This World Over

“Will you tell them about that far off and mythical land. . .” – XTC “This World Over”

http://www.xtcidearecords.co.uk/discs/discs_1.htm

I am Andy Candor, 31 years-old, American and hungry.  I consider myself a crack traveler.  I am non-threatening, engaging, intelligent, empathetic, alert, and open.  Like an improvisational actor, I accept what my fellows players suggest to me.  I do not deny the construction of an edifice as long as no one gets hurt when it falls down.  I tend to thrive where people speak English and can boast of previous success stories from extended stays in the UK, Western Europe, Scandinavia, and Southeast Asia.  In these particular realms I have indulged myself, acknowledged the shortness of life and, most importantly, I have gained proficiency at dealing with myself.

Tomorrow I leave my hometown of Hogtowne, Florida for a month long study abroad in Ireland and the UK.  Right now I am I packing my Tumi roller bag and contemplating taking a cigarette break before packing up my expensive and hip Freitag laptop bag which I bought in Amsterdam a few years ago.  Smoking is a disgusting habit and one that I have picked up within the last few months.  Before this I had quit for ten years.  That was until I met my neighbor Sultana, a 27-year old Greek girl who is a graduate student studying for her English PhD at Hogtowne’s own Florida College.  I met her one night as she was smoking one of those thin, girly cigarettes on our neighborhood garden porch.  I asked if I could bum one and we ended up talking over several of them.  I got her number, became her facebook friend and through a little back and forth initiated by me (mainly text driven), took her out to dinner about two weeks later.

We went to a nice restaurant in The Plantation, a large development in Hogtowne with a snazzy town centre.  We had what I thought was a good time.  She even appeared delighted that the menu featured a Halloumi cheese salad, a Greek specialty.  Back at our place we had several more smokes and chatted.  I left her with a non-threatening, friendly hug and never heard from her again.  Because she lives across the porch from me, I have to pass her door every time I leave my apartment.  She drove by me the other day, made eye contact, and didn’t even wave.  So she got a free meal and I got a smoking habit.  How pathetic.

I am jealous of Sultana too.  The previous fall I applied to eighteen masters and PhD in programs in English (my undergraduate major) and was rejected from Florida College, among other schools.  The fuckers in the Florida College English department never even sent me an official rejection letter.  I found out of my status by e-mailing the graduate advisor.  I ended up getting into one school out of eighteen, The University of Chicago no less, but since they could not provide me with funding I had to decline the offer.  (The Chicago program is a creative writing option within a larger, interdisciplinary humanities master’s program.  The tuition for this year-long program is $43,000.  Knowing that I am not yet Stephen King, I cannot justify taking out the loans).  I am pissed.  I was denied by Ole Miss, Georgia, and Florida College but was admitted to the top ranked school in my pool of eighteen.  Yet I cannot attend.  So where am I to go instead?

Nowhere.  My hand is forced to remain in my second master’s degree program here at Florida College, this one in public relations.  After a year of studying in the discipline I struggle to describe what public relations is.  However, I do have strands of thought.

Indulge me:  organizations are comprised of people, as such they invariably fuck up.  Sometimes these fuck ups are misunderstandings, oversights or, trendy today, lapses in security (a hacker unearths e-mail addresses from a telephone company, that’s always happening it seems).  These are relatively easy fixes.  Issue a press release, go on CNN and offer customers the reassurance that the problem will be corrected.  Maybe even cut them a deal on their next bill.  But consider a grand fuck up, an oil spill perhaps.  When oil spills, the burden falls on management to communicate the bad news to upset stakeholders (fishermen, activists, the government, John Q. Public, and, worst of all, media).  Managers disdain stakeholders because they are distracting from their commitments to shareholders.  Ill prepared to deal with the onslaught of public ire, managers fumble for tactics of appeasement which are usually disingenuous and ineffective.  Enter the public relations professional, who, if he is worth his meager salary, should be prepared to consult management to pull ripcord and admit to negligence.  But doing so invites lawsuits so management resists, creating more public ire.  The public relations practitioner, demoralized by his failed attempts to convince management to suck wind, can either tuck tail or remain indignant.  Graduate students are trained to choose the latter approach.  Crises are, after all, a chance for the public relations practitioner to shine as they are perhaps the only opportunity for him to enter the so called “dominant coalition” of an organization.  In calmer times, when the pelicans have been scrubbed and combed, and the public’s attention swayed to yet another grand fuck up by a different organization, the public relations practitioner is subsumed back into being marketing’s bitch or into a benign role as a manager of the internal/external communication function of the organization.  Management shuts its door on the public relations guy and demands that all news will be good news from here on.  The poor guy retreats to write press releases and waits patiently for another inevitable fuck-up where he can again try and prove his invaluable worth.

As yet, the scholastic foundations of the discipline of public relations are thin.  Essentially this one guy James Grunig (the “pre-eminent” scholar in public relations) received a $500,000 grant in the 80’s and began what was called The Excellence Study.  Tributaries of scholarship have since flowed into public relations theory building.  Resplendent with acronyms and supplemented with quantitative and qualitative studies (mostly surveys) the academic literature has grown such that there are now two academic journals devoted to the discipline.  Practitioners and academics in the field are even trying to argue that public relations is a bona fide profession, like doctoring and lawyering.  There are accreditations in the field and efforts to develop a public relations code of ethics.  At least they’re trying.

I don’t think I’ve nailed public relations on the head but I’ve given you a good start.  Bottom line is, be able to give a good handshake and admit that the organization you work for has fucked up.  The public just might tolerate your honesty.  The main question I have from studying public relations at the graduate level is, “How can I monetize my degree?”  I haven’t a clue.  So how did I get into this field of study anyways?

One answer is that I failed to get into one year MBA programs which would have rounded out the one-year international business master’s degree which I obtained last year from Florida College.  My failures were that I had an out of character poor test score, did not sit for interviews and applied in the dreaded third round.  Thus, when I got my rejection e-mails from Kellogg, Emory and Florida College’s one year MBA programs, I was pissed off but hardly surprised.  I had failed to play the game and I got what I deserved.

I was a bit surprised not to get into Florida College’s business school though, but it makes sense when you consider its top priority: improving its ranking.  This puts a kid’s test scores at a premium.  The school has also reduced its class size, creating the aura of selectivity.  The changes have helped make it competitive with the likes of The University of Washington and Boston College.  Nevertheless, when it comes to admissions it feigns the ego of a top twenty school.  Being a hometown kid I thought I was a shoo-in.  But Florida College is more likely to admit a native Iranian (or my sexy Greek neighbor) than a native Hogtowne boy.  Oh well, in my one year of studying business at Florida College, I studied the same shit as MBA students and got a cooler sounding degree: international business.  Plus I had a cohort of 105 students versus just 30 in the MBA program meaning that the network I built (the main point of playing the pretend reality game that is B-school) was three times larger than that of the MBA students.  Unless overly concerned with letters and pedigree, an employer shouldn’t care.  But in practice this is not the case.  Managers easily confuse accolades with accomplishments and often people place a higher priority on paper qualifications versus personal effectiveness.  Pedigree as a barometer of achievement is firmly entrenched.

But I opine.  Though I am confident in my ability to compete in the boardroom, admittedly, I cringe when I tell people I have a business degree and they ask, “an MBA?”  No, not exactly, think of my business degree as a “diet” MBA, I squirm.  If an MBA specifically is required for a position, I am SOL.  However, I say this: if you as an employer are adamant that one has to possess an MBA specifically to work for your company then I likely do not want to work for you.  Why?  Because that is a rigid, limiting position, clearly at odds with the flexibility required of a clever capitalist and a thought leader.  If a home-schooled Eskimo, proficient in SQL, walks into your office with a tight cover letter and proper references and you turn him down because he lacks an MBA that’s your loss.  I sound embittered but I believe I am correct.  Again, accolades are not always the reflection of ability.  Though they have studied the law, lawyers do not necessarily make the best public officials or rhetoricians.  The hayseed can be more effective than the scholar.  The “C” student runs your office.  Sometimes you have to say fuck pedigree.  I guess keep that in mind.

Another answer for why I am studying public relations is that, once rejected from business schools in May, I had to scramble to find programs that were still admitting students for the fall semester.  Any discipline would have to do.  The only school I could find that was still admitting students was the school of mass communication.  I met with a professor emeritus and told him I had leanings towards journalism (a lie, I was more inclined to get the MBA) but he said that I would be a better fit for public relations.  It was a growing field and in high demand.  Furthermore, there was a need for qualified males to round out the classroom.  I wrote essays and, thankfully, was admitted.  So there.

I have finished my cigarette on my garden porch.  No sign of the Greek girl tonight.  I haven’t seen her in weeks, not since she didn’t wave to me.  I go inside where it is nicely air-conditioned to pack my Freitag laptop bag.

I put in my Macbook, three new journals, my flight info, my required readings, a Crown Royal Bag filled with pound and Euro coins leftover from previous travels, a plastic bag from a Kiehl’s men’s sampler which I use as a pen and marker bag, my JVC pocket videorecorder / camera and the syllabi of my courses:  English and Irish Culture and Travel Reporting.  I am to play the role of journalist and participant observer during the trip.  This blog is an assignment.

I have been to both England and Ireland on several occasions and am less excited than usual.  I might have preferred Spain or Italy as I still have yet to visit them but the England trip is plug and play, offered directly through the school of mass com and led by a professor who has done this for years and not only is he good at arranging these, you can tell he’s passionate about it.  Other perks include the ratio of girls to guys, 49:7.  No bullshit.  I am packing my bags for a trip with 49 21-year old girls, a chorus of chattering minds a generation below me.  I have no idea what angle to take with this herd.  Do I creep?  Play it cool?  I’m highly single.

I have made promises to people.  I have promised to call my family, bring back a bottle of Irish brown whiskey to my friend Leonard, send funny postcards to my best friends.  But I end up doing none of these.

I fall asleep on my couch watching ESPN, a 24-hour network that has you watch guys in better shape than you do shit while you sit on your ass.

Freitag Bags – www.freitag.ch