To celebrate Veteran’s Day this year, I finished reading “Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life … And Maybe the World” by the current Chancellor of the University of Texas system, Admiral William H. McRaven (Ret.). The book made me laugh and it made me cry but most of all it made me think about how hard we all have to work to get to where we want to be.

Of the ten or so main life lessons in the book, the few that rang the most true for me are:

1) Start your day with a task completed (Make your bed, damnit!)

2) Life is not fair – drive on (Hopefully in the right direction)

3) Failure makes you stronger (Something I wasn’t quite sure of until grad school)

4) Never, ever quit! (Seriously, don’t even think about it)

You can find the book and the rest of the lessons here.

I highly recommend taking an hour or so to read this and see what you can apply to your life. And, to answer your question, yes I made my bed this morning.

Yesterday marked the 10 year anniversary of defending my dissertation and being called “doctor” for the very first time. The clear memories of that day make it seem as if it happened yesterday although I still can’t remember what happened after my advisor opened the door to tell me I had passed – maybe that will come back one day! One thing is for sure, I will always be a longhorn :).

On Thursday of this week, I had the opportunity to facilitate my first faculty retreat as Department Chair for the Strategic Communication faculty. The event included your standard fair of faculty items – curriculum discussions, committee appointments, forming an advisory board, and reviewing deadlines for the coming academic year. Overall, it was a productive half day spent with a fun group of colleagues.

At the end of the meeting I took the opportunity to “deputize” the faculty to go forth and continue being awesome leaders in our college. This activity was inspired by my long time mentor, Gene Kincaid, who used to deputize all of his interactive advertising students when we were ready for prime time (I still have my deputy sheriff badge from 1999 when I got mine!).

Here is the whole posse as we prepare to walk wide-eyed into a new semester – as one of our staff put it, we are deputized to strategize!

STCO Faculty Retreat 2018

The Certified Public Communicator Program at TCU came to a close yesterday after an eventful week of programming and networking. This year Jacque and I graduated our fifth cohort in the program which brings our total count of CPC graduates to over 100 – what an awesome achievement!

Pictured below are the graduates from this year – 24 public sector communicators from cities, counties, and school districts across the country. We first started this program with Texas-based city communicators and have grown it to include students representing a variety of states from coast to coast.

My sabbatical time officially came to a close last week with the move of my office into the main Strategic Communication office at TCU – my role as Department Chair will begin in a few short weeks so July will be spent trying to get back into the swing of things. Luckily, my new spot is peaceful, air-conditioned, and has a sliver of a view.

My new office in Moudy South at TCU.

The last three months of my sabbatical time were productive with regard to research and planning for the Fall semester – my department chair training has been completed, finally received the go ahead on an upcoming paper in Internet Research, and started a new project analyzing the #deletefacebook phenomenon that occurred earlier this year. I am thrilled to be working on this new project with my mentor from UT Austin – makes me feel like a grad student again which always makes me better with deadlines!

July will be a busy month with a conference presentation on communication planning in Nashville for the National Association of County Information Officers followed by the Certified Public Communicator week on campus at the end of the month. During this week, there will be 50 public communicators at TCU to learn about digital first planning, crisis communication, measurement, and media management. I am looking forward to spending another year learning from these valuable government communicators.

As I look back on my sabbatical time, here are a few things that I would recommend for faculty about to take one (or for myself before the next one!):

1. Try to front load your projects so you have more spare time in months 3 and 4
2. Don’t give yourself too many deadlines – leave time to explore new ideas
3. Take time for your personal life – get things done that could never happen while trying to get tenure (i.e. a financial plan, a will, a garden!)
4. Travel and catch up with family – it’s much more enjoyable when you are relaxed
5. Read things that don’t matter – step away from the journal articles at some point
6. Stick to a relatively normal schedule so things don’t go completely off the rails
7. Enjoy it – that next semester will be coming at you faster than you think

That’s all for now – I’ll be reporting from TCU sometime in the next few weeks.