This is about 25% of my class of 35 students. Comm 100 is a course designed to help students successfully navigate their way through the School of Communication by pointing out key faculty and staff, learn the names of those who provide boots on the ground support to students. And it’s also designed so that students will have a greater degree of confidence upon completion. I make sure those important points are covered as well, but that’s not my only job. I want to infuse in them a passion for communications be it journalism, film and digital media, general communications and advertising and public relations. I dare them to write well, to get up and freely express their ideas with no judgment, to learn to critically examine the world around them and truly pay attention because awe and wonder are everywhere. This class lends itself to departing from a syllabus if something better comes along that is scheduled for that day. Loyola students are strong academically and competitive. I don’t always think that’s a good combination. Some students want to know precisely what it takes to earn an A grade. Because this course is pass/fail, I beat a different drum. For a semester, a grade be damned and instead, I insist we focus on learning in joyous form, learning for learning’s sake. I want them to get to know each other. I want them to establish friendships and long-lasting relationships. People in our discipline are always a bit nervous about employment prospects after school. Teachers may have told them things are bleak. Moms and dads read about the collapse of media. They perhaps spoke to a burned-out professional. The truth of the matter is this: there has never been a better time to be a communications student. The opportunities grow by the month. Many of these students will create their own jobs. By week four they loosen up because they suspect what I tell them is true. Finally, learning should be a kick in the pants. Laughing out loud is always rewarded somehow. Mocking me is fine, too, provided there’s some creativity involved. I aspire to help students to understand that being them is more than good enough. Laugh with each other. Maybe cry about the all-to-real examples of total and complete unfairness others endure. Perhaps stopping to honor an act of kindness from afar. I tend to keep up with my Comm 100 students. When it’s time to graduate, they will be ready for their teachers to unleash them onto the world with the charge of living with courage and serving others. It happens less often than it used to, but damn, I’m not dead yet and I’m as passionate as ever about teaching and learning and hanging out with smart and really fine young adults. I have such a privileged position. I’ve never hid my strongest motive from students. I want to make a difference in their lives. Heck I even want them to owe me something like visiting me in the nursing home when I’m running from the nurses with underpants on my head. I suspect this is going to be a great semester.
Category: Uncategorized
AppThemes, where the customer comes last
Need help? Good luck. No phones, faxes, email, text, smoke signals. Just because a business is in the tech sector, doesn’t mean it can ignore its customers and send them into the abyss of “THE FORUMS” Sorry guys, not good enough. I just paid $100 for one of your products and another $100 or so to your “PREFERRED HOSTING VENDOR.” It’s no different if I buy a $200 tire and it blows out two blocks away. I’d need to talk to someone and so would you. So how are you guys different from the blown up tire guys? Hey Jimmy, this dude just blew out a tire. No problem, send him to the forums. http://www.appthemes.com/
Global Support Team
Get exclusive access to our customer support forum, tutorials, and more. Our support team is multilingual & globally dispersed for a balanced layer of customer coverage.
Chinese New Year Fireworks, 3O second finale
Chinese New Year, The Horse from ralph braseth on Vimeo.
It’s called Spring Festival by the Chinese. The holiday started last night and will end this year on Valentine’s day. The Lunar New Year, another name for the new year, is not a Chinese-only affair. Within the next 3O days, Korea, Vietnam, Japan and other Asian countries will join in the celebration of the new year. In total, almost two billion people recognize the Spring Festival. Happy New Year all y’all.
Sports TV at Loyola University Chicago
These are my dogs, the 40 or so students who crank it out week after week. This is also the TV show that Keith Kimmons built. I advise students regarding the content of the show, but shows never get off the ground without technical chops and getting students up to speed so they can take over the technical aspects of the show. Keith is never far from the student’s minds. The students viewed Keith as a the leader of this group. And so he was. And we miss him.
Gentle Snow
A wheel just fell off the Apple cart
Apple posted quarterly earnings today to the disappointment of Wall Street, but no real surprise. You can argue the point, but Apple is an aging computer hardware company. Margins are beginning to drop and prices will begin to fall as people figure out great design doesn’t mean performance and certainly not at the premium Apple has been charging for a decade. The days when Apple can release the newest version of its iPhone every 16 months are gone. Say hello to the new competition that hails from Korea. There are more than 100 notebooks out there competing with the iPad. Are they as good? A better question is are they good enough at a third of the price? Wait, what’s that sound, I should have known, it’s Google eating Apple’s lunch.
Apple maps along with Siri completely suck. Second rate trash. Not even second rate. Apple, a hardware store with fancy exterior designs that will lose their appeal and utility over time. Google wins by a landslide. Did I mention Apple, aka Mac is trash?
Overheard at the bike gala
The First Playboy Club
Palmolive Building from ralph braseth on Vimeo.
The Palmolive is one of the most distinctive and beautiful in the city. It sits in the heart of Streeterville within spitting distance of the Drake and Knickerbocker hotels just off Lake Michigan. At one point it was the tallest structure in the neighborhood and the searchlight atop the building used to attract lots of attention to the Playboy Club, the very first Playboy Club which opened up in this building in 1962. Can you imagine the parties? More on this at another time, but it wasn’t merely a sexy club with sexy bunnies, it was a status symbol for the established and the up and comers. Another story for another time as well, Chicago’s well heeled black community joined their wealthy brethren at the Playboy Club. Hugh Hefner wasn’t anywhere nearly as interested in black and white as he was green. Don’t for a second think the Playboy Club was first and foremost a capitalist venture. Hefner printed money.


