I always had a knack for stringing together a sentence. As soon as the engineering department found that out, they had to get rid of me. So my ability to combine nouns and verbs and add in a few conjunctions, landed me in Intro to Journalism my sophomore year.
The class was bunches of fun, especially the days when Dr. Cole criticized our articles. My sides nearly split when he tried to keep the poor writer (usually me) anonymous during his critiques, but left the byline in plain sight up on the projector.
I learned a lot from my mistakes that year. Over the next several semesters, the trips we took and the stories we covered were always ... I'd say unique, but we all know there is only one thing in this world that is truly unique.
The College's journalism students will be at a disadvantage without Dr. Cole there to mentor them. It really should be criminal for a journalism student to graduate without reading the "Dwarf Rapes Nun, Flees in UFO" packet.
The critiques got even better in Cole's Sports Writing class. I wonder if Dr. Cole still remembers my "plains of the Serengeti" lede for one of my articles on the women's basketball team.
Now, five years later, I am a beat writer for high school sports, and while I'm still developing as a writer, I'm much further along than I would have been without Professor Cole.
