Marshall Ramsey

One topic I enjoy talking about on my radio show is education. It’s my belief that it’s the key to a better life.  Knowledge is power. And applying knowledge is harnessing that power.

Every once in a while, someone will question whether college is worth the expense. As any parent who has college-age kids knows, tuition is skyrocketing. And sorry Isaac Newton; it’s the one thing that goes up and won’t come down.

But is it worth it?  I emphatically say, “YES!”  I have been out of college for 21 years now and I can look back on my time at the University of Tennessee and realize it shaped me into who I am today.

Here’s a list of 10 things I learned in college that made my diploma worth every single penny.

1. The dare of a special professor. Dr. Faye Julian was my speech teacher my senior year.  (she also was one of Peyton Manning’s favorite professors).  I remember her handing out the first graded test of the class. I took mine and noticed I had gotten a 95 — a solid A.  While I was happy, she looked me in the eye and said, “You can do better.”  That was the first time I had been challenged like that. And I did better. Every time I speak before hundreds or thousands of people, I hear Faye Julian’s voice. And I try to do better.

2. Finding my niche.  I was a marketing major, so it only makes sense that I took a few marketing classes. I wish I could remember the professor’s name (somethings fade with time) but the lesson he taught sticks with me.  We were doing a group exercise. We owned  a small craft-beer brewery.  We wanted to build a new facility and had two choices: In an industrial park in the suburbs (where we could produce high volume to compete with the big breweries) or in a redeveloped, trendy section of downtown (think Beale Street). We, of course, chose the suburbs.  And got clobbered by the big breweries.  It was the first time I was exposed to the concept of finding your niche and pursuing it. It is a lesson that has stuck with me for over 20 years now.  Know what you are good at and being the best at it you can be.

3. The Daily Beacon. I wasn’t your typical journalism student.  In fact, I wasn’t a journalism student at all. I was a business major.  I did, however try out to be the editorial cartoonist for The Daily Beacon, the student newspaper.  Best move I have ever made.  I learned how to produce under deadlines (five cartoons a week), I ended up being Journalist of the Year my senior year. I won awards and I learned how to deal with numerous editors’ personalities. I still count the staff at the Beacon as some of my most beloved friends.  For five years I drew cartoons and jumpstarted a career.  I learned my craft in Room 5 of the Communications Building.

4. I learned self-discipline. In high school, you are spoon-fed your responsibilities. In college, you are free to sink or swim.  It was my first true dose of personal responsibility.  No one was going to wake me up and make me go to class.

5. I learned that when pushed to the brink, I would not fail.  I graduated with honors from the University of Tennessee. But I had one big, fat D.  And that D was in Accounting II.  I’ll admit, I initially didn’t do the work — accounting was tedious and completely polar opposite to my right-brain way of thinking. And I stopped going to class. I failed my first exam, digging a hole I could barely climb out of. But I did. I busted my butt and ended up getting an 82 on my final exam.  So yes, I got a D. But I’m as proud of that D as I am of the dozens of A’s I received.

6. Don’t be a water bug. I had an English Comp. professor who went into a strange lecture one morning about the meaning of life. But it was one of the most profound lessons I learned in five years of college. He said,” don’t be a water bug. Don’t skim along the surface of your life. Live each moment.  Dive deep into the cool waters of your world.”  Most people think that you learn lessons from a textbook in college.  Mine seemed to pop up in the strangest places.

7. The value of a great advisor. My first college advisor wasn’t very good (that’s being kind). She even told me not to bother to try out for The Daily Beacon (I did after she said that and got the job).  My second advisor got me out of college. Her name is Dr. Sarah Gardial (she’s now the head of the University of Iowa’s Business School and still a friend).  She realized I was not a typical business student and she rewrote my schedule, having me take classes as diverse as persuasion, history, speech, logic and branding.  Every class she suggested I use on a daily basis.  She was like an angel guiding me out of the wilderness.  My last two years of college were amazing because of the path she put me on.  We all need advisors like Dr. Gardial.

8. The value of engagement. No, I don’t mean the diamond-ring kind. I mean really participating in what you are doing. My first quarter (we switched to semesters halfway through costing me nearly an extra year of college), I took one of the dreaded large classes at UT: Western Civilization. I was blessed to have a great teacher, Dr. John Bohstedt. (who later was a hero during the church shooting at the Unitarian Church in Knoxville by tackling the shooter.)  I sat up front, visited his office, got to know him and ended up getting a high A. I know if I had not engaged, I would have gotten a B or lower.  But I learned a valuable lesson about making an effort.

9. The value of friends. College was a place where I met a new group of people and created a new network of friends.  I met Charlie Daniel, the cartoonist at the Knoxville Journal (now the Knoxville News Sentinel). He and his wife Patsy took me under my wing and treated me like their third child.  I am a cartoonist today because of Charlie.  If I had not gone to University of Tennessee, my life would have charted a different course.  I’d probably be a laid-off advertising copywriter.

10. I learn more when I stumble than when I soar. There is a common thread through many of the other nine things I learned in college: My most valuable lessons use usually came when I was making mistakes or needed help.  I learned the value of failure to serve as a catalyst for growth.

I get to go back to Tennessee occasionally and when I do, I remember the good times. The parties. The football games. My friends. And I remember the bad times. The bad tests. The challenges I had to overcome.  I walk around campus and feel the currents that shaped me. And then I smile.

My sister Stephanie smiled as I unwrapped the long, thin gift from her. When I finished removing the festive wrapping paper, I looked at the gift with curiosity.  It was just a simple puzzle. In the age of video games, it seemed too simple, almost crude. It was a gray piece of metal with knobs inside a slot.  On one side of the knob was a circle. And on the other was an indention of a circle.  To solve it, you had to turn all the knobs in the correct direction to allow the tray holding the knobs to slide out of the gray piece of metal.  I nodded and thanked my sister.

Later that evening, I picked up the puzzle to solve it. “This should be easy,” I thought as I began to twist the knobs.  I failed.  Not one to be easily discouraged, I tried again. And I failed again.  I tried one more time.  And once again, I couldn’t solve the puzzle. I looked at the knobs and thought “What the heck?”  My linear method of problem solving was taking me nowhere.

And then it hit me.  I started over, twisted the puzzle’s knobs and moved forward. And then, I untwisted a knob and moved BACK two steps. And then I moved forward again. And then I moved BACK a couple of steps again. I kept repeating this until I was holding the tray in my victorious hands. I had solved the puzzle.  I couldn’t move forward until I learned to take a step back.

I thought about that puzzle this morning while I ran. I used to believe the path to success was a straight line. That you had to travel quickly from A to Z with no stops in between.  But my recent career upheaval and that old puzzle have taught me otherwise. Sometimes you have to have a setback to be able to move forward.

It also happens in exercise, fitness and dieting. It can be an injury. Or a couple of pounds gained. You can hit a wall or plateau and feel like you are falling backwards.  Just remember, no setback is a failure if you learn from it.

That puzzle is somewhere in my house.  I need to find it because in hindsight, it is the most valuable gift I’ve ever received. It’s truly a metaphor for my life and success so far: That setbacks are sometimes as important to success as moving forward. And that I can’t quit when they happen.

The sun was rising over downtown Jackson as I groggily walked toward my office.  I looked over at Thalia Mara Hall’s fountains and noticed they were pink. My first (and natural) assumption was that something was awry with Jackson’s drinking water again. But then I remembered it’s October. And October is Breast Cancer Awareness month.

A month for Breast Cancer Awareness has always seemed silly to me. Not because I don’t honor the cause. No, it seems silly to me because the disease is so woven into the fabric of my family’s DNA. To me, Breast Cancer Awareness is everyday — not just one month.  My mom’s first cousin (who was like a sister to her) died of the disease.  My dad’s sister is a survivor (she once joked she would show me her cancer scar if I showed her mine — I nearly spit my drink across the floor laughing.). And my mom is a heroic survivor of the disease.  Mom had it back in the 70’s. That was before pink fountains, pink ribbons and pink everything else. That was before support groups.  That’s why I admire my mom so much.  Her battle left a mark on her and all of us. And because of that mark, I pray every night my sisters (and I) don’t have to face the monster.

Yesterday I saw a friend who’s battling a particularly aggressive form of the disease.  She has lost her hair and has been struggling through numerous chemo treatments.  And her battle has just begun. She will have more surgery and radiation, too.  Her kids are about the age I was when mom had her cancer. As I stood there talking to her and her husband, I admired both of them both for their strength.  Her strength to fight. His strength in supporting her and the family.  Over the years, the golden thread I’ve discovered in cancer survivors is an overwhelming reason to live.  I saw that will in her eyes yesterday.

I watched the pink fountains for a minute. I watched the pulsing water and thought about an interview I recently conducted with Dr. Lucio Miele, the Director of the UMC Cancer Center. He talked about how primitive the understanding of the disease was back in the 1970’s compared to what it is now.  How supercomputers, DNA and other technological breakthroughs are rapidly propelling us toward a cure.  I watched the pink fountains dance in the wind and imagined a day when they could be turned off.  I imaged VC day (Victory over Cancer).  I thought of my mom, my aunt, my cousin and my friend.  As I turned around and walked toward work, the eastern sky was turning pink with the rising sun. I hoped it was a good sign.

They say that there are two constants in life: Death and taxes.  I’d like to submit a third — change.  No matter how hard we fight it, things are going to change. Our bodies change. Our relationships change. Our jobs change. Our careers change. Our towns change. Our country changes.  Change is the water that carved the mighty stones into the Grand Canyon.  As they said in Star Trek: Resistance is futile.

Change can be exciting like money you find in your pocket. It also can be annoying like a nickels that thunk in the dryer.

Change isn’t good. It isn’t bad. It just is. You wake up one day and your world is totally different.  Now, how you react to that difference determines your ultimate success in life.  I read a report over the weekend suggesting that entrepreneurs succeed because they pick themselves off the ground quickly after something negative happens. I believe that. Also you need to be careful about getting caught up in your successes. That’s as poisonous as Snow White’s apple.  I know I got comfortable and blind to changes going on in my career. And if things do change, don’t get mad. That’s a dead-end strategy. Just swallow your pride and figure out how you can make the change work for you.  It’s a lesson I’ve learned the hard way.

I see so many people in denial about changes going on around them. They just go about their day and pretend like life is the way it was yesterday. Maybe they want to hang on to a great moment in their lives. Or maybe they absolutely have their dream job (that was me.). Maybe they are scared into inaction. But whatever, they’re rooted into a comfort zone that isn’t reality.  Usually it takes something severe like being downsized to wake them. (Worrying if you will be able to keep your house is a powerful motivator.)

I’ve learned a very powerful lesson from change: Even when it seems like a bad thing, can be good. It sharpens your senses. It hones your skills. It lights a spark of creativity in a dormant brain.  Sure, it’s stressful. And it can cause pain. But it is also exhilarating and joyful.

My take on it is this: If you ever want true success in your life, you have to learn how to surf the wave of change. Otherwise, you’ll drown.