Babies Don’t Read Calendars

Detail of “Views of a Foetus in the Womb,” by Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1510-1512.

Public domain image.

Professor Karyn Smith first agreed early in the fall 2012 semester to teach the Publications class. At that time, none of us yet knew that another party would enter the picture: a brewing baby.

Smith expected to have to step out in late April for maternity leave, just a few weeks shy of the end of the semester. So far, everything has gone as planned and Smith has taken the extra pressure in stride. But as anyone familiar with pregnancy knows, babies aren’t too skilled at reading calendars.

Her eventual departure meant we had to factor yet another person into the semester’s formula. That person was Professor Cindy Boynton, who teaches other newswriting courses at HCC.

Boynton has worked for years as a professional journalist. Her experience is fortunate for the class because she won’t need a crash-course in journalistic principles before entering the fray.

Still, every newsroom operation is different, and the Publications workshop course is about as different as they come. Boynton will be coming in after most of production work has already been finished. She won’t need to worry about getting the students to think like reporters, but she also won’t know what has and has not been covered in classroom discussions.

Smith, Editor-in-Chief Dave Weidenfeller and I sat down with Boynton for about half an hour in late February to give her an idea of where we would be by the time she took over. Smith said she would provide Boynton all of the notes and materials she had accumulated. If all goes well, Boynton’s main task will be to lead the students through their final project, which usually involves creating a marketing campaign for the newspaper.

Weidenfeller and I will have a different burden, said Boynton: she’ll be relying on us to make sure production of the final issue of the newspaper, which will still be under construction, runs smoothly. Although the staff will be operating relatively autonomously by then, there will still be many tasks that require our attention. Boynton will be able to help and offer advice, but she may not know exactly what needs to be done to finish a given piece of the process. We will.

There is, of course, the calendar issue. If the baby decides to evacuate its current domicile ahead of schedule, Boynton may be shunted into the classroom vacuum with little warning. In that case, we’ll have a lot of contingency planning ahead of us.

In the meantime, we’re all crossing our fingers for a healthy, orderly birth.