“If our ideas seem smaller nowadays, it’s not because we are dumber than our forebears but because we just don’t care as much about ideas as they did. In effect, we are living in an increasingly post-idea world — a world in which big, thought-provoking ideas that can’t instantly be monetized are of so little intrinsic value that fewer people are generating them and fewer outlets are disseminating them, the Internet notwithstanding. Bold ideas are almost passé.
[…]
“The post-idea world has been a long time coming, and many factors have contributed to it. There is the retreat in universities from the real world, and an encouragement of and reward for the narrowest specialization rather than for daring — for tending potted plants rather than planting forests.”
The best takeaway from all the stories about A-levels this year can be applied to anyone, no matter what their situation.
A Carlisle student got a double dose of misfortune after he received the wrong results and then, when he finally discovered that his actual result was still not good enough, had missed out on all available clearing places due to the delay.
So far, so frustrating. But something caught my eye in what Mike Smith said after this unfortunate news.
Smith told Cumbria’s News & Star that he was more angry with himself, because he knew he could have put in more work to get the grades he needed in the first place.
It could have been so easy to blame the sequence of events for what took place. If the error had not occurred, a clearing place may have been possible.
photo by John-Morgan
Despite these issues, however, he still recognised some responsibility. Rather than wash his hands of the whole thing, he showed awareness that he could take better control of his situation and that he would do so now.
Curveballs get thrown at us as we go through life. Some big, some small. But that doesn’t take away our own strengths and responsibilities. You cannot control your life down to the last action, but you do have great tools at your disposal.
From time to time, remind yourself to use those tools and to learn how they operate best.
When you’re faced with unexpected problems, remember not to just find blame in everything else. It is rarely worth the effort. Many things do happen outside of your control. That makes it doubly important not to give up on the things you still have a handle on. Letting go of everything is destructive with no purpose.
I hope Mike Smith is able to recover from this year’s unfortunate position. I’m confident he will, so long as he continues to take responsibility for the matters he has more control over. Smith has learned something from a curveball, which isn’t an easy thing to do.
Next time you’re thrown a curveball, what will you do with it?
Okay, it’s A-level results day. If you, or anyone you know, is holding on to grades that weren’t the ones you’d hoped for, read this.
Your life IS NOT shaped by your results. YOU go way beyond a few exam grades.
What makes you awesome isn’t about a particular institution, degree, or career. Those things don’t matter as much as you might think.
Your awesomeness is about what you do. Everything you do. And who you are.
You are the big picture. While your experiences are parts of you, they don’t define you, they only help build a definition of you in pieces. For every situation that makes you want to crawl under a rock, there are many others that will pick you back up and make your big picture more amazing than ever.
In short, you can still make things happen if you want it. Lower A-level results aren’t a fail. You may have failed to secure a firm offer to the degree you wanted, but that doesn’t mean you fail. Or, put another way, failure is fine. It means you work on what’s next for your big picture.
Stuff like this can make you feel deflated. But don’t let it make you give up. Start with some of the following:
Have a cuppa and stay calm. Oh, and a doughnut too. Nom.
1. Take stock and stay calm
Yes, it’s time to pick yourself up, but have a cup of tea first. Have a few cups of tea. Basically, let it go for a moment. Nobody expects you to jump up fighting straight after a shock. So relax. As hard as that sounds, try.
It is not the end of the world. If anyone acts like it is, they are wrong. Hope is not lost.
Imagine how it feels when you’re really dizzy. Your balance is thrown around at first, but you gradually improve. Give yourself time to feel a bit less dizzy.
2. Consider clearing options
Although some unis say they have no clearing places, that’s no reason to ignore what is available. Check my previous posts on clearing to make sure you are prepared:
3. Only accept a place through clearing if you really want it and you think it’ll suit you
Just grabbing at places because you’re desperate to go to uni is a dangerous move. If you really are that keen to be in a uni, ANY uni, it’s better to find places that will guarantee you a place next year based on the grades you have. Then plan ahead for the year ahead.
Yes, even though tuition fees go up next year. Fees are more annoying than dangerous.
4. Consider your other options
We’re all thrown curveballs from time to time. You certainly won’t be alone in this situation. There are other routes into uni. And you may even decide not to bother with university at all. Correct, that IS an option. Seriously. A good place to start in checking out other options is notgoingtouni.com.
5. Find support from understanding friends and family
Don’t go through this alone. And if it is too tough to speak to those you know, seek online forums of support. There will be a lot of people going through similar circumstances over at The Student Room, for instance.
UCAS also has an Exam Results Helpline, with people on hand to discuss your future options. Give them a call on 0808 100 8000. UCAS say, “Whether it’s questions about continuing into further or higher education, or pursuing different routes such as vocational learning routes, taking a gap year or finding employment, advisers are on-hand to offer free, expert and independent information and advice”.
6. Work on Plan B, even when you don’t have one
University and College Union says that tens of thousands of students who don’t get a uni place this year are “unlikely to have a plan B“.
So make one. Now you’ve considered your options, make a focused plan. It doesn’t have to be detailed, but it does need to be taken seriously.
Why? Because now is not the time to despair and grab at the first thing to fall into your reach.
Give it proper thought. Ask yourself some questions. What were you going to university for? How else can you get to where you want to be? Who or what can help you in your quest? Do you have any particular career or pathway in mind?
If you can’t answer all your questions, do some more research. And don’t be afraid to ask for advice as you do it. Nobody would be able to do as much as they do without other people.
7. Believe in yourself
It’s not always easy to pick yourself up after a fall. But don’t be hard on yourself. What’s done is done. If you did your best, there is nothing to worry about. You can shine brighter in other ways. If you know in your heart of hearts that you could have upped the effort, let this be Day One of making the effort you know you can give.
Good luck to you and may you have an amazing future.
This is a big ol’ post about public relations in higher education, based on today’s discussion over at The Guardian. I hereby give you advance warning that you may want to skip over this post if you’re not interested in behind the scenes university chatter. 🙂
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I knew we’d be in for a fast-paced, interesting discussion on PR in higher education when David Colquhoun weighed in so forcefully with the first comment:
“Ah that’s nice. A meeting to consider how to communicate hyperbolic claims to the public. PR is simply paid lying. I maintain it has done a good deal of harm to universities. The public may not have a great depth of scientific knowledge, but they can spot advertising when they see it. And they can tell that most of the startling promises mad in press releases, or on the web, vanish without trace.”
BOOM!
By the way, if you don’t read Colquhoun’s Improbable Science, you really should check it out.
Colquhoun explained that staff must have a genuine interest in your audience. He explained, “If your hidden aim is to promote the university (or the authors), you’ll soon be spotted and you’ll bring into disrepute the university for which you work.”
While I don’t think disrepute is automatically brought upon a university in every single case, I do agree that PR should go way beyond simple promotion and getting stuff out to as many sources as possible. Good PR shows attention and care.
Pushing information out is useful only when it goes to relevant people, interested people, people who could benefit, people who could help causes further, and so on.
I’m talking about official channels of PR here. People who are paid to promote a university and what takes place within. On this point, Mario Creatura helpfully entered the discussion with some interesting points that are worth reproducing in depth:
“Each HEI will usually have at least one press or media officer (this is a drastic understatement). If they put out one traditional press release per day, then each HE journalist could in theory be bombarded with 165. Most HEIs put out more. Even if we ignore the targeted lists, that’s a lot for one journalist to cope with.
“As Matt wrote in his introduction, 90% of releases are ignored by the press. By sheer volume received alone this is understandable. The old one-direction shotgun approach of spraying press releases to all and sundry is no longer tenable.
“So my opening question is this: in a saturated market (evil word!) is it possible for universities to differentiate themselves to the media, and through them, to the public using digital and new media?”
Universities can use digital and new media to tap markets, but they still need an angle and they still need to care.
Moving to any new platform requires an understanding of how to best use the platform, as well as how to best broadcast relevant messages. Just shouting the same press releases from another place isn’t groundbreaking in itself.
Mike Simpson explained, “In an age when many people don’t get their news and information from the press, to depend on such methods is folly”. If a growing percentage of the public are accessing press releases and other channels directly, there is potential to engage with the public first hand.
Again, no matter what is done, those involved in the PR must care not just about the university and the job they are paid to do, but they must care about external communities and the messages they’re trying to communicate. PR isn’t solely about promotion, even if it does that very thing.
I’m sure that the majority of PR staff in universities do care beyond shoving out messages and promotion. But how do they deal with feedback? Do they consistently engage in listening to and responding to what’s being said about their brand? How are negative messages dealt with? Tracyplayle spoke about this early on in the conversation and is worth reading in full. [Don’t worry, I’ll wait for you…]
No matter how staff react and respond, there is still the little matter of whether or not any of the PR has worked. KatrinaBath picked up on this question:
“Column inches and the traditional methods of evaluating are (rightly in my opinion) criticised for being unsophisticated measurement techniques… and with social, digital and online communications it often isn’t relevant anyway.”
These new methods of communication are more easily analysed for clicks, conversations, comments, reach, and so on. It won’t prove whether PR has worked the way a university wishes, but it does begin to tell a story beyond mere column inches. And it’s trackable in realtime if required.
Nevertheless, as tracyplayle mentioned, “time and money issues remain, and until we crack those, we’re never going to be able to do really great comms in the HE sector”.
Tracyplayle also gave preliminary results based on 68 HEI responses on social and digital media for PR:
“More than half of HEIs view themselves as behind the curve in the use of social and digital media for PR (58%).
“The biggest barriers are: time (80% of respondents), skill/know-how (56.3% of respondents) and money/resource (52% of respondents).”
Clearly, there are still barriers even when an institution wants to engage with new and useful methods of communication.
Video
MikeSimpson asked if online video content should be ‘slick and professional’ or ‘a bit rough and ready’. My thought is that both are relevant. A brief look at YouTube alone is enough to see a popular mixture of both professional productions and amateur offerings. I remember the exposure Lincoln had when TomSka made his own ‘Banned’ University of Lincoln adverts. PR that didn’t even involve PR.
Official videos should adhere to a certain amount of production value, but the same shouldn’t automatically be said when a member of staff is making an independent video about their own work or an issue that shows what is being done within an institution.
Any video requiring an official logo/introduction, with full in-house production, should look relatively polished. It wouldn’t make sense to look anything other than professional.
I agree with rfcellis that “the bar on video content keeps on getting higher”, which results in having to keep up with developments and spending more time and money… the two things institutions are trying to save! That said, it is the content that matters, not the slickness. Professional enough is acceptable in most cases. People won’t care if what’s being dished out is useful and entertaining in content.
Lorna Gozzard uses a simple benchmark for quality:
“The question I always ask myself, is would I watch this?”
And in terms of moving away from press releases, Mario Creatura says “It is easier to watch a 30 second video than read a 300 word press release!”
Mario’s point points again toward information directly to the public, rather than to journalists and media agencies. Videos are already popular and there is still a lot more growth to come.
PR beyond PR
What does PR mean? MelonieFullick entered the debate by suggesting that it’s not all press releases and direct PR action:
“The idea has to be expanded to include what students and professors and staff do that brings attention to the university: all those things are the “message”, just as much (and even more than) a press release is.”
Fullick added that these messages cannot all be controlled. Due to this, PR is about relationship-building internally just as much as externally.
But all this takes time. Time that we have already established is not freely available. KatrinaBath said “I’m sure all HE press officers will agree that it can be hard to take time out from the daily routines and to-do lists to think creatively”.
Of course, it doesn’t have to be a press officer doing all the work. Journalists and the public want to hear from ‘experts’. And universities have plenty of those! Mithulucraft suggested, “The question is then how can university PROs embrace that and use it to their advantage”. Could universities bring together a range of academics to talk on and dissect new research in a way that can be presented clearly to the public and allow further discussion off the back of it?
Kyle Christie and Mario Creatura pick up on the growing number of online outlets used by universities. Many channels originate outside the realms of press officers, but those PR staff should be aware of all those channels both to source stories and to help communications move in the most relevant areas.
Change the game
There was much talk of restructuring press releases and the fear that doing so may not benefit. However, The Guardian’s Matthew Caines seemed enthusiastic about many of the new ideas being suggested.
Could it be that what we think we know as useful is actually out of date?
Creatura explained that new strategies are still necessary, especially within the HE community:
“The majority of HE coverage is with specialist journalists when we discover a cure for this or a solution to that. That won’t ever go away. It’s whether the positive profile of the sector (in general national media) and the expertise of individual HEIs (in the niche and expert publications) can be effectively supported through modern media strategies.”
Adparker linked to a great social media news release template for institutions to use and suggested that these releases provide better media coverage results than traditional approaches.
As the conversation was coming to a close, Mario Creatura asked if the HE sector wasn’t brave enough to try new things:
“Can that slow and meticulous attention to detail in research be hindering the relatively instantaneous requirements for expert comment?”
It was a shame to see such an important question at the end of the live Guardian chat. But the end of a chat doesn’t mean the end of the discussion.
As with anything as wide ranging as PR in higher education, there are always more questions than answers. That shouldn’t stop us from searching for answers though. If nothing else, it will highlight new questions and yet more wonderful places to start searching.
The road is long. Never ending, perhaps. I guess we’d better make it an exciting journey then!
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