Career lessons from unexpected teachers can, on occasion, land you on the front page

I remember that afternoon 30 springs ago: Journalism class, late May 1987, my senior year at Warner Robins High.

I had forgotten it was so long ago until typing it just now.

A newspaper reporter dropped by our classroom that day. I didn’t know her, but I knew her work. Sheron Smith covered education for the local paper, which back then was known as the Macon Telegraph and News.

The previous fall, Smith had spent a week on assignment at the high school across town. As a bright-eyed and a young-looking 25-year-old in Asahi sneakers, Smith had posed as a student. (The teachers and principal were in on it.)

Smith would craft a playful, witty, textured, two-part feature story about her experiences blending in with the young people of the day and, yes, even doing the assigned homework. Her first-person account read like a diary and was among the best works of immersion journalism the paper has ever published.

Now it was the end of school, the class of ’87 was on its way out the door, and Smith was at my school looking to do a piece about a senior’s last day. Her subject needed to be ordinary enough, not the football jock or cheerleader type, but a kid with enough personality to help carry her story. My classmates suggested me.

The plan was to shadow me for a day. I was game. I figured, at very least, it would be worth a few laughs. I had no idea what Smith would write, or whether I would be worthy of her ink. (I wasn’t, but she made do.)

Our principal, Tony Hinnant, summoned me to his office the day before Smith’s visit. It was his way of saying, “Don’t embarrass us, Kovac.” I’m sure I probably did.

Though I would not realize it right away, the best part of Smith’s work that day was not so much what was in her write-up about my last day of homeroom and classes — courses that included world religion with Mr. Few and typing (yes, on electric typewriters) with Mrs. Roth.

The best part, it turned out, was a free career lesson.

Smith was aware that I, at age 18, was an aspiring reporter. But how many times do kids that age change their minds about job paths?

Smith could not have known that I would actually go into her line of work. (Much less, four years later, have a desk in the Telegraph newsroom — in the cubicle next to hers.)

What Smith gave me on my last day of high school was nothing short of a gift.

How often are journalists at any age granted a first-hand view of what it is like to be followed, interviewed and followed some more by a reporter for a full-on profile about them?

I was nervous and it probably showed.

“No, you're doing great,” Smith told me, and I never forgot those words or her bedside manner.

She was a natural at being what the best reporting sometimes requires: being a fly on the wall.

Putting people at ease is less art than it is just being friendly, human, reassuring and, especially, empathetic. If empathy is something you have to work at, journalism is not for you.

I have no idea how many times I have told folks I was writing about, hanging out with, listening to, “Hey, you’re doing great,” when they seemed nervous.

It is no line of hooey, either. Sometimes we as people don’t realize that stories about us, boring and everyday as they might seem to us, can be the greatest stories.

Smith also taught me about seeing, painting scenes with words, taking notes about something so simple as, say, the way someone looks — a lost art anymore in most newspaper stories.

“Kovac is 18 ... and lean,” she wrote. “His short, dark-brown hair is layered and sticks up on top.”

A little embarrassing? Maybe. But true.

The smallest details, the telling ones at least, can leap off the page. Those things you may take for granted can make for remarkable tales. Spend a day with someone and take notes. You’re bound to come up with something of interest. All you have to do is look.

No telling what your headline might say.

The one atop the story about me was not exactly something I had envisioned.

Mine was on the front page — next to a photo of Oliver North.

“Thursday,” the headline began, “was lackluster day, even for class clown.”

This story was originally published March 22, 2017 at 4:41 PM with the headline "Career lessons from unexpected teachers can, on occasion, land you on the front page."