Why I Hate My Job So Much: An Example

I spent the last two days of last week immersed in a press release announcing the award that it seemed my institution would be getting from the agency set up here in California to award all that voter-approved money for stem cell research. We knew we were going to be only one of a handful of places getting this money, and that it wasn't likely to make huge news nationwide, but we also knew that the 'local' papers would jump on it. So I skipped a meet-the-new-person-in-marketing lunch at our faculty center, and called cell phones and pagers and skimmed through much of a 100-page document to see what exactly it was we were proposing to do with the money so I could write about it, then hustled everyone through the process of approving the copy, and finally spent the last few hours of the week making calls to find out just when it would be "official" and we could put our release out.

This is the story that ran yesterday. My institution? Is the last word in the story. An acronym. Not even a full name. Not even spelled out. That's it. The fruits of two days of work.

And this, my friends, was a GOOD response. Most of my press releases don't even get that much.

Bitter, table for one.