Truth be told, I wasn’t really sure how it would go. I love public speaking. But, these are modern-day teenagers (seniors in high school) and I’m 40 years old. Like, I graduated college the year these kids were born. Anyhow, I had about 20 kids in this small classroom.

Originally, I thought I was being interviewed by a UNCA professor in front of the students, but this was not the case. Exactly one-minute before the session began, I was informed by the organizer that it would just be me and them. I didn’t make any presentation or have anything ready. I was unaware of that aspect of the session. Whatever, I’ll figure it out. Go with the flow.

So, I sat down in front of all these kids, eye-to-eye, and just started talking about my life and career as a professional journalist. What was wild was, that for the entire one-hour session, the kids kept asking great questions, sparking all kinds of stories and advice for these aspiring journalists.

They would raise their hands: “Who was your favorite interview?” “How do you prepare for an interview?” “Do you ever get nervous interviewing famous musicians?” “How did you know you wanted to be a journalist?” “How do you come up with story ideas?” “What interview impacted your life the most?” The back-and-forth conversation never stopped. The ball never got dropped.

Throughout the session, I felt incredibly inspired and invigorated by hearing how excited these young minds were to possibly enter the same industry I’ve happily called home for the last 18 years. It was the same excitement I remember having when I was their age, with big dreams of someday writing for Rolling Stone. I still have that excitement every single day I get to do this gig. I’ve never taken it for granted.

Related Items

Outdoors Latest

Browse a seed library

Dreaming of spring? Beat the winter blues by planting native seeds. Late fall and early…

Letters to the Editor

Preserve Fontana Regional Library

To the Editor: For nearly 100 years, the Fontana Regional Library System has reflected…

A&E Columns

This must be the place: ‘Oh, that we could always see, such spirit through the year’

Thanksgiving morning. I awoke to the sounds of my upstairs neighbor scurrying about, most…

Latest

HCC announces new university transfer agreements

Haywood Community College continues to expand university transfer agreements with North…

When the session ended, they all thanked me for being there and spending time with them. They even told me how much they liked the direct engagement and how it was refreshing to not have to sit through a presentation, that I was actually talking to them one-on-one.

As I got up to leave, this girl in the session walked right up to me, big smile, and goes, “I want to do just what you do for a living. This session was my favorite. It really makes me want to be a journalist.” Folks, that just truly made my day. Put a little kick in my step. Few more logs onto the fire of my intent.

Editor’s note: this is the juncture of the column where the straightforward nature of the column will now casually and appropriately transition into an actual phone message recently left by Garret to a fellow friend of the same age about “High School Media Day” and what intrinsic thoughts ensued.

Hey, are you alive out there? Are you around? What the going on? Let’s get a beer soon, a taco, have some nice conversation. I’ve been wandering around too much on my own lately. Need some stimulating conversation with good kindred spirits, yourself included. Also, hello from UNCA. I thought I’d reach out to you because I got asked to do a panel. It was just me.

“High School Media Day,” all these kids that want to be in journalism. And I assumed I was going be interviewed by a professor. They never said anything otherwise when they had asked me to do this. And so, I show up a minute or so before the panel starts. The guy I thought was interviewing me goes, “Alright, they’re all yours.” I totally got caught off guard.

He just threw me into the deep end and just leaves. So, I walked into the classroom. Something like 20 high school kids, the oldest being 18. My mind went — “Oh my God, when they were born, I graduated college.” And you know, I interact with people of all walks of life. I have no problem talking to anybody. One-hundred years old or 10 years old, doesn’t matter.

But, I’ve not really been around a lot of these kids that age, in a setting like that where you’re talking to them, you’re trying to keep their interest as an educator or an academic or whatever. Luckily, I have no problem talking to anybody. And I used to substitute teach a lot back in the day, but that was 20 years ago. It was surreal. I just got tossed into this room totally unprepared.

And it made really made me happy how well it went. I was happily shocked that these teenagers were actually enthusiastic. I was telling them wild stories about interviewing The Red Clay Strays, Dave Grohl, Wynonna Judd and Kacey Musgraves. Just trying to put stuff out there that they would know and connect with. They were totally engaged. I was sitting in a chair facing them at the same level that they were facing me for an hour.

It was interesting to explain to them the origins of my career, how the initial goal was to work for Rolling Stone and be on [MTV’s] “Total Request Live.” I wanted to be [TRL host] Carson Daly. And they didn’t know what TRL was. I was trying to explain it to them, “Well, it’s kind of like YouTube before YouTube, where you would actually call MTV studios in New York City and request a video. And they would play it, and whatever one was the most popular, they would play it again.”

It was great that they’re interested in doing what I’m doing, especially at such a young age in this unknown landscape of media — social media, mass media, whatever. And then I look into the [bathroom] mirror [on campus], my gray beard and my hair’s going white. And I’m like, “What the hell happened? How am I 40 years old talking to these kids?” I remember being in journalism school. I remember being in high school. I remember just watching MTV and reading Rolling Stone and thinking, “I want to do that.”

I digress. How’s your day going? What are you doing? Are you around this weekend? You want to go to a party? I got a cool one. Get at me. It’s an Oktoberfest party on Saturday. You should come.

Life is beautiful, grasp for it, y’all.