Hello from home, cheri! It’s good to be back in Tennessee, all storms aside, after a month of heavy traveling and conferences galore. I’m settling back into the Jackson routine, now, & have never been more excited to have a weekend with nothing to do but catch up on a couple projects & more than a couple hours of sleep.

It’s been a wonderful month, though, & I can’t say enough about all that I heard this weekend at the conference and all of the kind hearts I was able to encounter–not the least of which was the amazing Mr. Garrett Hubbard from USA Today, who took time from his pressure-packed life to come & speak with us at the conference and then back at school, yesterday, for a lecture. Below are just a few snippets of wisdom I was able to jot down through a quick interview & a couple Q&A’s over the weekend. The full story will go in next week’s issue of the Cardinal & Cream, which I’ll be sure to link to later.

Enjoy!

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I’ve always felt like being given the opportunity to work at USA Today has been a gift and … I am to be a steward of it, and stewardship looks like working very hard, working smart, working collaboratively, working humbly and learning, always seeking feedback from other people on how to grow.

Visual literacy is so well shaped and so well defined in this culture. It’s one of the quickest ways to the heart.

Know the answer to the why question: Why you do this. Once you have that down, then you have a purpose, and when you have that purpose you begin to know who you need to reach out to, who you need to look to for mentorship, who you need to look to for advice. … Working harder than any of your peers is a given, but that’s just the starting point. Reaching out to people, making the most of your instructors and the other people who are teaching you is huge. It’s not to be taken lightly.

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