You can't finish grad school — can too – can not — can — can't — can

In my secret garden, battles between Superior Me and Inferior Me are determined by the degree of public commitment made by the former.

Superior Me knows I can achieve nearly anything I set my mind to, including getting a master's degree, but he admits I sometimes lose focus on long-term goals. That’s why he took a cue from Vaidyanathan and Aggarwal (2005) and announced to the world I would enter Franklin University's MCM program. He's relying on "self-predicted ... (though not my) normal (academic) behaviour” (p. 234) for my success. He knows I can’t fail now that I’m committed to friends and family.

Superior Me is why even as a short-legged, stubby guy, I have run five or six marathons. He tells people about some of my personal goals and to be consistent with his blabbing, I end up training and finishing 26.2 miles. Sometimes he's a no-good @#$%&!

Inferior Me, on the other hand, survives on my academic "low domain-specific self-concept" (Moller and Koller, p. 70) sown during my lengthy undergraduate career. I failed or underachieved in many ventures because of my limited abilities. He tells me any success was due to outside influences.

All that commotion coming from my secret garden — you can't hear it? — are those guys fighting. It's early in the struggle for the master's degree, so the outcome may not revolve around the material, but which Me is the most consistent.

References

Vaidyanathan, R., & Aggarwal, P. (2005). Using commitments to drive consistency: Enhancing the effectiveness of cause-related marketing communications. Journal of Marketing Communications,11(4), 231-246.

Moller, J., & Koller, O. (2000). Spontaneous and reactive attributions following academic achievement. Social Psychology of Education, 4, 67-86.

The unspoken truth about fear as motivation.

Fear of losing one's job is the Damocles sword swaying over my head and those of my associates. Though no one has been terminated (sanitary, isn't it?) in the last year, many positions were eliminated three years ago when my employer purchased the newspaper I work for. Redundant/overlapping positions disappear in mergers, but such losses and a(n) (undelivered) promise of raises if the newsroom tripled its output immediately got our attention.

The newsroom quickly increased output — almost enthusiastically — because our publisher offered balanced negative and positive information (Welbourne, 1995). Our commitment to the company was ultimately eviscerated when increases were not given after a year of intensive performance. Permanent distrust by most and outright hatred by others resulted in poorly written and researched stories, or what Welbourne refers to as "maladaptive behavior" (p. 34).

Should we all be worried?

The economy is flat, but even if it weren't, we live in a "scaredy-cat society," (Reeves, 2006) where job insecurity is part of a bigger problem, where we "pay the price for (our) own paranoia, hanging on to unsatisfactory jobs for fear of the unknown, toeing the corporate line rather than cutting (our) own path for fear of rejection, and avoiding risky initiatives for fear of failure."

We may fear losing our jobs but our employers are happy because we "forget everything else and cater to the aroused need first" (Shaw & Shaw, n.d.).

Welbourne, T. (1995). Fear: the misunderstood component of organizational transformation. Human Resource Planning, 18(1), 30-37.

Reeves, R. (2006). The goblins that stalk us. Management Today, October, p. 21.

Shaw, K. & Shaw, P. (n.d.) Motivation. Retrieved July 10, 2007, from http:// laynenetworks.com/Motivation.html.

Weekly Newspapers in the 21st Century.

I was promoted (and ultimately rewarded) to focus the weekly Morrow County Sentinel on what our readers said they wanted — hard news. The only credit I take for the improvement is that I acted on that request. At a time when newspapers are faced with uncertainty, as Lu (2005) points out, listening and responding is vital to surviving in the turbulent 21st century.

Weekly papers compete with daily newspapers for breaking news using Web sites to give readers what they want, when they want it. This exposure also generally provides increased out-of-town readership and an additional revenue source (Adams, 2007).

The dynamic marriage of Internet-based tools and journalism conflicts with Dietrich’s assertion (2006) that reporters are akin to buggy whip makers — facing extinction due to uselessness. The journalist determined to succeed will pick up the wireless laser mouse and update his or her Web site, just as predecessors embraced the ballpoint pen and flash photography.

References

Lu, J. (2005). The Listening Style Inventory (LSI) as an Instrument for Improving Listening Skill. Sino-US English Teaching, 2(5), 46.

Adams, J. W. (2007). U.S. Weekly Newspapers Embrace Web Sites. Newspaper Research Journal, 28(4), 42.

Dietrich, W. (2006). Goodbye Gutenberg: Finding our footing. Nieman Reports, Winter, 31-33.

Why read what I think?

I'm the first to realize that my thoughts you read here will dissipate into the ether along with the 200 million other blogs in the U.S. I liken my opinion, and therefore my blog, to that of a family pet, say, a cat. When the cat dies, the immediate family can be devastated. When it's my friend's cat, I feel sympathy for my friend, but I likely will not feel much sadness, unless I knew the cat really well. When I tell my mother about my cat's friend, she'll say, "That's too bad," but we all know she doesn't really care — she doesn't even know my friend, let alone "Sniffers."

So my thoughts are like the cat, few people will really care — but that's the challenge, isn't it? I'll avoid posting racy pictures or using suggestive headlines just to get attention. So we have to focus on motivating others to not only get to our blog, but read it. Thus, the photos might be provocative and the headline might capture the reader long enough to get them to read the first couple lines, then the post has to keep them intrigued.

Let's face it, with hundreds of millions of blogs and the countless other competitors for eyeballs, a person has to slice through that traffic and grab readers by their eyelashes and slap them around a little to get their attention. That's a figurative example — see, I read our assignments.

That's all for now, because the only person who is still reading this is my mother to see if I disparaged her any further.

Mom, it wasn't about you — it was an example. Yes, I love you and I'll call Sunday night ...