On Monday, I had the honor of giving a speech at the annual awards ceremony for the College of Mass Communication at my alma mater, Middle Tennessee State University. In my remarks, I encouraged the apprehensive graduates in the room to be humble, avoid a wait-and-see attitude and to not be afraid to move far, far away in pursuit of their dreams. Toward the end, I mentioned a recent graduate I know who prescribed to all three of these notions, TJ Werre, and that it was paying dividends for him.
I've written about TJ several times. In his senior year at the University of Memphis, he covered the men's basketball team for the student paper, passionately following the team all the way to that unforgettable night in San Antonio when they lost the NCAA Championship game in a most gut-wrenching fashion. After graduation, he networked in Memphis for a few months before landing a job with the ABC affiliate in tiny Austin, MN, home of the SPAM Corporation.
During our trip last weekend, I was checking Facebook and saw a post from TJ, telling his friends that he'd be anchoring for the first time on Saturday. As we prepared to taxi the runway, I excitedly shared the news with Heather and felt a gush of pride. I hope anyone taking the walk across the stage in the next couple of weeks finds a bit of inspiration from TJ and realizes that, despite the cold, hard fact that employers are hiring fewer graduates this year, there are opportunities available - for those willing to get off their butts and go after them. You can check out a couple of TJ clips here and here. Congrats again, my friend!
Heather and I had hectic, but fun day in the 'Boro. Besides the ceremony, I gave a talk to a group of PR and journalism students (despite the 8:00 a.m. start time, I only saw a couple of students nodding off), enjoyed breakfast at the venerable City Cafe on the Square, and had a lunch meeting with Greg Snider, the CEO of Blu Sky Media, the company that I'm working with to distribute Cypress Walls. We had a solid discussion about our next steps together and later that afternoon Greg emailed me a purchase order for 400 copies. Greg is a fellow realist and not one to make empty promises. We left the meeting feeling confident that Greg and Co. are going to work hard in getting Cypress Walls on bookseller's shelves and reassured about our decision to partner with the Blu Sky team.
The pic is outside of Reynolds Hall, the dorm I managed for three semesters while at MTSU. It's also mentioned on the first page of my book. A special word of thanks to Marcie Hinton and her Mass Comm department colleagues for all of the hospitality they extended to us during our visit on campus. It was great to be back. GO BLUE!
Gave a speech at the awards ceremony? Uh.....gave a speech at an awards ceremony where Joel was inducted into the MTSU College of Mass Communications Wall of Fame as an alum we are very proud to call our own! Joel gave a very well received speech where he could have spoken of his accomplishments, but instead offered terrific advice to graduating seniors. Joel was very impressive in front of throngs of appreciative students and faculty. Apparently pretty humble as well!
Posted by: Marcie Hinton | May 02, 2009 at 05:45 PM
Joel it is so cool that you gave a speech at your school AND were inducted into the Hall of Fame! So proud of you! GO JOEL FREY!
Posted by: Genevieve | May 18, 2009 at 09:04 AM