My college classes, ten years later.

Ten years later, my experience at the University of Florida is still eating shit.

I graduated from college ten years ago, and if you read my old blog at all, you’d know that I sort of characterized my time there as, more or less, an absolute nightmare in every conceivable way. To put it lightly.

In honor of the dubious anniversary, I thought I’d look back on some of the most prominent aspects of college and see if my complaints still hold up. Maybe my opinion has changed with ten years of hindsight. By that I mean, maybe the experiences were even worse than I remember.

Starting with the courses themselves, I actually found them to be mostly fine. I was an undeclared major for a long time, eventually graduating from the journalism school. While I had individual complaints here and there, overall, my studies themselves were probably the least offensive aspect of the whole college experience. There was nothing life-changing there, and they’ll never make a Dead Poets Society after any of my professors, but they mostly did a perfectly serviceable job teaching perfectly typical university material.

What I couldn’t predict, unfortunately, was just how embarrassingly ill-equipped UF would leave me to start a career in journalism. I say this as someone working in the industry despite UF’s education, not because of it. Yes, the courses were mostly informative and taught competently. No, memorizing textbook facts and figures does not lead to gainful employment.

I graduated having never once reported anything, interviewed anybody, written or fact checked a news story, edited copy, studied or analyzed current news, worked with photos, video, or other media relating to journalism, researched anything, or worked in or around a newsroom environment. Ever. There were no labs, projects, fieldwork, or anything more elaborate than half-assed group PowerPoint presentations. The most we did was learn “about” journalism, the same way anyone could learn about any topic by reading a book or watching a YouTube video.

My degree was technically in “telecommunication,” under the journalism umbrella. No, I don’t know what the degree encompasses. Couldn't even tell you what the word means.

It’s not that I wasn’t paying attention, or that I’ve forgotten the lessons. I was a straight-A student who barely missed a class in four years. I spent a lot of time and energy trying to get through it. And for my trouble, I graduated knowing nothing about working in the real world.

The classes in my degree track were lecture-based. ALL of them. The professors would present material, you’d take notes, and at the end you’d sit for final exams. Maybe write a research paper or two. Nothing else. They were not prerequisites for anything further. There were no hands-on activities, no internship-type opportunities (that I didn’t seek out on my own), nothing to approximate any kind of real-world journalism career at all. We did not MAKE or PRODUCE or EXPERIENCE or CONNECT WITH anything — news-related or not.

It’d be excusable if all of these courses were at least interesting and enjoyable. They weren’t.

I had all the typical subjects, like American history and English, economics and science. But I also had three different social media classes whose only goal was to teach us (millennials) how to use Twitter. There was the politics discussion section that quizzed us on the president’s name. The Spanish class whose online textbook was broken three-quarters of the time. An astronomy class that never once had us look at the real night sky! An anthropology class where we were instructed to play a less-complex version of rock-paper-scissors as a learning game, but not told what we were supposed to be learning (and it was NOT part of any world culture). There was a sociology professor who would constantly show the class a photo of a baby and ask for commentary about it — while we all stayed absolutely silent. I took acting for fun and we spent the entire semester warming up. Oh, and there was the summer I spent alone in a university dorm taking a single writing class that turned out to already be covered by my AP credit.

I’m not complaining about easy courses or strange professors; every college has them. Everyone’s experienced wacko people doing weird stuff. But this is ALL there was. There was never a point where I transitioned over to the “real” work, the “real” journalism. Never a moment where I thought, "Oh, this is what I'm here to learn!"

So why should I have moved across the state and paid thousands of dollars a semester to sit in a classroom and be lectured at? What’s the point of pursuing a diploma when a YouTube video or podcast can cover all of the same lessons, and beyond, in a more entertaining way, for free, anytime I want? Just say you went to any school you want, nobody checks. Any replacement-level univerity can teach textbook material and test students on it. Community college can do that. High school can do that. An app can do that. None of that leads to being employable in an actual career.

I’m no expert, but it seems to me you have a research university that is 150 years old, attended by tens of thousands of students, attracting professors from all over the world, calling itself the “flagship” Florida school — “the Harvard of the South.” You’d think that when dozens of journalism Ph. Ds are convening in one place to imbue their lives’ work upon eager students, they might have had a little more to offer than the same curriculum you can get from the University of Phoenix. Like, maybe, you know, working in actual news production in ANY capacity. Maybe putting together some kind of portfolio that could’ve helped me get ANY job. I work in radio now — while UF still doesn't have a student radio station. Just pathetic.

This is the point where the vultures will emerge from the woodwork to tell me that I should’ve “taken initiative,” “reached out to people,” “been proactive,” “worked harder,” or been more “competitive” or “ambitious.” No. Those are specific personality traits of a certain type-A personality that not everyone possesses. People not like that will already be at a disadvantage in job prospects; they shouldn’t be shut out of a career opportunity because they “only” did exactly what was expected of them and nothing more.

I attended the school, passed the classes, earned high grades, paid attention, and did everything asked of me. I’m not saying that should guarantee me a fellowship with The New York Times, but if I’m paying the money and showing up and following the degree track exactly as directed, I think it’s the school’s responsibility to give me one iota of a chance to get a foot in the door. ANYWHERE.

What was I talking about? Oh yeah, the classes. They were whatever. ✍︎

P.S. If you want to know more about any of this, feel free to read Nonsense Report. You'd be its first reader in a decade!