FUCK.

That was what was written on the white board in big, faded, bubbly letters when the great Constantin "Coz" Cotzias angrily stormed into the classroom earlier today and looked out at the class. Pretty simply put, I thought, that one word could sum up the way every single person in the class felt at that moment. Just throw on an "ed" to the end. Proceeding to erase it in long swoops, he replaced it with the numbers “8/30.”

“Write this down,” Coz said in a tone that could only be characterized as threatening. Twenty-four pens slowly marked it onto notebooks.

“This is the date of the last day that you may be able to withdraw from the school and get your money back." Everyone took a deep breath and looked around helplessly.

"I don’t think any of you have any idea of what is about to happen to you," he continued. "You are about the get hit by a motherfucking Mac Truck. Now I want you to listen to me like I am the fucking burning bush: Every year we have at least ten kids who will not make it to second year. In fact, out of everyone in this room, 2 of you will not fucking make it to the second semester. Will you have the tenacity to not be one of those 2?”

Welcome to Conceptual Thinking in Copywriting, Fall semester 2007, Tuesdays and Thursdays, 1:30-4:30.

We got out a shade before 7:30.

Welcome to advertising. Welcome to your future.

Coz’s class is, if the first class is any measurement, a mixture of pleasure and pain, highs and lows, heaven and hell. It’s a rollercoaster ride through orgasms and someone kicking you in the nuts with boots made out of shattered glass. All of this screaming, mind you. Let me elaborate.

In no way am I exaggerating when I say that I have never been so terrified in my entire life than I was the first half hour of class today-- my first ever at Adcenter. I listened to Coz speak about failure, about the workload, about thinking until your brain aches, about wanting to go home and pull the trigger when nothing brilliant comes, about the brutality of this business, and felt the pain settle in my stomach as I wondered if I had the stones to actually go through with this life-changing decision. If I had the stones to be in advertising. I watched as he pushed greasy locks out of his angry red face and jingled the keys in his vested pockets, merciless about the fact that he was scaring the ever-living shit out of twenty-four wide-eyed ad hopefuls. That he was dashing their dreams to nothing before their very eyes and basically telling them one thing: "Some of you don't belong here." But which ones, no one knows.

But of course, no one can stay that mad for long without having a brain aneurysm. Directly after he finished his tirade of yelling, threatening and cursing (the last of which, incidently, never stops), his manner completely changed. He softened up, for lack of a better term. His words became stimulating, intriguing, even quotable. I couldn't take my pen off the paper as he spurted off conversation-like rhetoric, the page evolving from three menacing numbers at the top to three full pages of insightful one-liners. This was a guy who knew what he was talking about. This was a guy I would be honored and blessed to learn from. This was a guy that had some of the funniest stories that I've ever heard. Stories that span a lifetime doing exactly what I someday want to be doing. Including the notion that John Goodman's character, Walter from the Big Lebowski, was based off of him, which he claimed went only as far as his wardrobe. To this day, however, he has never been able to prove that is true.

Here is a visual representation of Coz, plus long hair. Minus the coffee can.


Looking around the room I saw nodding, smiles, even genuine laughter from time to time. I felt relaxed. I felt excited. Excited to be in a business that pays people to sit around and come up with cool shit. I was ready to go. Throw the work at me. I can handle it.

It was funny to think about advertising as a whole, how, like the class, it is a business of ups and downs. A business where, as Coz puts it, "on any given day you can show up and not know if you're going to end that day feeling like the shit on the bottom of some dude's shoe, or be that same dude's hero." The "dudes" were my addition (in honor of the above picture).

I'm going to work my hardest to make sure I'm that dude's hero.

dubs. out.