Not that every journo instructor is a dinosaur. Indeed, some schools are actually doing their darndest to be relevant in the social media age. A for effort, at least.

Still, I never learn more than when I’m hammering the keys on deadline, sitting under the lights waiting for the camera to go live, talking into a phone on live radio or otherwise being a journalist. My comfort with the process wasn’t born in a classroom. Rather, it grew out of the 4 a.m. newsroom shifts that I pulled every day before trundling off to class.

Oddly, I’m a product of a j-school. But I’m a journalist based on the scars I’ve picked up in the real world. I did the j-school thing because it seemed far preferable to the generic degree program I would have otherwise been forced to endure. When I finally made it to class – bleary eyed after writing news runs and enduring the abuse of craggy old hands who resented 19-year-old kids in their midst – I was surrounded by too many students who simply never understood the difference. Today, many of them have disappeared off the journalistic radar. Good thing, that.