A 37-year-old video clip brings back a flood of memories

The video at the top of today's post is a 1-minute snippet of a longer segment recorded on Wednesday, November 2, 1988, my 19th birthday.

The clip was captured by my dad using our trusty old – and decidedly heavy – Curtis Mathis video camera. The quality is exactly what you would expect nearly four decades on, though I'm not sure the lighting and the videographer were exactly top notch to begin with.

(I say that with all due respect to my dad, who made up for whatever he lacked in moviemaking skills with love and enthusiasm.)

No matter, though. What's important is that it captures a moment in time that, while receding further and further into the past, still vividly recalls the optimism of young adulthood.

I was a freshman at John Carroll University, while my then-fiancée Terry (seen in the last few seconds of the video) was working at Lincoln Electric and banking the money we would use to buy our first house 3 1/2 years later.

There's much to savor here, including:

• A striking resemblance between 1988 me and the 2025 version of my son Jack. People have said we look alike, and I see it here.
  
  
• A starring role for my niece Jessica, who was 3 years old at the time and the star of nearly every video my dad shot.
  
  
• Cameos from loved ones long gone (Mom, my sister Judi) and those thankfully still with us (my brother Mark, my sister-in-law Becky, my brother-in-law Jess).
  
  
• Mark with my stuffed Bill the Cat on his head.

Mine is not the first generation to have its life chronicled through home movies, though I think the VCR era did make it easier to record and watch moments like these.

And I'm so grateful for that. A few years ago I went through our VHS tapes and digitized as many as I could. They're full of clips like these I never want to lose.

Time marches on. Technology makes it possible to remember the people and places we encounter along the way in more than just our hearts.

We're enjoying having a college kid in the family again

Jack on his first day of college

The recent birth of our grandson has somewhat overshadowed another significant family milestone, which is the fact that our youngest son, Jack, started college a couple of weeks ago.

Jack is a freshman data science major at Cleveland State University. He's a little older than the typical freshman at 19 1/2, the result of a two-year process of trying to figure out exactly what he wanted to do in life.

Lots of young people go through the same extended period of self-reflection that Jack did, and I'm surprised it's not even more common. Asking 17- and 18-year-olds to pinpoint exactly what career path they're going to follow is a tall order, especially in a world that changes as rapidly as ours.

Since graduating high school in 2023, Jack has had a brief fling with community college, considered a career in the trades, and worked full time for nearly a year cleaning cages in an animal research laboratory.

Eventually he came to Terry and me and said he thought it would be best to go to college and earn a bachelor's degree of some sort. He is interested in statistics and data analysis – a field that will surely be reshaped by the emergence of artificial intelligence – so data science it is.

Starting in 2012 when Elissa began her own four-year journey at Cleveland State, we had a kid or kids in college continuously for 11 years. For me as Dad, it was a blur of FAFSA forms, dorm move-ins, and essays to edit.

Now, after a two-year break, I'm excited to get back into that world.

Like me so many years ago, Jack is a college commuter. He lives at home and drives downtown five days a week to attend class. There are advantages to doing that (particularly financial ones), but it can also mean being somewhat disengaged from school activities outside of the classroom.

I made an effort to be involved in the band and the school newspaper when I was at John Carroll University, at least until the demands of a nearly full-time work schedule at The News-Herald made those extracurriculars impossible. Jack has talked about joining the CSU pep band, and I hope he does. It would be good for him.

You know, becoming a grandparent can make you feel old. But I'm finding that once again having a college kid in the family balances that out. It makes Terry and I realize we're still very much in our primes.

Good luck to Jack, and go Vikings!

A Room of One's Own

 

When Terry and I were first married in 1992, one of the upstairs rooms in our house was designated "the computer room," but it was in most respects really "Scott's room."

Oh, we both used it, but I was the one who "decorated" it, if you want to call it that. It had hockey and music posters on the wall. It featured stuffed Bill the Cat and Opus dolls from my favorite comic strip of the time, "Bloom County." It had a little nook in which I placed the Yamaha keyboard on which I would doodle from time to time.

As I was just 22 years old at the time, it was in some ways the college dorm room I never had.

It was the only room in the house over which I had (or wanted) any real say when it came to what we put there and how it looked.

Fast forward 33 years to our current house and this tradition of giving me one room to play with has continued. Terry uses our upstairs office all the time, but most of the stuff there is mine.

There are, for example, three bookshelves to hold my personal library, including this one devoted largely to my military history books:

And on top of that is a little shrine to our dearly departed cats Fred, George and Charlie:

The music theme continues in this little corner with the inclusion of two instruments (a keyboard and guitar) that I technically cannot play, though that never stops me from trying. Note that the room also contains my alto saxophone, which for the record I can play.

On the walls are various photos reflecting my interests, from a large autographed image of Sting to an autographed Lake Erie Monsters (our local hockey team, now called the Cleveland Monsters) layout. I also have a map of the Appalachian Trail and these two pictures of my mom and dad presumably taken on Parents Night when I played high school football:

Above those are my undergraduate and graduate school diplomas from John Carroll and West Virginia universities, respectively:

There's also a closet containing music and sound equipment and a large bin of sheet music I won't even bother showing you.

The point is that, while this room will never win any interior decorating awards, it's my room, and I love it. Terry does a wonderful job putting together the other rooms in our house, but I'm very grateful to have one to myself.

After all, I have helped us make a lot of mortgage payments over the years. It feels like I've earned a few square feet of my own.

30 years ago, my pregnant wife delivered newspapers with me (the paper for which I was also a sports writer)

Terry looked like this and still helped me deliver papers. What a trooper.
(Photo used with the express permission of Mrs. Terry Tennant.)

It was 1993. Terry and I had been married a little more than a year and she was pregnant with our first child, Elissa. I was about a year and a half into my stint as a full-time sports writer for The News-Herald in Willoughby, Ohio, and generally loving life.

I've written before about my time at the N-H. I started as a sports clerk a week before college, left for a year to join the Cleveland Plain Dealer while still at John Carroll, then came back full time in November 1991 while still six months away from earning my degree.

My tenure at the paper spanned a combined eight years, during which I covered a wide range of high school, college and professional sports. What's more, while the paper itself was one of the largest suburban dailies in Ohio, the staff was relatively small and we all had to do double duty.

That meant nights when I would travel somewhere to cover a game, come back to the office and write my story, then grab a few pages from the next day's sports section to lay out before our midnight deadline.

It was an exhilarating way to make a living for a young newlywed, coming as it did at a time when people actually read newspapers.

The job didn't exactly pay well, so I looked for extra sources of income wherever I could. One of my side jobs was as a carrier for the same newspaper where I was employed.

For eight months or so, I delivered The News-Herald every day to residents of East 300th Street, Lincoln Road and Arlington Circle in my hometown of Wickliffe (we lived on 300th, so it was all very convenient).

On Sundays, I would load the extra-large papers into our car and Terry would drive the route while I walked and delivered to each of my customers. She would get out and deliver papers herself to the few businesses on my route, including the Wickliffe Public Library.

I will never forget the image of a very, very pregnant Terry in the middle of winter 1994 trudging through the snow in her long parka to leave a paper near the library's front door.

I will also never forget Mrs. Piacente, one of my customers on Lincoln. Many Saturday mornings she would greet me just as I was opening her side door to deposit a paper and ask me what articles I had in that day's edition. She also asked me to do a few odd jobs for her, including changing the batteries in her kitchen clock and knocking icicles off her gutters.

I was always happy to help, but the whole thing made me laugh. It was full-service journalism and then some! (And hey, she tipped well.)

Elissa was born in March 1994, and a month later The News-Herald switched from afternoon to morning delivery. That was when I had to give up the route.

I stayed with the paper another 2 1/2 years as a sports writer before moving on to technical writing and eventually corporate communications.

But if there was ever a time when I built a work ethic, it was back in those days when I would work in the newsroom until 2 in the morning, go home and sleep, and be up again mid-morning the next day to deliver my papers.

To be young again.

I know more about prostates and blender design than any one person really should

I was talking to a friend of mine recently who, like me, makes her living in corporate communications. She started as a newspaper reporter (also like me) and has spent the better part of two decades communicating about power management products.

That's likely not what she was envisioning when she went to journalism school.

Likewise, when I was earning my degree in English and History at John Carroll University 30 years ago, I did not see myself spending all day thinking about cars, tires, and the future of mobility.

Such is the world of work nowadays. Things change, and we have to change right along with them.

Over the course of my career, I have had to build a working knowledge of a lot of really strange and different things, including (but certainly not limited to):

• Insurance plan documents
• The spectrum of human urologic disease
• Intellectual property law
• Airline labor disputes
• Pediatric physical rehabilitation
• Nonprofit organization management
• Municipal broadband
• The physics of blending
• And now...tires

The bottom line, kids, is that as much as you plan, there's a good chance you have no idea what you'll be doing for a living 20 years from now. So learn everything you can about everything. Be curious. Read, ask questions, step outside your little world.

Because one day you, too, may be called upon to write 500 words on the latest advances in adrenal cancer. And trust me, when that day comes, you don't want to be caught flat footed.

I'm glad we learned French in grade school in my town

I've mentioned this before, but I grew up in a school district where everyone took French from the time they were in first grade.

I actually studied the language nonstop from the age of 6 through my third year of college. I am not fluent in it because I was never in a situation where I was forced to speak it in order to survive, but I can read it fairly well, and my vocabulary is still pretty expansive.

The advantages of having taken French at such a young age were not limited to a better understanding of the French language and Franophone culture in general. It also gave me a better command of English. I've always said the French composition class I took at John Carroll advanced my writing skills more than any English composition class could have.

It also helped that I enjoyed all of the French teachers I had (all of whom, with one exception in college, were female, by the way). There was old Madame McCoy in the early grades. She would push her little cart of French books and flash cards from classroom to classroom and try her best to get us to learn the most basic French words.

Later it was Mademoiselles Chader and Gagliano, then Mesdames Rees and Whitehorn. They were all excellent teachers, and each left an indelible impression on me.

Mlle. Gagliano later became Madame Pumphrey, and we remain Facebook friends to this day. In sixth grade I remember her having us do a project that resulted in me writing a one-man play that I acted out in class, all in terrible, terrible French. But it was such a beneficial exercise because it forced me to make good use of my French-English dictionary, and it gave me a better understanding of verb conjugation and tenses, which were the major focus of instruction in Madame Rees' class the following year.

Wickliffe, like most public school districts of which I know, has long since abandoned the practice of elementary-school language instruction, which is too bad. I assume it's a matter of resources and the effects of state testing, but I feel it's a huge loss. If nothing else, taking a language when you're very young works so well because you're such a sponge for picking up new words at that age.

Of course, it wasn't too hard to remember the French words for "weekend" and "hot dog," which as I recall were "le weekend" and "l'hot dog." I think I aced the quiz the week those were on the vocabulary list.

When you're 46 years old and going back to school

I think I've mentioned here the fact that I always wanted a graduate degree but never got around to earning one. Against the advice of my dad, after I earned my B.A. from John Carroll University in May 1992, I got as far away from classrooms as I could. After nearly a year as a full-time sports journalist and a full-time student, I was burned out both mentally and physically.

I figured, "Why bother? I'm going to be a sports writer for the rest of my life."

Which of course did not happen, because long-term plans rarely work out the way you assume they will.

Over the course of time I came to the conclusion that I needed a "real" 9-to-5 job, and eventually I got into PR and marketing. It's a very rewarding career and one that has paid the bills for my family for several years now.

In the back of my mind, though, I feel I should have gotten that master's degree. I've come close to starting a few times, but the whole not-enough-hours-in-the-day syndrome has gotten in the way every time and I shut it down.

But not anymore. Beginning next week, I will officially return to the ranks of the matriculated as I begin online coursework toward that elusive advanced diploma. It's a mouthful to say, but I'll be pursuing a Master of Arts in Journalism and Mass Communication with a concentration in Public Relations from Kent State University.

If people ask, I just say I'm going for "a master's in PR from Kent State."

As I said, it's an online program. The whole thing. Welcome to the 21st century.

As I understand it, each week the professor teaching whatever class I'm taking (I only have room in my schedule to take one class at a time) will post the material for that week and required reading online. Then, by Thursday I'll be expected to engage in some sort of virtual class discussion. Each week ends with a paper or other assignment due on Sunday.

Then the whole thing starts again on Monday.

Each course is seven weeks long, and I have to take 12 of them to earn the degree. With breaks and everything, that means I should get the master's in the spring of 2018.

IF everything goes as planned, of course, which as we've seen above very often doesn't happen.

But that's the idea.

I'm intrigued by this concept of asynchronous online learning. I don't have to "attend" class at any set time; rather, I can adapt the reading and other coursework to my family and work schedules. I won't be getting much sleep either way, of course, but the flexibility of the whole thing appealed to me.

Now let's see whether I actually learn anything. This will be an interesting experiment in teaching that old dog those new tricks.

My loyalty will always lie with John Carroll, but for the next couple of years I guess I get to be a Kent State Golden Flash, too. Which my daughter Chloe, a University of Akron student, will not like. Akron and Kent are fierce rivals.

In the real world, that is. In the virtual world, everyone gets along and sings Kumbaya.

At least that's what I'll tell Chloe.

But I have promises to keep...revisited

NOTE: Here is this month's "Blog Rerun" entry, in which we resurrect a post from the past. This one originally ran on May 21, 2012. It is one of my favorites and still very relevant to my life.


I was an English major in college, but I never was a big poetry guy. I can appreciate poetry, and the Jesuit professors at John Carroll University made me read plenty of it. But I'll take a good novel or short story over a 14-line sonnet any day.

There are exceptions, of course. My favorite poem is Sara Teasdale's "There Will Come Soft Rains." I almost have that one memorized (almost). And there's something to be said about "The Hollow Men" by T.S. Eliot if you can understand it...not that I really do.

But do you know which poem I find myself coming back to time and again lately? It's one you might know by Robert Frost, called "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening." Chances are good some teacher or other made you read it at some point. Chances are equally good you quickly forgot about it.

I, for whatever reason, can't forget it. Or more specifically, I keep reciting the last stanza to myself. It goes like this:

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

The protagonist is riding his horse one night and stops to admire some woods. There's something vaguely alluring about them, and you can feel how strongly tempted he is to ride into those woods and never come back.

But he can't. Somewhere back in the "real world" is something, or someone, that keeps him from riding off into oblivion. He has responsibilities. He has promises to keep.

Increasingly these days, I can relate. There is so much I need to do. There are so many things to accomplish. There are bills to pay, projects to finish, and most importantly, children to raise.

If you're a parent, you know what I'm talking about. The work you and I do is important. And exhausting. Mentally, spiritually, physically exhausting. We give everything we have to our children because they deserve it. And because they need us. And simply because it's our job.

Strictly speaking, there is nothing "real" that ties us to it. There is nothing to physically restrain us from pulling up stakes and starting over somewhere else.

But 99.9% of moms and dads don't leave because they can't. They could no sooner separate from their children than they could from their own souls. Your kids are a part of you in every way. The reason we would die for them in a heartbeat is because they ARE us. There is literally no difference between us and them. There is no place where they end and we begin. They are part of us, and we are part of them.

There are times when I wonder what it would have been like if I had selected another life path. What if I had never met Terry? What if I hadn't gotten married? Or had five kids? What would I be doing? Would I have more money? Would I feel less tired? Would I spend more time on things I want to do than on things I feel I must do?

These thoughts are my "woods." They're what I very occasionally stop and consider. At times they seem "lovely, dark and deep." But never for a second are they serious thoughts. Never do they gain any real traction in my mind.

Why? Because like Frost's horseman, I have promises to keep. When I married my wife, I promised I would stay with her for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, until death do us part. And in truth, there has been a heck of a lot more "better" than "worse." It's not an especially difficult promise to keep.

The same goes for my children. I never took any formal oath to protect them, to feed them, to clothe them, or to guide them. I never actually said those words aloud. But the first time I held each of them and looked into their faces, I promised to do all of those things. Then and there, I made a promise that I would be their father for the rest of their lives, no matter what.

And those are promises I intend to keep. Even when something distracts me from the day-to-day mission of providing for a wife and five kids, those promises keep me pointed in the right direction.

One day there will be time for sleep. Not necessarily literal sleep – though that would be nice, too – but rather whatever God has in store for me in my "golden years" and beyond.

As a co-worker of mine used to say, I could get hit by a bus tomorrow and it would all be over. But I like to think there are still many miles before I sleep.

Memories of the greatest job in the world (for an 18-year-old)

There are jobs in this world the existence of which most of us are utterly unaware.

I used to hold just such a job.

Twenty-five years ago tomorrow, I reported for my first day of work as a part-time sports agate clerk at The News-Herald, the newspaper that would, a few years later, become my full-time employer.

These clerks, which I believe the paper still employs, do the grunt work that sells papers.

In my case, that meant taking dozens of calls every night from statisticians and coaches reporting the results of their recreational, high school and occasionally college athletic events.

More important than the final scores was the opportunity these callers had to give the names of up to three players on each team who did something noteworthy.

In the case of a little league baseball game, that may have been the kid who hit two home runs. For a basketball game, it was usually the guys/girls who scored the most points.

Whatever the reason for giving these amateur athletes their 15 minutes of fame in small agate type (thus the job title), having their names collected in print every day under the Community Scoreboard was a major reason why The News-Herald was one of the largest suburban daily newspapers in Ohio.

Which you can understand. If Little Johnny got his name in the paper, you can be sure Mom and Dad would rush out and buy 5-10 copies as keepsakes. So would Grandma. And the next-door neighbor.

So the work we agate clerks did had some importance from a sales and financial point of view.

Not that I cared much about that. What my 18-year-old self cared about when he walked into that newsroom for the first time on August 22, 1988, was that he was going to get to work at a newspaper. They could have had me sweeping the floors for all it mattered.

I caught the journalism bug early in life. I read The News-Herald front to back almost every day from the age of 14. Then I joined my high school newspaper and absolutely loved it. I could picture myself making a career out of journalism. And if it could be sports journalism, all the better.

Which is why I jumped at the chance when, one afternoon during the sweltering summer of '88, I came across a blurb in the "Area Sports in Brief" section saying that The News-Herald was looking to hire two sports agate clerks.

I needed a job at the time. I was a few weeks away from starting my four-year undergraduate career at John Carroll, and if nothing else I knew the cost of gas from driving to school every day (I was a commuter student) was going to be brutal.

So I applied and, thanks largely to the fact that News-Herald prep sports writer Joe Magill had been one of my high school track coaches and was therefore a nice inside reference, got the job.

I cannot tell you the thrill of typing or writing something, and then turning around 12 hours later and seeing it in print. Even if my name wasn't attached to it. I could point to it and say, "I did that," knowing that nearly 50,000 copies of my work were floating around Northeast Ohio that day.

A few months after starting at The N-H, I was given the chance to cover high school events with a byline, which was a dream come true. Eventually, at the veteran age of 20, a column mug with my photo began running alongside some of my stuff. This was, as far as I was concerned, the pinnacle.

Later, after I graduated from Carroll, the paper offered me a full-time job as a sports writer, which I gratefully accepted. I stayed there for five wonderful years, leaving only because of the demands of my growing young family.

But the experience I picked up at the paper absolutely shaped my future career in marketing and public relations. Taking those little league and high school scores over the phone for hours on end, night after night, was a great resume-builder, believe it or not.

Nowadays I think the clerks at the paper have most of the scores emailed to them, though I can't be sure of that. I choose to believe it's true, though, because otherwise I wouldn't have the credibility to say, "BACK IN MY DAY, WE USED TO TAKE 1,000 SCORES A NIGHT OVER THE PHONE. AND WE TYPED UNTIL OUR FINGERS BLED. AND WE LOVED IT!"

And honestly, we DID love it. God bless the agate clerks of the world.

Four things I know I'm supposed to do but don't

Read the Classics

I have a degree in English and history from a well-regarded institution of higher learning (John Carroll University...go Blue Streaks!), yet I have never read The Scarlet Letter. Or Pride and Prejudice. Or Moby Dick. Or Don Quixote. How could this be?

(Actually, I know how it can be. Upper-level English courses get so specialized and esoteric that you end up reading the collected works of a 17th-century Finnish poet and have no time for The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, or War and Peace, also books I've never read.)

The point is, I should make time to atone for the glaring holes in my literary resume by actually reading these books. But I don't. Nor will I, at least not any time soon. It's easier to lament not having read them than it is to check them out of the library and crack open the front cover.

Lift Weights

I just mentioned this recently. I'm not a strength training guy. Never have been. I run. I run quite a bit. But I never touch the weights.

And it has always been like this. Even when I played football in high school, I was not a frequent visitor to the weight room. And by "not a frequent visitor," I mean I showed up there once a year to perform the mandatory weight-lifting tests set forth by my coaches. Then I wouldn't visit again until the following year.

I know I'm supposed to lift, but I can't stand it. Just like a lot of people know they're supposed to do cardiovascular exercise but can't stand running, cycling or climbing aboard the elliptical machine. To each his own, I suppose.

Take Care of My Fingernails

First off, I have abnormally small hands. And thus I have abnormally small fingernails. Making matters worse, I bite those fingernails. I bite 'em right down to the nub.

I admire people who take care of their nails, particularly guys. Society doesn't necessarily expect men to do much in the way of fingernail work, so I like the extra effort put in by guys with clean, nicely shaped nails.

My nails are ugly. At our wedding reception, the photographer took a picture of Terry's hand and my hand together as we showed off our new rings. Her nails are, as you would expect, beautifully manicured. Mine look like they belong to a 7-year-old. A hyperactive, nail-biting 7-year-old.

I'm embarrassed by it, but not so much that I'm motivated to do anything about it. My ugly nails will live on as long as I do.

Drive Under the Speed Limit

Depending on the mood I'm in, I'll drive anywhere from 5 to 15 mph over the speed limit. Not terribly bad, but still not legal, either.

The trouble is, I have kids. And I'm supposed to model proper driving procedures for those kids. Which is why I try to shield their eyes from the speedometer when I'm going 75 mph down a stretch of 60 mph freeway.

I should slow down, I know. And I don't. There are those who drive way faster than I do, but that's no excuse for breaking the rules. I will freely chalk this up to a classic case of hypocritical "do as I say, not as I do" when it comes to my children.

This is not the post where I inspire you to achieve your life goals

Actually it's not really a depressing post today as far as you're concerned. But it sort of is for me.

Here's my problem:

After graduating from John Carroll University in 1992 with a bachelor's degree in English and history, I stopped going to school. My dad told me I should stick it out and get a Master's degree, but I was tired of working full time AND attending college full time, which I had spent the previous couple of years doing.

So I decided a B.A. was good enough and I stopped there. At the time I was a sports writer at The News-Herald in Willoughby, Ohio, and my career path was pretty well laid out for me: Work my way up the journalistic ladder and eventually become a beat writer covering a Cleveland professional sports team.

It was that simple. That was my goal, and one certainly didn't need a Master's degree to get there.

So like I said, I stopped the whole school thing. And I kept on sports writing for four more years, at which point I realized three things:

• Sports happen at night, and it's difficult to raise a family and participate in kids' activities when you have to be at work every evening.
• You're never exactly going to be independently wealthy as a sports writer.
• Eventually the industry was going to change, and there was no guarantee of long-term job security in sports writing (20 years later, it turns out I was actually right about this one)

So I moved away from sports writing and got into technical writing, then trade journalism, and eventually marketing and public relations.

And now, two decades down the line, I desperately wish I had a Master's degree.

Specifically, I'd like a Master's of Business Administration (MBA) to help make up for the fact that I never studied business in any formal way.

And because obtaining a graduate degree would be extremely personally satisfying to me.

Happily, my employer has an excellent tuition reimbursement plan. Probably the best one I've come across. I almost wouldn't have to pay a dime for an MBA.

But what my employer can't give me, what I can't even give myself, is time.

And time, you see, is the problem here.

I'm barely two months into my job, but already I can see that it's always going to be fairly time-consuming. I enjoy and appreciate the position, don't get me wrong. But things aren't ever really going to calm down when it comes to the day-to-day chaos.

Even if you only take one MBA course per semester, you still need considerable time to attend class, study, get through your reading and homework, work on group projects, etc.

In addition to having a crazy job, I also have a wife and five kids. They deserve a significant amount of my time and attention, and I want to give it to them.

The math just doesn't work out.

If I'm getting anything close to the proper amount of sleep, exercising, doing my job well, and staying closely connected with my family, that pretty well accounts for a 24-hour day right there.

Unless we figure out a way to move to 28-hour days, I'm in trouble here.

Yet many people at work are encouraging me to go for it and get after that MBA. Which is nice, but none of them has offered me that gift of time. Nor do many really seem to understand the stage of life I'm in.

So it appears I'm stuck.

The obvious solution - the only solution, I suppose - is to set this particular goal aside and come back to it someday when the kids are older.

And I may just go that route. But I could really use the knowledge and experience you gain in an MBA program in the next few years. It will still be personally satisfying if I get the degree in my 50s, but I feel like it won't help me as much professionally if I wait that long.

So....yeah.

At this point I invite you to do one of three things:

(a) Tell me to suck it up and quit whining about my first-world problems, something with which I can't disagree.

(b) Tell me how you personally overcame similar obstacles and got a degree or achieved some other life goal, thus inspiring me to get out there and reach for the stars or whatever.

(c) Ignore this post completely and move on with your day, which honestly is probably the approach I would take if I were you.

Because, really, who has the time for that?

(NOTE: Since I wrote this, I came across an excellent post from my friend, former colleague and blogger extraordinaire Tara Pringle Jefferson with practical tips on balancing work, school and family. So it CAN be done. Hopefully one doesn't need to be as awesome as Tara to pull it off, though...)

Should I be worried by the fact that I'm essentially brain dead?

Next month will mark 21 years since the last time I was officially a student (that's how long it has been since John Carroll University, in a stunningly ill-advised move, conferred upon me a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and History).

I was a pretty darned good college student. And that's because I learned the system.

I learned the secret to getting an "A" in every one of my courses while working nearly full-time and juggling the other everyday responsibilities of life.

I'll let you kids in on what that secret is right now.

(I'm not even sure I'm supposed to be telling you this, but what the heck.)

The secret to academic success and getting good grades is...do the work.

If your professor assigns you reading to do before the next class, do the reading. If you have a paper due next Wednesday, write it and turn it in on time. If you're attending a lecture, pay attention and take notes.

Amazing, right? Like, I should put this into a book and sell it. I'll make millions!

The point being that there IS no secret. There's absolutely no substitute for hard work in school. So work hard and you'll be fine. Don't cut corners. Is that clear? I hope so.

Of course, that assumes your mental faculties are reasonably sharp. And mine were sharp in my late teens and early 20s. I could absorb new material at an astounding rate and spit it back out perfectly in a two-hour exam or 20-page paper. I was just good at it.

But now I'm finding that's not the case anymore.

I know this because I've been taking review classes in an attempt to gain my APR certification through the Public Relations Society of America. APR stands for "Accredited in Public Relations," and as I've explained to people who've asked about it, earning it is the equivalent in my field of saying, "Yes, I know what I'm doing."

The APR process consists of two major elements:

* A one- to two-hour "readiness review" in which you present a PR plan to a group of seasoned professionals to show you understand the elements of research, planning, execution and evaluation.

* A three-hour computer exam in which you answer multiple-choice questions about the art and science of public relations.

I'm not sweating the readiness review, really. That should be fine. It's that darned test that has me a little worried.

Mostly because I am stunningly good at selecting the wrong answer on multiple-choice questions. It's like I have a God-given talent for being wrong. I defy the Law of Averages and all of its corollaries.

And you just know they'll throw some tricky questions in there. Like the ones where answer A and answer B both sound right, and one of your choices (answer C, the one you should apparently always default to if you're not sure) is "Both A and B." I HATE THAT! DARN YOU, TEST-MAKERS!

Then there's this: As part of the very helpful series of review classes I'm taking, we have to read significant chunks of a textbook called "Cutlip & Center's Effective Public Relations." This book is something of a bible in my industry, and it's pretty comprehensive.

It's also, as I say, a textbook. It has been two decades since I've had to read and retain material from a textbook. Let's just say that my abilities in this area have slipped in the interim.

Quite a bit.

There was a time when I could read a 20-page chapter once through and tell you all of the salient points, including what was most likely to be on the ensuing quiz.

Now I read a 20-page chapter (twice), and if someone asks me what it was about, I'll say, "Well...it was kind of....you know, the chapter really covered....basically....I think it was about public relations. Or something business-related. One or the other. I think."

I can't retain anything I read. And I can't tell you how much this distresses me. Is it because I'm 43? I mean, 43 isn't really old, right? It's early middle age. One should not be exhibiting symptoms of advanced dementia at 43.

But then again, I can never remember why I walk into a room anymore. So why I think I should be able to read a textbook at 43 like I could when I was 22, I don't know.

We have two more review classes, then I'll probably have my readiness review in June and take the computer exam before the end of summer. In the meantime, I have a lot of material still to go over and absorb. And I'm not sure I'm up to it.

I just read a chapter from "Effective Public Relations" earlier today, and the only thing I can tell you is that it was generally about public relations.

Or business.

One or the other.

I think.