Every decade or so, someone comes into your life who hates you so much, with a passion so intense, that your relationship with that person changes you forever. Usually it's a girlfriend or boyfriend, or in some cases an employer, but in my case it was a teacher at a finishing school for advertising.

After graduating from the University of the South (Sewanee) with a degree in English and a GPA that only a mother could love, I was told by friends that I would probably do well in the creative side of advertising. Maybe they admired my wit. Or my hipster doofus apparel (a prerequisite). Or, more likely, maybe they were duped into buying my used Journey and Bread CDs that I assured them would complete their record collections. Either way, they must have seen firsthand my ability to sell the unsellable - and be clever while doing it. Their encouragement gave me some confidence.


With that newfound self-esteem and little direction other than one away from my hometown of Spartanburg, I moved to Atlanta. The move took care of the only thing I knew I wanted at the time: to be out of the upstate of South Carolina. A job in advertising, to boot, would be the bee's knees. So my attempt to make a name for myself in the sprawling capital of the south began. But I had no job offers. Every story was the same: you need a portfolio before you'll get hired anywhere. The folks kind enough to meet with me in those days of naivete recommended two schools in Atlanta to do just that: The Portfolio Center and The Creative Circus. And they mentioned one more in Richmond. It was a little place called the Adcenter, a school affiliated with VCU. Since I had recently moved to Atlanta and knew no one in Richmond, I pursued the two schools in the ATL. Measured and reasonable, no doubt.

During my visit to the Portfolio Center, a guy poked fun of my Barbour jacket, so I ruled PC out. I don't like being made fun of, especially when it has do with practical winter garments that make me feel like I have money and provide me a perch from which I can look down on the untouchables of the world. Not to mention, my mother gave me that jacket; the student was indirectly making fun of my mama. The Creative Circus, on the other hand, had recently been started by some disgruntled ex-Portfolio Center teachers and administrators. Maybe they all owned Barbour jackets. Anywho, like all start-ups, they needed money and they'd bend over backwards to get it. That meant everyone there had nothing but kind words to say. In retrospect, I should have been wary of their cult-like welcoming, but damn if it doesn't feel good to be wanted. One of us. One of us. Anyway, the Creative Circus was probably floating checks to SCANA at the time; my check could keep the lights on for at least another month or two, I imagine. Because of that, the admissions policy was less than stringent . . . to say the least. I was accepted on the merits of some drawings I did in high school.

But I didn't want to illustrate. I wanted to write. So I entered their 2-year Copywriting program with about 4 other students. We were joined two quarters later by 8 other copywriters. This was when the Creative Circus was leasing space in a depressing, small office complex on the northside of Atlanta. The type of place you might imagine a remake, God forbid, of Glengarry Glen Ross being filmed. That was before it moved into a warehouse behind Atlanta's golden strip of handjob shacks, though I was fortunate enough to attend classes there beginning with my 3rd quarter.


The copywriting program at the Creative Circus, like the other concentrations there, is typically taught by industry professionals. Most of these professionals are just as you'd imagine: young, commited and, in many cases, talented. There are required courses and electives in the program. Most of the electives are taught by the aforementioned professionals, while the required courses are generally taught by fulltime employees of the Creative Circus - some who had a stake in the profits of the school. I'm not a huge fan of for-profit schools - when investors serve as faculty members, the wrong people end up wielding the most power - but leaving the Portfolio Center and creating a new, better ad school was a business venture (with an interesting loan process, I'm sure) and I was fully aware of that. And I had signed up.

Mike Jones-Kelly, an initial investor and one-time head of the Copywriting program, thought it'd be a good idea to hire an old friend of his to teach some classes (an example of the pitfalls of for-profit schools). His friend was not an industry professional. She was a sometime-contributer to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, though I've been hardpressed to find any of her work online, and all-time tub of goo. Regardless of her physical maladies and lack of credentials, his friend now had a big, ugly bat in her corner. She would be needing it.


It was my 4th quarter. The class was called Reva Writing, or at least it was referred to as that by everyone in the Copywriting program. It was led by Mike Jones-Kelley's longtime friend and once-in-a-blue-moon-contributer to the AJC, the portly Reva Ezell, and it was supossed to help the students in the copywriting program learn to write creatively. That is, it was designed to help us explore different voices and styles, while developing our own.

The first couple of classes went off without a hitch. I loved them, in fact. This was so much more interesting to me than writing about cheap trash bags or durable pocket knives or high-end vacuum cleaners. This was actual writing. But things soon started going south.

I wrote in all lowercase sometime around the 3rd week. I liked the way it looked and I didn't see why it mattered, so I continued to write in lowercase. This eventually incensed Reva. I was no E.E. Cummings, she'd say. I gave her that, but I continued to write in lowercase, using voices that I could argue the lowercase fit. Fuel on the fire, I admit.


And there were some other, smaller arguments. Before a break during one class, she asked us to write down, in confidence, one of our weaknesses. I wrote that I played up to or down to the competition. That I had a hard time challenging myself if I wasn't challenged by others. After the break, she read our anonymous comments aloud, but when she got to mine she revealed its author and remarked at how arrogant I was. She claimed that I was essentially calling out everyone else in the class. She took more offense to it than my classmates, though, because like I'll soon prove, she hated me.

Now, you may remember me commenting on the lax admissions at the Creative Circus. That's an important detail. While I may be a self-described wonderful copywriter, albeit at the time of my acceptance to the school underqualified, nearly half of the students in my quarter were not only underqualified at the beginning of the program, but they had no business whatsoever being in the program after 4 quarters. They had not grown one iota. Simply put, they didn't get it. After one whole year, they still wrote the same hack headlines and clunky copy they wrote when they began. But the Creative Circus needed their money, so there was no way they'd be asked to leave. Instead, they'd graduate with books that'd make the Creative Circus, as the name suggests, truly seem like a school for aspiring clowns. One guy's ads, without fail, always seemed to have someone shooting off a machine gun in them. Even when the campaign was about a hybrid vehicle. The saying that a blind squirrel occasionally finds a nut was proven wrong by no less than 5 of my classmates.

Below you'll find examples of some ads you might see in my class. The worst part is that their creators would try to explain them, as if logic would somehow prevail.

Definitely hasn't been done before:

And here's a book piece for Behr paints:

Around the time of Reva Writing, the Wall Street Journal was doing a piece on the burgeoning ad school phenomenon, or something like that. There are like 20 schools in the US that now offer similar courses of study. Back then it was relatively new, and newsworthy, I guess. Anyway, the writer from the WSJ sat in on one of our classes. The assignment from the week before was to write a letter from jail. I thought about it. And thought about it. And thought about it some more. Then it hit me: Monopoly. I would write my letter as if I were one of the playing pieces in Monopoly who had found himself locked up in jail. I thought it was creative. And I had a lot of fun with story.

Clearly, Reva did not like it. She thought I was trying to get out of doing the assignment. An argument ensued. Words flew. Most of the class was behind me on this one. I had clearly done the work. And done a good job with it. This only rattled her more. She asked me, in the middle of the argument, if I knew what the word pettifoggery meant. I didn't. She took some pleasure in that, but that was the only bright spot for her that day. The class was out of control. Reva was humiliated. It was clear to everyone, and I suspect even Reva, that she was wrong. But unlike scramble dogs, being wrong does not sit well with Reva. She was pissed. So she did the only thing she should have done. She told on us. And, of course, singled me out.

Where did this hatred come from? Maybe it's my lack of a weight problem. Maybe it's because I didn't assume she was always right. Maybe she was depressed. I don't know. It really doesn't matter. It only matters that it existed.

Back to the WSJ class and its fallout. After that class, I was asked to present my case in front of the school board. The problem was that I had a job that I couldn't afford to miss. Maybe. Plus, I thought the whole idea of rehashing everything in front of a board of investors/administrators, including Reva's friend, Mike Jones-Kelley, among others, was pretty gay. This was, after all, the Creative Circus. It is filled with individuals. And individuality is something I thought the school should celebrate. Apparently, so do they. From Allschools.com:

At The Creative Circus, individuality is celebrated and personal attention is
stressed in the classroom to provide room for each student to grow as artists in
their own unique way. Programs in art direction, graphic design, image, and
copywriting lead students to exciting careers with advertising and other media
outlets. Located in Atlanta, Georgia, the Creative Circus' graduates go on to
work at some of the most prestigious agencies in the country,
and many take positions abroad.

So I wrote a letter to the board explaining that we should all just put the mess behind us. Not surprisingly, Reva got her doughy hands on the letter and edited it.

If I can figure out how to fix the bug I'm experiencing with Blogger, you'll get Part II of the story on Monday. It gets better. And much, much nastier. I wanted to do the whole thing as one big blog, but that isn't going to happen today. Still, I imagine you can tell where this is going . . . yep, straight down the tubes. Update: I figured it out! Scroll down . . .