8/30

That was grumpily plastered on the whiteboard of my first class at the Adcenter, Conceptual Thinking in Copywriting with legendary Coz Cotzias. He told us to write this date down and we followed his order with fervor and intense anticipation.

He soon shattered our excitement with this simple paraphrase— “you have no f---ing clue what you just walked into. This is the date to get all your money back from the school. I expect at least four of you to not be here by the end of the semester.”

After being yelled at like tattered young sailors for the first 30 minutes, our ship’s captain continued by letting us know that this is the biggest group of copywriters that the school has ever admitted, twenty-four. He also belted that this was also the most diverse group of writers they’ve ever admitted. It seemed as if he was licking our wounds from the razor-tongued lashing we received from the class intro. But, he sucker punched our egos by letting us know a little secret.

The secret? According to our great leader, a leader with the awards, work and years to prove it, our ’09 class of writers is the most untalented group of writers ever admitted. Sure, we have plenty of talents, work experience, even a law degree. That’s not what he meant. He meant that our applications were complete SH*T. Of the 24 people in the copywriting program, 8 of us are considered long shots and need to be working our buns off to keep up. All of us had crappy samples that we turned in. Simply put, we were the worst group of writers the school has ever seen.

He did comfort us by saying that it is all going to change. For the better.

The one thing we did have, the reason we all got in was the amount of cream factor we have for our chosen craft—we love advertising and creative communication.

We started bombarding the legend with questions, and the vibe of the class completely changed. He sensed we were getting “it” a lot faster than he anticipated—so fast that he decided to extend class from three hours to just a smidge past six hours, covering our first three lectures on the first day, instead.

The funny thing is I loved every minute of it. The cursing. The rants and raves. The doubt. The realization. The passion. The promise that if we work our buns off we are going to be amazing. And really, isn’t that all that any of us ever really wants, to be amazing?