My second parents, the Landrums, worked for decades in the administration of the University of Georgia. I grew up visiting them every year in the cool, hip town of Athens. They would show us around the campus, and swap stories about their days as students in the seventies. After explaining my mission to Mr. Landrum, he immediately thought I should talk to Sam Fahmy.
Mr. Fahmy is the Director of Public Relations in the Office of Academic Affairs at UGA, and he had some fantastic things to say about being in your mid-twenties.
DB: So where were you when you were 24?
SF: That’s a great question. I finished my undergraduate degree in five years, and then I actually took a gap year myself and I’m really glad that I did that. At the end of college I thought I wanted to do journalism but wasn’t sure. So I took a distance learning class in journalism and realized, ‘Yes I love this!’ I also got away from Athens and moved to Charleston, SC, lived on the coast and it was wonderful. On paper the plan was to save money for grad school. I think I actually ended up with less money at the end of that year. But I really enjoyed the lack of structure and the opportunity to think about what I wanted to do. And then when I got into graduate school I was very focused on it. I spent a year waiting tables and living a very unstructured life. I thought, ‘this was fun for a year, but now I’m ready for something more career-like.’ And I’ve worked with people who went immediately from undergrad to grad school. And to them graduate school felt like just an extension of undergraduate. And so I’m glad I did [take some time off] and I encourage other people [to do so], if they can. I think you just need a re-entry plan.
DB: Just a little bit of time to pick yourself up.
SF: Yeah, think about what you want to do when that gap year is over. So when I was 24 I probably had just wrapped up my masters degree. I was very fortunate in that I graduated into a really strong job market. I earned my masters degree in the year 2000.
DB: So no worries yet [about the economy].
SF: This was some time ago. The economy was really strong. I had multiple job offers to choose from. I was really fortunate to be able to pick the one that was best for me. It’s much more challenging for students today just because of the way the economy has changed. That said, most of the students that I work with out of the health and medical journalism program tend to find success. But you really have to be focused from day one of grad school, ‘What do I want to do when I’m done?’ So you want to acquire the skills that you need. And it’s okay to have multiple options and things you want to do. At the same time you should have some sort of endgame.
DB: I see a lot of kids with no endgame that got out of school and are just kind of wandering, like me.
SF: I think a lot of people go to grad school because they don’t know what they want to do.
DB: Right.
SF: The attraction of that is, it’s respectable to say, ‘I’m in graduate school.’ [both laugh] But I don’t think that’s an ideal situation to be in. Ideally you have a sense of what you want to do. Interestingly there are a lot of new graduate programs that give students some flexibility. For instance here we have this Integrated Life Sciences program. In the past people in doctoral programs pick the field of study and the professor you want to work with at the very beginning. The ILS program gives you the opportunity to pick as many as three labs from a slate of two hundred.
DB: That’s awesome.
SF: It gives people the opportunity to explore their options before committing to a decision. It’s a good way to explore options and have a specific end in sight. So there are options out there. There are professional masters programs out there with very professional career goals in mind. For example, we have a masters in Biomanufacturing and Bioprocessing. It’s basically a two-year program that is a cross between an MBA and a science degree. And it could involve biofuels, pharmaceuticals, all these things. The take-home is that there are more options for people who are unsure, but are more professionally oriented. The program has a good focus on career outcomes, so the student feels that the investment in time and money is worthwhile. Most students have to do an internship and they help set you up. People who graduate from it have jobs lined up, and they are rewarding, knowledge-based careers. So there are some neat things out there.
DB: It sounds like this school and others are starting to adapt to the future economy [where jobs leap-frog others in relevance], and they are giving lasting tools.
SF: Yeah, there’s a lot of movement towards interdisciplinarity. A lot of the big problems that we face are going to require solutions from multiple perspectives. There’s not going to be a magic bullet, but rather we’ll use multi-faceted approaches from different fields.
DB: Have you written about anything or heard about something exciting out there, something that lights your fire?
SF: A lot of the interesting things we’re doing in graduate education are exciting. There are more options. A lot of people saw graduate school as a way to prepare for academic careers (and that’s still out there), but there are also these alternatives in industry and non-profits that maybe there weren’t in the past.
DB: I guess you can’t turn back the undergraduate experience to focus more on professional options.
SF: It’s interesting. At the University we have a career center and a large percentage of our students avail themselves to it. More schools are requiring internships; our provost announced these academic enhancements. One of the big things is to hire internship coordinators. Increasingly resources are being redirected to help students find a career that suits their interests and skills. I really resist the idea that the University experience in and of itself should be about career preparation, because we also want people to be stewards of their community, of their environment, to be able to make informed decisions, to vote, to appreciate the arts and other things that aren’t specifically career-related. We want them to have careers, but we also want them to have lives.
DB: That’s so liberal arts.
SF: Yeah, exactly! Looking back on my undergraduate experience I think some of my favorite courses had nothing to do with my area of study, like music appreciation, art history, even public speaking. There were things that made me a better person and that made me a more thoughtful person. I really do think that if we’re going to be – even fast-forward to decades from now, globalization and things like that – if someone has a small set of job skills but lacks cultural competency to work with people from different cultures and understand different perspectives—
DB: Bridge the gaps!
SF: Yeah, so I think a liberal arts education becomes more important. If you were to train someone for a specific job, then ten years from now new technological changes mean that that job doesn’t exist. I believe that the education that we provide gives students a degree of flexibility, to be successful no matter what the economy does.
DB: I’m reading a book on resiliency in cities especially in light of climate change, and you just reminded me so much of the need for resiliency in education! I’d never thought of that.
SF: Yeah, to bounce back and be someone who’s constantly learning.
DB: That’s the question, how do you keep learning?
SF: Hopefully it’s something that people enjoy and seek out, and there are so many opportunities out there. There are conferences, materials online, webinars. In any field there are these resources, and many of them are free. So it’s really up to you to avail yourself of them.
DB: What do you do for fun?
SF: Time with family is always one. I have a wife and two daughters that I love. Rock climbing is kind of my passion when I have time. I feel like it’s good for both the body and the mind in the sense that it’s great exercise, but it’s also problem solving. You don’t just use force to get up there, you really do have to think about the best course of action to take, so it’s a lot of fun.
DB: A lot of people I talk to say rock climbing. I don’t know if there is a common thread or what.
SF: I have heard that people who are in the sciences gravitate towards rock climbing because there’s that problem solving aspect.
DB: Are you working on anything in particular right now?
SF: Primarily right now, for example, editing profiles of faculty on the home page with these, like, Q&As. I am working on a couple of news releases about some new initiatives that are coming up: the provost’s office and what we are going to publish and when. So halfway into the fall semester I’m thinking about spring semester. Things sneak up on you, and there are things that urgently need your attention and the challenge is separating the short-term things from the long-term things.
DB: Prioritization.
SF: Yeah, switching between the two.
DB: That’s what intimidates me about professional life is needing those executive skills to prioritize things.
SF: Yeah, I deal with that with my graduate assistants. I’ll just throw a bunch of things at them and they’ll ask, ‘well, what do you want me to do first?’ Early on I’ll explicitly say, ‘this, then this, then this.’ And that helps them. There’s the prioritization by deadline, but also the prioritization by importance. So urgent things aren’t necessarily important, and you have to understand the difference between the two.
DB: Yeah, that gives me a heart attack.
SF: So there are certain times that I work on things that are much farther out because they are more important than a near-term item because…
DB: … if you didn’t do them, it would be that much worse.
SF: Yeah. And frankly I think as you grow professionally there are things you understand better about yourself. You understand how you work better. For instance in the morning, I tend not to do very productive thinking. So I try to have short-term things [set up for myself]. And then I try to save the afternoons for more long-term things like writing, planning, things like that. That’s what works best for me, but there are some people who are the opposite.
DB: Like grade school warm-ups.
SF: Your really have to figure out what works for you. Another thing: if I skip lunch and don’t exercise, then that really throws me off. I may have saved a little time by spending more of it at the desk, but it was probably less productive.
DB: That’s hard to see, because kids around me only value time.
SF: Yep. It’s challenging. The quality of your work is also valuable. I know I can work at night, but I know I don’t do very quality work at night, so I just save things like updating websites, things like that where it’s not particularly creative or challenging, but it needs to be done. So that’s a really good time to do it. I suppose as time progresses you really get to know yourself better.
DB: You mentioned updating websites and stuff, do you have skills like HTML or PHP, coding and scripting?
SF: No that’s more of the back-end stuff, we have staff that do that. I update the content of the websites using content management systems (we use Expression Engine), so it’s about as easy as filling out an order form online.
DB: It’s nice to know that not everyone needs to know scripting. Over the last couple of decades have you found the [technological] transitions difficult?
SF: No. Because I basically have set a personal goal never to be that person who doesn’t know how to program the VCR. It’s one of those things where, unless you are constantly keeping up, you are going to fall way behind. And you’re going to fall behind in a way that, it’s almost exponential, [that you can’t get back up to speed]. Things change so rapidly that it could almost become foreign to you.
DB: A lot of my friends run into that because they reject current technology on principle and then they get to a job and they’re unfamiliar with the technological infrastructure.
SF: Yeah, it’s one of those things where, if you’re one of the people who doesn't do a little bit every day, it can catch up to you quickly and then you don’t have the skills that others do.
-- Read Mr. Fahmy's articles about academic affairs here!