Reminiscing About College, Enthusiasm And New Ideas

A few weeks back, I drove up to North Jersey to join the rest of my family in celebrating the first birthday of my niece Madison. My sister Steph tried to make the most of the unwrapping of the gifts but Maddie was way past her naptime and struggled to feign mild disinterest. My other nieces McKenna and Maya, who are three and a half and a year and a half old respectively, were only too eager to step in and open the presents for their cousin. Their eyes lit up and their enthusiasm was in overdrive, no doubt fueled by the sugary rush of the birthday cake. Shortly afterward, I tried to muster my own enthusiasm for the long drive to my friend’s annual barbecue gathering in South Jersey. My dad had already warned me about the awful traffic backup on the southbound side of the New Jersey Turnpike. I thought, “No problem. I’ll just hop off exit 9, take Route 18 to Route 1 and get on Route 130 from there.” I knew there would be a lot of lights but at least you keep moving. I was familiar with exit 9 as it is the exit for New Brunswick and Rutgers University, my alma mater. I still have fond memories of the school and, in particular, The Inside Beat, the weekly magazine of The Daily Targum, which is the daily college newspaper at the school. It was the Beat that fueled my enthusiasm for working on a magazine. The Beat was a wonderful publication. It was full of great reviews of film, music, theater and art but we also had charming offbeat articles and informative cover stories that ranged from topics reflecting our liberal politics to more slice-of-life topics. One writer penned a cover story on interracial relationships. Another author wrote of her affection for Jersey diners. We had terrific theme issues. One was entirely about sex. One was entirely about Malcolm X. Aside from the articles, the Beat was a great experience. I vividly remember the road trip to cover the pro-choice march in Washington, D.C. I chuckle when I recall the end of our Sunday staff meetings when we had hilarious “bad fiction” readings from awful short stories that one of our staff would bring with him from his creative writing class. When jazz legend Miles Davis passed away, I wanted to run a tribute article about him and I knew only one guy could do it justice. Shortly afterward, I ran into my friend Rob and before I could even say anything about the article, he said, “We should do an article about Miles.” I knew right then that we would be friends for a long time. In the hectic everyday of our lives, there isn’t much time to wax nostalgic about college. Interestingly though, when we were out at the Western Podiatric Medical Congress recently, more than a couple of doctors said they wanted to see more articles about the podiatry colleges, noting that they wanted to stay abreast of what was going on at the schools. With this in mind, we are launching a new series of articles, “Colleges In Focus,” which debuts this month in our “News And Trends” section (see page 6). Each article will emphasize a particular area of strength at an individual podiatry college. In the debut article of this series, Associate Editor Brian McCurdy talks to Terence Albright, DPM, and David G. Armstrong, DPM, about the renewed focus on research at the William M. Scholl College of Podiatric Medicine at Rosalind Franklin University Of Medicine and Science. The various research projects sound very promising for faculty, students and the profession as a whole. Clearly, the college experience shapes us and informs our character in more ways than we know. Hopefully, this new series in Podiatry Today will reflect the enthusiasm and the propulsion of new ideas that the colleges are bringing to the podiatric profession.