Making better people.

 

I was attending a tech training event when someone asked me what my goal as a professor was.  Since he was probably expecting me to say something like - I want to teach them how to develop creative briefs, he was shocked when I said that my goal was to make my students better people.

 

When I began teaching 17 years ago I realized that I was lucky if I remembered one thing from any of the classes I had taken in college.  So I asked myself - if I want students to remember one thing what would it be?  Since I was teaching advertising the answer was - Does it make me want to buy something?  Given the tendency to evaluate advertising as entertainment, just this simple reframing opened the door to new observations.

 

I'm not sure at what point I began to realize that my students were in fact children.  Perhaps it was after a few years of fielding their creative excuses for not doing their assignments.  My favorite: "The cruise ship didn't have Word." 

 

Therefore, I wasn't totally surprised when I learned that the human brain is not fully formed until age 25.  I adjusted accordingly.

 

I realized that simple things like explaining that deadlines don't change because you are having trouble meeting them, matter

 

Likewise, making them understand that granting exceptions for one student is unfair to all the others may be one of the most important concepts I teach. 

 

More recently my emphasis has shifted to helping them to recognize fake news and distinguish facts from opinions.  (Hint: Don't ask Siri.)

 

I hope that  I have created enough ripples at this point for my goals to have had impact not only on my students, but also on their friends, families and colleagues.

 

Time management, fairness and being able to recognize what's true and what isn't are all far more important in the long run than writing a terrific creative brief is.

 

And who knows?  Maybe they will remember the rule of threes too.