By Judith Roberts
I’ve mentioned before how I spent my three summers as a Louisiana Tech student in Ruston – my last summer before I graduated the following May was perhaps my favorite.
That was the quarter I was editor-in-chief of The Tech Talk.
Summer was always a little bit calmer on campus, and The Tech Talk was no exception. Instead of publishing weekly on Thursday, as was the norm during the academic year, we published just two papers: the first came right after Peach Festival and the second was a much lengthier, much anticipated Bulldog Survival Guide that was released the first week of Fall Quarter.
The Bulldog Survival Guide had some news, as news naturally occurs, but it was filled more with feature stories to help new and returning students acclimate to campus life. We had dorm-room special recipes for students to cook up, and we had ghost stories about why the Bulldog is our mascot and why Howard Auditorium is supposedly haunted. We had stories featuring new coffee shops (Frothy Monkey, anyone?) and hotspots for dates. We had interviews with the Student Government president, with the Tech president, with favorite faculty members.
Much of newspaper work – then and even now – occurs at odd times of the day. My then roommate and fellow editor Stacy Rhodes (nee Temple) would hang out in the basement of Keeny Hall (where Human Resources now resides) with fans blowing full blast (because we know how terrible Louisiana summers are), music blaring as loud as possible, and editing stories and designing pages. We spent many nights up to the early hours of the morning doing our work, long after everyone else had gone home.
In the academic year, we’d do the same, but the basement would be louder and filled with more people. We’d come up with headlines, crack jokes constantly, and discuss everything from news to classwork to what we were doing the next weekend. We were more than peers; we were close friends.
We Wiley Hilburn kids still remember getting our string books back each week. Wiley would take everyone’s stories home for the weekend, read them, and critique them. He didn’t hold back on his criticism, but all of it we knew came from a place wanting us to become better. No matter how bleak the comments were (and sometimes they were rough – we all liked to compare our notes on Monday morning), we knew if we listed to him, we’d become better writers; and we did.
I remember, as reporter and editor, going into Rita Pepper’s layout room, watching Sallie Rose Hollis (one of our writers now) go through the proof pages with her red pen. All of our professors – Sallie, Reggie Owens, Eddie Blick, and Ron White – edited pages, and we were all scrambling to make sure we met deadline each week.
But it was so fun. Many of us now are still close – some of us ended up married together (Hey, Kyle!). Many of us still work in a communication-type field, even if it’s not media. But all of us are connected still through our tutelage under Wiley and through The Tech Talk.
We’ve gone through a period of not having a campus publication, though I have hopes that with new changes in the university, that may also be in the future. I love that many of our current students can be published here in The Lincoln Parish Journal. It’s a great opportunity for them.
I am nostalgic for my days of The Tech Talk, of late nights in the basement, Sonic drinks and Griff’s burgers a staple part of my collegiate diet, and my friendship development outside of the classroom. During my first year, I considered switching majors because the constant deadlines and the rapid pace of assignments started growing difficult, and I thought, maybe journalism isn’t for me. Thankfully, my adviser, my professors, and my friends (as well as my parents) convinced me to stay.
I’m so glad they did so.
