Unsolicited career advice

For one of my classes, we were assigned to stand near an ATM machine for four hours and watch the people who use it. Why, you ask? I'm not entirely sure, but it has something to do with observation skills, I guess. Or maybe the professors just want to see what they can get us to do in order to get a free Ivy League master's degree. Winter assignment -- c'mon, just lick the frozen lamp post! Nothing will happen!

Anyway, I was standing on the street corner watching my ATM this afternoon. At about the 90 minute mark, a guy walked by pushing a shopping cart full of styrofoam coolers. He was kinda short and beefy and was wearing a sweat suit and a white yarmulke. He stopped and looked at me, then started the following conversation out of the blue.

Him: What are you, like 27?
Me (startled): Um, yeah.
Him: What do you do?
Me: Uh, I'm a student at Columbia. Why do you ask?
Him: I'm just curious. What are you studying?
Me (this is getting weird): Journalism.
Him: Ahhh. Your dream -- your dream is to be a reporter? (I nod). I wrote a story and sold it to the newspaper once. It was on the front page. Let me tell you something, you need to stop wasting your time. Working for someone else, you'll never get anywhere. You need to come up with a story that you think is a front page story, go out and write it and sell it to the newspaper. They'll buy it. Okay? Stop wasting your time.

And then he left, pushing his coolers. Maybe I'm just too much of a New York newbie, but I'm consistently amazed by the number of weird people around. This guy didn't even seem that crazy. He just honestly wanted to give me his unsolicited career advice.

By the way, what did I observe by standing there? Uh, lots of people use the ATM. And occasionally someone will leave their card in it when they walk away, and it'll get eaten.

Oh right, I have a blog...

The "J School" part of the ryaninjschool blog has been woefully anemic since my classes started. If you've been checking the site religiously to discover what it's like to attend journalism school, my apologies. Both for not posting, and that reading this thing is the most interesting thing you can come up with to do... :)

So, it's been pretty hectic now that class has started and I've needed to get back into the whole homework thing, after four years removed from it. All my classes look like they'll be really interesting, albeit with a LOT of reading. Along the lines of, "For next class, three days from now, read this entire book along with a good several dozen pages of dense theory." But I'm sure it will be fine, and besides it's not like I have any money to be doing much besides reading for hours at a time.

A bunch of people have asked what classes one takes in journalism school, so for anyone interested, here's a list. Everyone in my program takes Evidence and Inference (about doing research, making stories as accurate as possible, and not getting swayed by sources or personal biases) and History of Journalism for Journalists (the name says it all). I'm also taking one class dedicated to arts and culture writing (for which I've already gone to a Korean Film Festival and an exhibit on Dadaism at the Museum of Modern Art) and a course outside the J-school in 20th Century American Theater. On top of that, there's a 50-page master's thesis due in May. Now you know.

The application materials for the M.A. program I'm in said something along the lines of "applicants must dedicate an outstanding record of professional achievement" in order to be admitted. I was thinking that covering the school board and kids making gingerbread houses for four years was probably not what they were after, but I got in, so I guess I was doing something right. The fact that I was accepted made me think that the "outstanding achievement" they were looking for had less to do with an impressive resume than I had worried about. However, the resumes of my classmates pretty much fall in line with what I thought in the beginning, when I thought no one who wrote about middle school food fights would get in.

An partial list of where some of the other 32 people in the program worked last year:

Wall Street Journal
Newsweek (three people!)
San Francisco Chronicle
Times of India
China Daily
Slate
Reuters London Bureau

There are a few people from non-world-famous publications, but no one from anywhere as tiny as the Daily Hampshire Gazette. So I feel pretty lucky to be here. However, there are three former Gazette people that I know (two interns and one of my fellow reporters) in the other program at the J-school, so I guess we're impressing someone.

Another question people like to ask is "what's your roommate like?" I have to be honest -- I really don't know. I hardly ever see him or talk to him, even though he's usually here closed up in his room. The other day we had an actual five-minute conversation, the first time we'd said more than Hi to each other in a few weeks. But that's fine -- I'd rather live with someone a little odd and quiet than loud and obnoxious.

Truth, Justice, All that Stuff

At the end of the summer, I went to Six Flags New England, finally using the free passes I'd won at the office Christmas party eight months earlier. Stupidly, I wore my T-shirt into the water park, then it cooled off and I was freezing. So I bought a Superman T-shirt at the gift shop to change into.

It's just the standard blue shirt with the "S" logo on the front. I've seen people wearing them all over the place, so it didn't strike me as particulary unusual or amusing. But apparently, the Superman shirt really strikes a chord with people in New York.

I wore it the other day and no less than four people on the street called out comments about it. An old man walked by and said "Hey, Superman! Can you fly, Superman?" Two little kids stopped playing when I walked by and looked to be in awe. "It's Superman!" they said, exchanging glances with each other. Even a homeless guy in a wheelchair called out from across the street, "Superman! Superman! Superman! Got any change for the bus, Superman?"

I'm at a loss to explain this reaction. I don't think any of these people were making fun of me for wearing a goofy shirt, they just genuinely seemed interested in my $15 purchase. I am a mild-mannered reporter who's somewhat awkward, and do have dark hair and glasses, but no one was calling out "Hey, Clark Kent!"

Suggested explanations welcome.

I still exist...

So it's been over a month since the last time I updated this thing. Where have I been? Here:

My apartment:

The Journalism School:


The Columbia Campus:



More to come soon....