Each fall we host several hundred students from across the region for a day on the Samford campus. We bring in industry leaders, mix them with our faculty and try to give the high school students a day of fun and a little learning.
Here are a few pictures.
Dr. Dennis Jones talks about newspaper design:
Samford alumnae, and CBS 42 reporter, Kaitlin McCulley leads a large session on broadcast reporting:
Kyle Whitmire, who recently joined The Birmingham News and al.com, talks about online journalism to this group:
Samford’s senior photographer, Caroline Summers talks about digital photojournalism. (Naturally I take a shaky picture of this.)
Birmingham News business reporter Marty Swant discusses intermediate reporting.
Finally, and joined in progress, here is Dr. Julie Williams, who leads a session on beginning writing. She illustrates her first point by making peanut butter sandwiches. The people in the session have to help her.
What you don’t see is their order to open the bread. She grabs the back and rips it apart, flinging the bread everywhere. They tell her to tear off a paper towel, and she pinches off a corner of one sheet.
I edited that on my phone, while walking from one building to the next. This technology still amazes me.
There were other sessions, but they were all opposite mine, so I could not visit them. I talked about building an organization, staffing the newsroom and the various challenges and successes you have in school newsrooms. It was so gripped my room stayed three extra minutes.
It was a late night. About 2:30 or 3 this morning, I think, when they finished their newspaper. Much faster than the first night last year. Not as fast as they’ll be later in the year, of course. And of course time doesn’t matter so much. Work on it until the sun rises if it means the quality is good.
And the first paper is pretty good. This is a young staff, with only one returning section editor from last year. They’re learning as they go, and we’ll make sure they learn a lot. But for a first edition, this is promising. You can see it online here.
We had our first critique meeting just after lunch today. Four members of the editorial staff were there, and we laughed and told jokes and asked questions about this or that in the paper. There are errors to correct, but there are many things to brag on. Later in the day they received compliments from two big titles in the university’s administration. That’s a nice pat on the back, too.
Spent part of the afternoon unpacking a few new cameras for the department.
We have added a large handful of new high definition equipment this year. When they handed me this part of my job a few years ago it was a mess. As of today we are an all-HD shop.
A great plan from the faculty, great support from the university’s administration and attention to detail have made it happen. The digital video center is a part of the program we are proud of.
Hard working students, smart planning among the faculty and an administration that is taking part. No wonder Samford is a great place to work.
Pretty, too. This is one of our lovely buildings, as the afternoon is winding down:
And this is west campus, from Talbird Circle, looking back toward Seibert Hall:
This came up on Twitter. Someone we know from Alabama, and from Auburn, is back at Alabama for law school. But before she returned to Tuscaloosa she came to visit the Cumberland School of Law at Samford. She’s jealous, but, you know, they are all beautiful campuses.
Chick-fil-A now wants your name, for when your order is ready. The guy at the cash register asked. Threw me for a loop. Why does everyone need my name? This is probably a good idea at lunchtime. For now I hope I can hear them over the din of the … three people in here at dinner.
Also that manager is working. That guy. You know the one; he moonlights as security at concerts so he can get his authority on. One night I saw him almost work his way into a fistfight over what time he closed his store. He’s a bit aggressive with his employees, too. Just a bit intense for a chicken place.
Remember, during the week of Chick-fil-A Week of Free Publicity, that after the I Eat Mor Chickun campaign, there was to be a kiss-in after that. Some wondered if that would devolve into a nasty scene. If there were going to be fisticuffs it wouldn’t have surprised me to learn it involved him.
Here’s why you love Chick-fil-A, though: the guy who took my order gave me a coupon for a free sandwich for the delay. I’d waited an eternity, three minutes.
More rehab tonight. I’m sore, but that’s more muscle sore than injury sore. Seems I can easily overdo it, that’s progress. So, yes, let’s do that again.
And then I did an hour of intervals on a bike, clocking 19.5 miles and showing watts and METs I don’t understand. I’m just waiting for the muscle spasms to go away. A few days after that — I have to make sure they aren’t trying to trick me — then I’ll try to really ride again. It has been a while, but my shoulder says no rush. So far I’ve been inclined to agree, which seems odd. I try not to think about it.
Sounds you don’t want to hear at your surgeon’s office: an electric drill.
Not just a drill powering a bit pushing a screw through wood, but that screeching screw in a knot and the drill doesn’t have enough mustard to force it through sound of shrillness.
That was late today. One of the ortho’s assistants was impressed to note I was not in a brace, but it has been a while. She didn’t know the case. She did tell me to be careful climbing onto the examination bed, so maybe she did know the case.
Anyway, took another X-ray. The doctor asked me to raise my hand over my head, I can. He asked me to put my hand behind my head. I can. He said he was pleased with my progress and that I was making an excellent recovery.
I told him I’ve felt pretty good the last few days, at least when I don’t overdo it. I’m having muscle spasms, but we think that might be the driving.
He told me the pain will go away by Christmas.
In happier news, I work on a beautiful campus:
That’s A. Hamilton Reid Chapel, which I’ve posted here a few times before. It was built in the image of the first Baptist church built in the Americas which was, apparently, in Rhode Island. You can see the resemblance.
The coolest science video you’ll see today, where a Stanford scientist explains how his team’s research is besting steroid-enhanced performance.
“What we can do” he says in the video, “by extracting heat from one hand, is we can dramatically improve performance.”
So we’re all re-purposing our ice chests this weekend, right?
Any day that starts with fruit and grading can’t be bad, right? I think so. Also, apple slices are delicious.
I’m a phase eater. Sometimes I eat a lot. And then, for a brief while, I’ll eat very little. There’s nothing consistent about it, except when I’m in the habit of eating the same things over and over. Lately I’ve been on a fruit kick, which is not particularly interesting to anyone but me, and only then given how many bad-for-me things I typically ingest.
There is a boy in my family who apparently reminds me of me — how he talks and walks and laughs — and I think, “Poor kid.” And then I text his mother and say “If he is like me tell him to study harder and eat fewer candy bars.”
“Enjoy more grapes.”
So I had a small fruit tray for breakfast and graded quizzes this morning. I had lunch with one of our recent grads. We had barbecue, my first ever trip to Saw’s. It is a small little place in a roadside strip mall. There are maybe eight tables inside, we had the corner window. The lady at the register is managing chaos, but thanks everyone who writes out a tip. It doesn’t feel particularly clean, but you can’t make respectable barbecue in a place that aces the health code rules.
A young man brings out your lunch on paper plates. They leave you alone otherwise, despite the lunch crowd and the few tables. There are framed newspaper articles and magazine covers on every inch of the walls. There are license plates above the doors. It is all a thin and perfectly random homage to a sub-genre of food.
Longtime readers know barbecue would be the center of all of my food streaks if it were actually healthy. All things in moderation though, even slow cooked, pulled pork.
Back on campus I had a brief meeting with the editor to discuss distribution patterns and then a visit with my chair, who’s the nicest guy around, and some students about various student things. I wrote plenty of emails.
The guy that can fix my office phone called my cell. He stopped by near the end of the day. This is what he did: glanced at my phone, followed the path of the two cords coming out of it with his eyes, picked one up and plugged it into the wall.
The phone paused, lit up and turned on.
Naturally, I feel like a dope. Turns out he’d had to do some electrical work in a panel in a Jeffries tube somewhere in the building. He did that after I called to complain that my phone wouldn’t work. I didn’t know that, and hadn’t thought to test the highly technical technique of plugging the phone back in to see if it was working this week where it did not last week.
So I spent a few minutes playing with the settings. Turns out you can run your computer off this phone. You can both phone home and phone the Internet from this Cisco IP device. It does not have the ringtone from 24, however. I’m sure there’s a way to do — yes there is.
The engineer that fixed the phone left his notebook in my office. It looked important, so I called his office and someone was still there. He answered his phone, on this same server networked phone. Sounded like he was standing in my doorway.
Pin drop nothing, I could hear the creases in his slacks settling.
So I walked the book over, because this is one thing the phone won’t do. The phone guy will thank me in the morning.
He’ll send an email, no doubt.
Hot day today, even into the evening. I believe she had the right idea:
She does it, her owner said, more than he would like. But the fountains at Samford are just so tempting.
Burr and Forman, by the way, are not buried beneath that fountain. That is a large regional law firm. Some 55 of their lawyers graduated from Samford with their undergrad or with their JD from Cumberland.
Tulane is here. They’ve taken refuge 250 miles inland so they can continue their last week of preseason preparation without worrying about Hurricane Isaac. They did this a few years ago, too.
We see them around in the hallways and in the cafeteria. These are big guys. I mean, the football players Pat Sullivan brings into Samford these days are large men — one almost accidentally knocked me over with a blind swat of his hand and I’m not a shrimp — but that’s Samford. Tulane is another thing altogether. Every one of their guys are hosses. And that’s only Tulane.
But it is nice to have them here — I don’t know what they are doing with the rest of their day, presumably studying and resting in a hotel somewhere — but they are going about the business of football practice in the morning.
There’s a guy down there, somewhere in that picture, who is calling out the stretches. He sounds exactly like Farmer Fran in Waterboy:
Anyway, a lot of meetings today. We had a lunch meeting with the office of communication and some of the student journalists. It has become an annual tradition, the pros getting to know the students. They talk about what they do, beg the students to call them at all hours of the night rather than get something wrong, and so on. They give them tips and feed them lunch. They, so kindly, offer to let the students copy and paste their press releases.
Later I explain why they won’t ever do that.
There was a meeting with a few of the editors, and then a sales meeting with the new ad managers.
I had to catch up with some faculty and do staff things. Then there was another meeting that didn’t happen, but will take place next week. I’m not sure, but I might have had a meeting about a meeting. And so on.
Dinner at Dreamland with Stephen. It had been so long since I’ve been there that I almost forgot where to make the turns. I ended up in a residential area and rolled down my window, thinking I would sniff my way to the ribs. This was not a good idea.
Naturally we had banana pudding.
Football season is upon us and I’m posting photographs we found last week while sifting through archives in Auburn University’s collection in honor of this most festive time of the year. This is Ralph “Shug” Jordan who was the beloved Auburn coach from 1951 to 1971. The back of the photograph says he’s posing with “a special fan.”
It could be Aubie. He finally came to life during the basketball season in 1979 and Jordan died in the summer of 1980. And the print of Aubie’s coat looks familiar to his original look. So we’ll call it Aubie. That’s Rep. Barry Mask, then.
