Author: Kat (Page 19 of 89)

The Balancing Act (Or Why My Current Career Path Is Like The 80s Cartoon Jem)

11 April, 2012 / Kat

When I was a little girl, I adored the 1980s cartoon Jem.

Jem was a popular animated cartoon and series of dolls about a woman named Jerrica. Jerrica spent her days running a music related company and running a home of foster children. But at night (or whenever she touched her magical holographic earrings and called upon a Great Oz style machine named Synergy), Jerrica became Jem, mid 1980s pop rocker with bubble gum pink hair and the very thickest of eyeliner. Only those closest to Jem – her all-female band with equally bright hair and horrid 80s fashion taste – knew she led this double life.

Five year old me loved the idea that you could be great at two careers and just seamlessly glide from one to the other without too much conflict. Sure, the Jem/Jerrica charade did get tricky at times, but in the interest of good TV, it was always figured out without anyone who didn’t need to know finding out.

Fast forward 25 years, and living a life like Jerrica’s is not too far fetched. During the day, I am a higher education administrator, caring for 16,000 undergrads and another couple thousand grad students. When they succeed, my office rewards them, and when they fall hard, my office punishes them. Increasingly over the years, my job has included handling external interests when students fall hard and trying to promote the much good the unnoticed majority are doing.

At night, I am a sports writer – or at least I try to be. Writing and communicating was the one thing I knew I wanted to do since I was twelve years old, but the foundation was laid long before: I had been writing stories, making handmade books and creating newsletters since I was four.

For a while, I was able to seamlessly glide between working in Student Affairs during the day and being a writer at night. It was fulfilling and felt even glamorous in a way to get out of one job and frantically run to the other. “I just expelled someone and ran a town hall meeting for students, but wait! – a half hour later, I am covering a lacrosse game!”

Just like the cartoon I loved as a child, I was doing two meaningful careers – one that I loved, and another that helped others. And the two lines didn’t cross. The rare times conflict arose, I was able to deflect or solve it before anyone who didn’t need to know knew.

Until lately. Continue reading

90s Girl Problems: Why Verne Lundquist’s Voice Always Takes Me Back To 1992

23 March, 2012 / Kat

Veteran sports broadcaster Verne Lundquist is calling NCAA Tournament basketball games for CBS this weekend. I don’t know about you, but even fourteen years after CBS broadcast its last Winter Olympics, Lundquist’s voice will still always be associated with Olympic coverage for me.

If you grew up in the late 1980s and early 1990s, there was high probability that one of your childhood dreams was to be a well-trained, calm and composed figure skater representing the United States at the Olympics. Part of that dream included Lundquist narrating your life story – or at least pertinent biographical information – to the masses. And then when Scott Hamilton, his color analyst, would flip out and talk nonsensical about your performance, Lundquist would bring him back from spaz-ville.

“She landed a triple loop,” Hamilton would comment, then start shrieking like someone turned his personal energy throttle up to Micro Machine Man. “OH MY GOODNESS, THIS IS THE BEST MOMENT IN THE HISTORY OF AMERICA. NO MANKIND. NO, ALL OF THE UNIVERSE.”

Lundquist would cut through the energy and translate Hamilton’s insanity to the masses. “I think what you’re trying to say, Scott, is that she’s doing quite well.”

Childhood Olympics junkies, like myself, would take to the nearest tiled floor in my house during Olympic coverage commercials and “skate” around in our footy pajamas. When I did so, I always could hear Lundquist’s voice right before I manically started jumping around in my tiny kitchen. “The first to skate, the ten year old from Rochester, New York, Katie Hasenauer.”

You wanted Lundquist to tell America your own personal story of adversity, you wanted Hamilton to over-caffeinatedly swoon over your jumps and artistry, and you wanted to skate like Olympic gold medalist Kristi Yamaguchi. That was life as a ten year old girl in 1992, back when the Olympics were the national equivalent of the Super Bowl, March Madness, a Mad Men season premiere and a Harry Potter film opening all in one. (Or at least, that is what it felt like.)

When I had Syracuse-Wisconsin and Ohio State-Cincinnati basketball on my television Thursday night and heard the now 71 year old Lundquist calling the game, I was instantly taken back to those days where I spent my entire February school vacation glued to the television watching Olympics coverage and hanging on to his every word. For me, there are few childhood memories clearer or fonder than that.

Here’s Lundquist calling one of 1992 Olympic gold medalist Kristi Yamaguchi’s programs.

The Scribble and Throw: Brian Hoyer and Why He Is Not The Second Best QB In The AFC East

21 March, 2012 / Kat

Usually, when I completely and totally disagree with a sports related comment made on Twitter, online or through other means, I don’t say so. I’m passive. I usually pull the good ol’ “note to the ex-boyfriend” route – you scribble madly for ten minutes everything you want to say, then fold it up, rip it up and throw it out. You feel the release of having said it, but don’t have to deal with the aftermath.

And while that is fine and good for Little Miss Polite me, it’s also limiting. Do you realize how much more blogging material I would have if I just hung onto that writing, stripped out the nonsense and posted it?

So today, when I saw several Boston based football writers seriously suggest, upon the Tim Tebow trade to the New York Jets, that “Brian Hoyer is the second best AFC East quarterback,” I threw my pen across my office in disbelief. I then recovered the pen and started scribbling.

But wait – why scribble and throw? I’ve got a blog that needs material, and this is a pretty legit rant. So here you go: my unedited “Scribble and Throw” response regarding Brian Hoyer, New England Patriots backup quarterback. I’m not claiming that I’m right, that this is grammatically correct, or that this is by any means my best work. This is just what exactly I thought and wrote in fifteen minutes time. Continue reading

Super Bowl Sunday: Please Don’t Riot. Please. Don’t.

5 February, 2012 / Kat

Over the past eight years of working in higher education in Boston (yes friends, my full time job is not in sports), I have worked my fair share of university-sponsored viewing parties for the World Series, ALCS and Super Bowl. Part of working these parties is convincing students to attend them and imploring them to lay off the rioting in the streets (part of the reason why we hold them.) Achieving both goals can be hard. Most times schools decide to share “Please Don’t Riot” messages via an all-university email, and over the past few years I’ve had to review or help write a number of them.

If the email is too lengthy, students read two lines in, realize it resembles a novella, and immediately strike the delete option. If the email sounds to harsh or overbearing, students reading it hear the Peanuts teacher voice in their head and tune out. If the email is too brief, then you risk not getting all of the points you need to across.

On top of all of that, universities are asked to include certain messages by the Boston Police and Mayor’s Office. The two entities produced a PDF called, “Play It Safe,” with tips they wanted to provide to Super Bowl revelers. The PDF was available for forwarding via email or posting to school websites. In giant institutional email systems with limited mailbox sizes, it is far easier to post the PDF online and incorporate the tips into university-wide emails.

Here’s a quick look at Massachusetts area colleges and how they tried to get the “please behave on Super Bowl Sunday” message out to their students:

• I’m biased, but my boss at Boston University wrote a great one this year – one that struck the perfect balance between length and importance. You can see it here. He also wrote a blog post.

• Our neighbor on the other side of the Fenway, Northeastern University, struck a different tone, with several different messages going out to students from various entities (individual resident directors as well as an all-University one.) One of those messages was subsequently called out by Boston Police for misrepresenting their policies. BostInnovation’s Laura Landry was on top of the story during the week. (If you don’t read her education writing on a regular basis, you’re missing out.)

• The UMass Amherst campus has had problems with sports-related rioting on their Western Massachusetts campus in years past. To get out the “behave or else” message this year, they chose to make videos with alums Victor Cruz of the New York Giants and James Ihedigbo of the New England Patriots addressing the student body. You can see Cruz’s video over at Gahden Gremlins.

• Suffolk University also sent out an email to their student body on Friday. According to the Suffolk Voice, the email focused on the precautions the BPD will be taking around the city during the Super Bowl.

Is there any perfect way to give students the “Please Don’t Riot” message, or will a select few always misbehave when the opportunity presents itself? Do you have examples of what your school sent out that you’d like to share?

Super Bowl Sports Gear: Women Apparently Love Tom Brady Jerseys.

4 February, 2012 / Kat

Leading up to Sunday’s Super Bowl, what NFL jerseys were hot in the world of online shopping? Not surprisingly, New England Patriots’ quarterback Tom Brady is very popular with online jersey buyers.

Nextag.com rounded up some figures and shared them with members of the media throughout the web. Here are some of the facts and figures I found interesting:

• In terms of Patriots’ gear, “Tom Brady continues to be the most sought-after jersey with 8 of the top 10 selling items, followed by Wes Welker.”

• Women’s merchandise account for seven of the top ten most popular Patriots’ items sold online. The most popular item is the “Reebok New England Patriots Tom Brady Premier Team Color Jersey,” with a women’s pink jersey, the “Reebok New England Patriots Tom Brady Women’s Pink Fem Fan Jersey” coming in a close second.

• Despite the usual outcry towards pink and sparkly sports wear for women, two of the top ten Patriots items on Nextag.com are pink female jerseys. Another two have rhinestone embellishment and are in fabric and prints exclusive to women’s styles.

Big thanks to Nextag.com for sharing this data with sportswear geek me. What will I be wearing to the Super Bowl Party I’m working Sunday? Not anything Brady, but not anything Manning either. I’ll be wearing a very special outfit that will represent the two teams that would have made the Big Game…if the AFC and NFC determined their representatives based solely on the first four weeks of the season. I promise to post a photo sometime Sunday on my Twitter feed.