Instead he became angry at me for some perceived slight, and didn’t follow up on my suggestions. I offered him several suggestions, even wrote a letter of introduction intended to get him started in free-lance work for an advertising agency that undoubtedly would have hired him. A former student once was out looking for mass media work. Yes, you will, unless you’re the new Mozart or Einstein. You will need others to achieve your goals. It just doesn’t cut it in the real world of mass media. Blah-blah-blah might get you by as a Dilbert-esque manager. I’ve had a number of students who constantly talked about the great pictures they took, or the great articles they wrote, or the great research they were doing-but I never actually saw their published photo, an article in print or a research presentation from them. The way to do that is to produce on deadline-for the Spectrum, as an intern, or in a class. You need to prove that you can produce on deadline. In the mass media biz, the mediocre writer who cranks out four stories a day, on time, is more valuable than the good writer who produces one a week. In fact, in our commercialized society, you need to actually produce something that will sell-either free-lance, or through an employer. I think a lot of us don’t realize that very few people are going to pay other people for sitting around doing whatever the moment moves them to do. Well, you can dream of being president of the United States, too, if you want, but if you take no steps to make your dream come true, you only annoy me and your friends by carping about how poor you can’t get the job because everybody’s out against you. Are you submitting free-lance articles to local magazines? No time, got to work at my Burger King job. Are you trying to intern at a local television station? No. How are you preparing for them? Are you writing sports for the Spectrum? No. Over and over again I talk to beginning mass communication students, or even glib seniors, who declare they want to “work as a television sportscaster,” or “write a column for a national magazine.” Okay, great, I say, these are lofty goals, but doable. One explanation seems to in the way some people think of themselves and their place in the world.
Why do some students achieve so much success as graduates, while others seem to always miss the boat? It’s not only high grades, for sure. While I can’t attest to the examples he gave from his background in law and show business, I do see similar mistakes played out again and again in university students. Stein produced a magazine article entitled “Mistakes Winners Don’t Make.” In his “sermon,” as he called it, he described traits he saw over and over again in losers-that is, people who don’t achieve their goals.
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