Mr. Watters

I had just finished Ethan Watters' book and I must say I was impressed with how he reinforced his arguments using different a couple different countries as models for his book. Although some parts sort of dragged a little, but I thought he did a fantastic job in terms of how he conducted his interviews and background information he used for his book. Psychology isn't exactly my cup of tea, but the fact that he was comparing Western psych methods with other cultures made his book all the more interesting.

Before attending Ethan Watters' talk I was a little weary about going to the event because I was completely exhausted from all the work I had to do for other classes and I was afraid of falling asleep in the middle of Watters' talk. Thankfully I stayed awake through the whole thing, writing down any relevant information for the "Crazy Like US" assignment.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that Mr. Watters was just as impressive in real life as he is in the book. He had done a great job answering most our questions and was able to eloquently explain some of the psychological terms he used in his book. My favorite part of the event was when he told us about the "Top 10 things you need to know before going on the Daily show" (obviously he was on the Daily Show), which I thought was hilarious.

I'm not sure if everyone realized this, but we literally have two or three weeks of school left, wasn't it just yesterday we were working on our "HOOD1" assignment? Is it just me or has time gone by a little too fast?

Ethan Watters

Hi students, stuck in Richmond on my way to NYC. I'm happy to have heard from Rachele how well prepared & engaged you all were. Thank you!

Yvonne

Ethan Watters

Sir E. Watt

Yeah, I just saw all of the other posts and I thought I'd mix it up with the title.

ETHAN WATTERS WAS SO INSPIRING. I was so impressed with how well he handled all of the questions and how thorough he was at explaining himself.

One thing he made me think about was how we handle sources. In general, it seems, reporters don't really like sharing. That seems to be a lonely choice. Knowing how hard it is to collect the right sources for the story at hand (I guess that depends on the subject), I feel like it should be a no-brainer.

Anyway, those who were there (I think it was everybody- INCLUDING LUPE I HAVE THE PICTURES TO PROVE IT) know that he invited anyone who was interested to come hang out and have lunch at his fancy San Francisco Writer's Grotto. I think we should plan a day to go as a class. and YES THAT MEANS WE NEED TO START A DIALOGUE.

So maybe we should wait til a class day to talk about this? Or you could just write on this post?

I think the most valuable thing I learned from his talk was that a community is really important. Having a separate space to collaborate on content and people you trust to give you feedback is really important, and I hope that I can have that somehow when I get out of school and start my professional life.

By the way,
You guys are the best.

(And I'm sorry for using caps so much)

Crime Map for North Beach.

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Ethan Watters comes to SFSU

I will be honest...this was not one of the easiest readings I've ever had. In fact it was really hard and I kept zoning out BUT I did finish it.

I love having an author come to school to chat with us. I like hearing about their past experiences and all the various projects they have been involved in. Like Ethan Watters wrote for GQ and New York Magazine! Its so amazing to here about all of his accomplishments. This may sound corny but it gives me some much needed inspiration.


Anyways he discussed his book and the audience asked questions. It was cool hearing about his travels and what he thought of psychiatry today.

Thanks to my little recording device I can listen to the whole meeting when I write this paper. Its an hour of audio but I'm definitely grateful I recorded the whole thing.

I think Nelson had the most fun, he was very excited!

Ethan Watters

The obvious choice, yet again, to blog on, but oh well. Y'all can enjoy my thoughts anyway.

First off, I want to take the opportunity to clarify that I really enjoyed the book. I thought it was absolutely fascinating and I like that he kind of kicked the western world off its high and mighty perch a bit, too. On the other hand, it could have been way shorter, but I somehow survived.

I'd never met the author of a book after I'd read the book before, so that was kind of a cool experience. Not that I hung on to every word, but I did take pretty copious notes. I liked that he went into detail about why he chose the topic that he did and why it interests him. I also really liked that he gave us all little nuggets of journalistic wisdom from his experience to guide us all, nuggets which I find highly valuable, actually.

I feel like at this point in our careers, everything spells DOOM. It's like journalism is shifting to the point that we professionally-trained may not even have a great place to mold our craft to be something valuable for society to partake in.

Watters didn't really console much on that, which I really liked, because I'm tired of hearing those consolations. Everything is changing, yeah, but you don't know what the future holds any more than I do, so why try to predict it? Let it be.

He instead chose to tell us HOW to pick what we want to do, which is amazing to hear since everyone keeps saying that to be a journalist these days you kind of have to be a jack of all trades, so to speak, and I'd rather not do that. I've already found those specific little niches that fascinate me in the world and have every intention of following through with discovering everything I can about those, which is exactly what Watters said to do.

I also thought that it was awesome that he told us about treating people nicely to get information out of them and then making them look bad (something I have some recent experience with, unfortunately). I really never want to do that again, and I enjoyed that he said that he wasn't okay with doing it either. I felt like I could effectively identify with that.

I liked the anecdotes. I liked the advice. I liked the 10 tips for being on the Daily Show. I liked hearing the story from the man himself. I liked attending the talk. I feel like I actually learned something, like a great little supplement to reading the book.