Dreamers

I don’t know if it’s just our students, our university, or my becoming an old cynic, but the students I teach these days are possibly the most amazing dreamers I have ever run across in my life. And they dream big. They want to be the programming director of a major radio station, the next Christiane Amanpour, the next Oprah Winfrey, a music producer, a researcher on a par with George Gerbner, and the biggest DJ ever known to the entire US. I love nothing more than meeting our sophomores for the first time in Comm 2001, and having them tell me about what they will do with their degree. But as our students move up through our program, sometimes all their dreaming worries me. Now I’m not saying you shouldn’t dream. It’s cool to dream. You should live, eat, and sleep your dreams. By all means, dream away. But at one point you have got to start getting real, and starting making plans about how to realize that particular dream. And that’s where I’m not so sure about some of our students.

Our students here have all the opportunities imaginable to start building a pathway to a successful career in media, or media research. We have a television station, a radio station, a student newspaper, and endless opportunities for student research. Yet very few students seem to take advantage of all this. Many of our students don’t seem to take the time to go out and shoot a packet for the news broadcast, or write a good clean news article, or produce a weekly radio show. Yet these same students, when asked about their dreams in class, will voice grand ideals about a career in media.

And it’s not that we don’t tell them about what it takes to be successful. We do. Endlessly. We talk about the need for a reel if you want to go into television, the need for an awesome portfolio if you want to be a journalist, the need for research experience if you’re looking into graduate school. We tell them that only lots of hard work will get them close to where they want to be. We remind them constantly that the real world is only a few years away. But with some students, it doesn’t seem to hit home. They prefer to dream.

Now in my world, dreaming is just the first step on the road to success. If you don’t get past the dreaming-stage, you will most likely never get anywhere beyond a “Would you like fries with that?” Just yesterday I told a student who is about to graduate that “success has nothing to do with talent, and everything to do with determination.” It’s all about the work you put in. “Could-a, would-a, should-a” never brought anyone success.

The problem is that in order to truly be successful, you need to be intrinsically motivated. You need to want something from your smallest toe to the top of your head. Only then will you have the dedication to fight your way to wherever you are headed. And I’m not sure if many of our students really want what they say they dream about. I think many of them have been told that success and a famous name is what they want so often, they have started to believe it themselves. Many of them may have also been told that this is what they want because it’s possible. After all, many of my students have parents and grandparents who distinctly remember all the things they couldn’t be and do. Now that this generation has all that within reach, why shouldn’t they want it?

By the time our students get to college, they have been exposed to so many motivational speakers telling them to believe in themselves, to dream the unthinkable, to believe in their dreams, to not let anyone bring them down, that perhaps our students have forgotten to look deep inside themselves to figure out what it is that they want. And us professors, we can talk all we want, but if there’s not a little fire lit inside that tells you to do whatever it takes, there is little we can do. I like to compare it to running. Almost everyone can run a 5k on adrenaline, the crowds cheering them on, and the inspiring speeches before the race starts. But if you want to finish a 15k or even a half marathon, those outside factors won’t make a single difference. Your desire to finish needs to come from deep inside of you. And you know what, I don't think attaining success is a 5k race.

So then the question remains; should I be just another motivational speaker telling my students what is they want, or should I let them flounder and discover for themselves whether or not they have that little fire pushing them forward?