suddenly, and then they feel a terrible panic.”

What can you do? Besides networking, she says, get in the habit of checking job boards (she names Journalismjobs.com, Poynter.org, and mediabistro.com–woo hoo!). Try to notice patterns in what skills are listed as requirements for the jobs. Then go and get those skills.

Don’t wait til next spring, folks!

Journalism professor Dan Reimold is disturbed by what he sees as a new trend: student journalists using Twitter to find and contact sources.

What’s wrong with them? Well, Reimold says, the character limits and public-by-necessity messages make the Tweeted introductions “resemble public cattle calls more than courteous private introductions.”

Reimold goes on to explain how these messages could be done better—they should be personalized rather than blasted to 50 people at once, they should be DMed (if possible), and they should be professional.

Here’s the thing. We (that’s the royal we here) use Twitter to contact sources all the time, usually as a last resort for those sources that didn’t pick up the phone or respond to our email. We like to think we send personalized, professional messages no matter the medium.

And that’s the thing: a student journalist who thinks its OK to send 50 messages that just read “Hi, I’m a journalism student, I’m working on a story. Up for a chat?” is going to think it’s OK to send 50 messages by email too (probably CCing all 50 people as she does so). Twitter isn’t overly rude; it’s just a medium. It’s what you do with it that matters.

Are you one of them? If not, why not?

Here’s @PRSarahEvans getting ready to introduce the first session: Social Engagement for Businesses and Brands.

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So far there’s a rockin’ discussion going on both in the live chat and the asynchronous forums.

Yes this might be a tiny little but we’re legitimately psyched about the course.

What’s the one thing many employers say they look for in new hires? New media skills. But you need to know more than just blogging and Tweeting, people. The key to staying ahead is to be able to optimize your company’s content through search and viral marketing to bring in the largest number of eyeballs possible.

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Patch, AOL’s hyperlocal blog network, has faced extensive skepticism and criticism since it began its lofty goal of having the largest online local news network in the country. But it just keeps on growing, and in another move to help increase its presence, the company has launched PatchU.

By working with 13 local universities across the country, the site will allow students a chance to work on stories for class by publishing on the Patch network. Also, internships will be available at various Patch sites and it will help teach students about new media business models, according to paidContent.

“Our continuing rapid growth gives us an incredible opportunity to provide cutting edge, real-world experience in various communities across the country to students who will become tomorrow’s editors and reporters, at Patch and elsewhere,” said Patch president Warren Webster in a press release. “We’re delighted to offer students the chance to learn alongside our outstanding editors and develop their skills in multimedia journalism at the community level.”

The company got some big-league journalism schools to sign onto the project, including Northwestern University, Missouri University and University of California-Berkeley. It’s not exactly like getting a story in the New York Times, but just another example of the shifting media landscape.

CNN wants to create a new university online using its iReport. No, it’s not actually building a whole new school, but it does plan on picking talent from other universities across the world.

The site journalism.co.uk reports that CNN will do a worldwide search for students to help with its iReport by teaming up with a number of schools to find five seniors from each to help with a new site called iReport University. CNN told journalism.co.uk that it has set its sites on 13 schools, but none in the U.S. because it already has a school partnership in the states. Still, why leave U.S. schools out in the cold on this one?

The winning students will get to develop stories for the new site, and will receive feedback from CNN editors.

“The ability to find a good story is the start of good journalism, The aim of our initiative is to offer practical experience to better equip today’s most promising journalism students to move seamlessly into the world of reporting and producing once they have graduated,” said director of participation for CNN.com Lila King in release announcing the initiative.

Sounds like decent exposure for the upcoming college grad.

More than half of respondents to the Wall Street Journal’s poll of 479 college recruiters said that the skill grads lack most is a combination of critical thinking, problem solving skills and the ability to think independently, the WSJ reports.

This isn’t to say that new grads are dumb. On the contrary: Sara Holoubek, chief executive of Luminary Labs, a boutique consulting firm in New York, says that the new grads she hires are more observant than their bosses. But they have trouble turning their observations into a strategy, she adds.

So schools are changing curricula to focus on critical and analytical thinking skills. George Washington University’s school of arts and sciences is changing its science requirement: “Freshmen will no longer simply complete a science class and get credit for a required course. They’ll have to prove proficiency in scientific reasoning to pass. To measure that, professors are designing evaluation standards and assignments to test students on their reasoning skills.”

The WSJ adds though that it’s not certain that today’s grads are lacking anything. It simply may be that the modern workplace demands more from everyone.

In the meantime, think hard. Employers like it.

Finally some of those big-state schools get a little respect. According to a survey by the Wall Street Journal, recruiters favored schools with larger populations over the more prestigious Ivy Leagues.

The recession hit all aspects of business life, including the recruiters. Because of the downturn, recruiters had to cut costs and work more efficiently at finding the right candidate to fill a specific job post. And they found the larger schools that also teach “practical skills” transitioned quicker and smoother for their organizations, according to the WSJ.

“We’re all accountable to the bottom line,” said recruiting leader at Deloitte LLP Diane Borhani.

Coming in at the top choice, according to the survey was Pennsylvania State University, followed by Texas A&M University and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The Ivy League schools didn’t fall into the top five, although recruiters did say they still recruit from the schools. And in specific industries, some Ivy League schools ranked high, like Harvard (4) in business and economics.

Not exactly a surprise, but also many of the Ivy League graduates attend post-graduate school, holding off their search.

Guess that expensive Ivy League tuition might not be all it’s cracked up to be in times of economic turmoil. But I’m sure the graduates will do just fine anyways.

Photo by j.gresham