Leaving the walls of Troy

After six years at the University of Southern California, this will be the first in which I am no longer associated with that institution's undergraduate education. I had an amazing experience there, and the beauty of USC is that the thing they call the Trojan Family is real. I have found there is a vast, and generous, network of Trojans and people associated with USC in some way who are willing to be of help to me and other people in many capacities. This type of network means that I am not ending my time as a Trojan or my association with the University, though I have concluded my technical education. I have many fond memories of that education.

I began as a broadcast journalism major, bright eyed and bushy tailed. For me, as a freshman, that really didn't mean very much. It took about a year of core classes before I was able to take a course at the Annenberg school. Ultimately, I ended up leaving the school and the major, but as one of many hundreds of students, every day I attended, I was treated like the next big thing in journalism. I had a wonderful adviser named Annie who guided me through the three and a half years I was registered there. She was technically the broadcast adviser, but even when I got mysteriously dosed with some common sense and switched to print journalism, she stayed with me. I worked with Jabari, the print adviser, a little and he was a great, big, friendly guy. Annie and I, however, had a great rapport.

In the fall semester of my fourth year, I took the course that was called the Newswriting Module. Essentially, it consisted of the three core writing classes, one each for broadcast, print, and online. In reality it is a brilliant set up by Annenberg to train students for what is a dwindling job market. It became clear a week or two into the semester that my limitations would put limitations on me in these courses without some assistance. Before hand, I didn't see any obstacles and neither did Annenberg, but there were obstacles. USC has another fantastic department called Disability Services & Programs (DSP) that facilitates notetaking, test taking, et al., for students with both physical and learning disabilities. In the blink of an eye, Annie was on the phone with the head of DSP setting up interdepartmental (six syllables -- and they say we don't go to class) meetings to get me what I needed.

So, I met with Annie, Jabari, my three newswriting profs, the head of DSP, the head of the Annenberg IT, and probably a couple bigwigs way beyond my pay grade. To someone more accustomed to professional expenses and problem-solving, this wasn't that big a deal. To me, I was very positively astounded at the speed, planning, and expense to which these people and the school went for me. They hooked me up with three Annenberg students for notetakers and an empty office and computer for in-class projects equipped with the mouse and microphone I needed to get my work done. That semester went great, and I do still believe the quality of my writing made all that work worth it. Unfortunately, I repaid those efforts by changing majors!

Annenberg's wise move to make students capable in any form of journalism (which I agree with) ultimately hurt me as a pure writer. The next semester would have been the Reporting Module and I would have been responsible for $625 worth of equipment to take to an assigned city to cover news there. It was double the work of newswriting, and the work had a minimal amount of writing involved. I was, expectedly, hesitant to disappoint all the people who had worked so hard for me, but they would have done that for any student and Annie always treated me like she wanted what was best for me. She pushed minors and double majors all the time, but she never pushed me.

That, at last, led me to the Creative Writing major and it has really been off to the races since then. And I certainly owe much of my success in this brand of writing to a few of the people who make up that great Trojan Family.

He may leave the walls of Troy, but he takes a piece of her in his heart, and leaves a piece of his heart behind.