American businesses are anti-intellectual. American universities are anti-relevance. The gods help the overeducated schmuck stuck in the middle. Hi. I’m Sam, and I’m a PhD. Hi Sam! For those of you who don’t know me, I have a doctorate. Communication, University of Colorado, 1999. Some days it’s the thing I have done in life that I’m most proud of. Other
Read moreAdler calls out her attackers. But winning a battle isn’t the same as winning the war. I noted last month the latest in the University of Colorado administration’s ongoing campaign to completely destroy the school’s reputation, as it sought to fire Dr. Patti Adler for daring to teach deviance in her class on, well, deviance. There’s good news. The professional
Read moreIt just hit me. Teachers are underpaid, undersupported and unrespected. As a result, our educational system is in the tank. If there were a simple way of increasing everybody’s respect for teachers and boosting their pay to a level commensurate with their value, American education would very quickly be number one in the world again. The solution:
Read moreCU shoots itself in the dick again, devaluing its reputation and my degree even more. Oh, good. The University of Colorado is in the news again. There is, of course, disagreement over what exactly the school is and is not doing and what Professor Adler did and did not do. Since I wasn’t there, I can’t say for certain. Here’s
Read moreHopefully this will be an example to all those corrupt professors responsible for NCAA football cheating. Our friend Otherwise called this one to my attention. Former UNC professor charged HILLSBOROUGH, N.C. — A former professor at the center of an academic scandal involving athletes at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has been charged with a felony, accused
Read moreFor years my career has revolved around solving communication problems. One of my specific charges has been to “make the complex simple.” I’ve played along because many of the companies I’ve dealt with (not all, but a majority) think this way. When they do, boat rocking and cage rattling is rarely a winning strategy for advancement. But the truth is
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The original plan when we began this project was to offer the amendments individually, invite discussion, then produce a final document. The course of the process, though, has made a couple things clear. First, there needs to be a period to discuss the entire document in context, and second, while the original “Bill of Rights” approach perhaps had a certain
Read moreEarlier this week I received the distressing news that one of my fraternity brothers, Jose Fernandez, was dead. Jose – aka Joe – was in my pledge class, a small group that somehow earned a reputation for … underachievement? To be sure, we had our share of fuck-ups. But we also proved, when all was said and done, that were a
Read moreBack when I was growing up “graduation” meant one thing: high school. Well, it could mean college, in theory, but in my old neighborhood college was generally something that happened to other people. Mainly, though, it meant that a kid had somehow stuck it out, avoiding pregnancy and resisting the intoxicating allure of a lucrative career bagging groceries or helping
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I recently came across a useful article over at Ragan’s PR Daily entitled “What to wear to work in the PR and marketing industry.” After reading through it, my first reaction was that it was mistitled – what it offers is good advice for what to wear to work in just about any industry. From where I sit now, there’s nothing
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I wrote my first poem when I was a senior at Ledford High School in Wallburg, NC. It was called “Octoberfaust,” and while it wasn’t a terribly good poem, it wasn’t bad for a 17 year-old having his first crack at something brand new. My English teacher, a guy named Jim Booth, whom S&R readers may have heard of, was
Read moreI saw this on Facebook today and thought it might be something that others would want to consider. If all the teachers enduring these problems quit, how much trouble will we be in?
Read moreOn Sunday, the University of Colorado fired head football coach Jon Embree after two seasons. Reaction has been mixed and at times heated. Some point to the results, noting not only the 4-21 record but also suggesting that the program was actually regressing. Others argued that Embree inherited a dumpster fire from previous coach Dan Hawkins and that it was
Read moreEverybody seems to be so negative about campaign season. They hate the ads, they hate the mudslinging, they hate the lying, they hate the candidates. Not me – I LOVE campaign season. Why? Because it’s an opportunity to learn stuff that not only didn’t I know before, but that I’d never learn any other way.
Read moreTwo roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. While I’ve never conducted formal research on the question, it has always seemed to me that America’s favorite poem is Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken.” (AmericanPoems.com says it’s number three, and frankly, I’d like a look at their
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lullaby pit 