Career in college
I think I am getting old: one, because I fear another reality-tv show 'faux-phenom' and two, I'm just disgusted by this guy's success (essentially based on slacking off), especially in light of my own struggles trying to just get by.
Let's be real here, though: if he wasn't good-looking, white and fit into a media enclave (All-American slacker a la Van Wilder) aka marketable, he wouldn't have any of this success. Still, it stings because...I guess, if I were to be honest with myself, I'm bitter that he can get a break just sitting on his ass, whereas I feel everything is a strain for me: waking, working, breathing, dating, talking, planning, waiting, worrying. In short, I wish I was him, not me.
Yeah, I know, I'm not the only one who has to work and struggle. I also know a violin is playing, boo-hoo to me and that I shouldn't be so bitter...fuck off, all of you.
For One Student, a College Career Becomes a Career
By SAM DILLON
Published: November 10, 2005
WHITEWATER, Wis. - Nearly every college has some screwball who never seems to graduate, lingering year after year as classmates move on. And then there is Johnny Lechner.
In his 12th year of college here, Mr. Lechner has parlayed life as perpetual student into a lucrative personal brand. His genius for self-promotion might have earned him Phi Beta Kappa - if only it had been applied to his studies.
He has appeared on "Late Show" with David Letterman, "Good Morning America" and other shows, describing a roisterous campus lifestyle of beer and merrymaking.
National Lampoon is promising to pay his tuition, and the makers of Monster Energy Drink deliver 30 cases a week, along with advertising posters and condoms, to the house where Mr. Lechner lives and parties, in exchange for his endorsement of Monster as "the official energy drink" of his 12th college year.
He has signed with the William Morris Agency, which is marketing a reality television series based on his life at the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater. And in recent days he has referred to interviews with The New York Times on his personal Web site, anticipating new publicity from this article.
The dizzying whirl of sudden celebrity has not been easy, Mr. Lechner said.
"I'm really stressed out," he said. "All the money, the book deals, the agents. It's just crazy."
The marketing hoopla whipping up around Mr. Lechner, 29, is making it difficult to separate fact from fable about his college career. He has compiled a 2.9 grade-point average and in one semester got straight A's. But in the topsy-turvy logic of the entertainment world, a record of debauchery has become central to his success, and friends say he has taken to exaggerating his Animal House credentials.
Mr. Lechner is not entirely unique. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings said recently that she had found a student who had been enrolled in college for 17 years. Still, in an era of national anxiety over global academic competition, some state officials are indignant that Mr. Lechner's record is attracting a spotlight.
"The guy's been a student for 12 years, and he's bragging about it?" said State Representative Robin G. Kreibich, chairman of the Assembly's Committee on Colleges and Universities. "I wonder how many kids can't get in because he's staying on so long."
University officials denied that Mr. Lechner's lengthy enrollment had prevented even one qualified student from gaining admission. But he was the beneficiary of a tuition subsidy given to all in-state students - until the last school year, when the Wisconsin Board of Regents imposed a surcharge virtually doubling tuition for students who exceed 165 credits. (Mr. Lechner has 242.) Wisconsinites call it the Johnny Lechner rule. This year his tuition is about $9,800.
Martha Saunders, the Whitewater chancellor, said that some faculty considered Mr. Lechner a bit of an embarrassment, while others believed that "we're a community of scholars, and he just loves to learn."
But Richard Brooks, a silver-haired philosophy professor who is Mr. Lechner's most recent academic adviser, looked peeved when his student announced in a meeting between the two that he had made little recent progress toward completion of his senior thesis, in which he will reflect on his undergraduate years.
"The reader should come away convinced from this thesis that you actually did learn something," Dr. Brooks said. As a liberal studies major, Mr. Lechner must complete a thesis, which can be formal and footnoted or personal and reflective, his final requirement for graduation. Mr. Lechner said it was stressful to reconcile his identity as a laid-back student with the image that his marketers now expect of him.
"I'm not out getting hammered every night," he said. "People expect me to have crazy stories about being in threesomes, nights at the bar that end at sunup - but that's just people's imaginations running away with them." He paused.
"I don't know how much of a market there is for a guy who's merely a good student," he said. "But I want you to know me as I am, rather than as the animal they're making me out to be."
When Mr. Lechner enrolled in college in 1994, the Internet was practically a baby and his current girlfriend was starting fourth grade. He has since drifted through four majors - education, communications, theater, women's studies - and watched hundreds of friends graduate, get jobs and marry.
Mr. Lechner has stayed on, pursuing a coffeehouse career as a singer-songwriter and accumulating more than twice the 120 credits required for graduation. His parents are divorced; his father is an engineering executive, his mother a convenience store manager. During his first two years they helped pay his tuition, but since then he has paid his own way, working part time and taking out $30,000 in student loans, he said.
Mr. Lechner said he hardly noticed the semesters flying by during his fifth, sixth and seventh college years because he had found a "comfort zone."During his eighth year, he said, "I realized it's a great story, and I started thinking about my book." He resolved to go for at least 10 years
"There's a big difference between saying I went to school for nine years, and saying I went for a decade." he said. "It's more amazing."
A friend created a Web site, johnnylechner.com which is headlined: "There is a time and place for everything. It's called 'college.' " The site displays pictures of Mr. Lechner strolling across campus, drinking and hugging beautiful co-eds.
Last spring, he e-mailed Wisconsin newspapers. The Wisconsin State Journal published a profile of him that provoked frenzy in the entertainment industry.
CBS flew Mr. Lechner to New York to appear with Mr. Letterman, who asked what college was like.
"People expect me to be like, 'We're going to toga parties and doing keg stands,' " Mr. Lechner responded. "Don't get me wrong - these things are happening."
One person who watched the show was Orin Woinsky, a National Lampoon vice president based in Los Angeles, who saw similarities with the 2002 movie "National Lampoon's Van Wilder," about a fictional seventh-year college senior who refused to graduate.
"Johnny was the real-life Van Wilder," Mr. Woinsky said. He walked the news into the office of National Lampoon's chief executive, Daniel S. Laikin, who responded, Mr. Woinsky said: "Get in touch with this guy!"
Mr. Woinsky sent an e-mail message to Mr. Lechner offering to pay his tuition, sponsor his graduation party and hold a job open for him at National Lampoon.
Talk radio hosts from around the country called Mr. Lechner.
"I heard him do his first phone interviews," said Megan Seeboth, a 21-year-old undergraduate who was dating Mr. Lechner at the time. "He said he spent all his time playing basketball, drinking all night and at parties, and that's the complete opposite of how he lives. He just thinks that's what will sell.
"He's going out once a week and he's going to class."
Ms. Seeboth, who broke up with Mr. Lechner in September, said that part of his reputation was deserved.
"It was very difficult being in a relationship with a guy who girls were throwing themselves at," she said.
Adam Steinman, a senior producer at Lion Television, a British company that had a camera crew follow Mr. Lechner in September, said: "People love him. He brings people together."
But some students find Mr. Lechner annoying, said Brian Wolfe, a political science major who defeated Mr. Lechner by a vote of 511 to 281 last spring in an election for student body president.
"Johnny has his little core of buddies," Mr. Wolfe said, "but a lot of people think, 'Why doesn't he just grow up?' "
Mary Martin, a Los Angeles producer who knows Mr. Lechner, said that hard-working students across the nation might share that view. "But," Ms. Martin added, "it's also every 40-year-old guy's dream to do what he's doing."
Let's be real here, though: if he wasn't good-looking, white and fit into a media enclave (All-American slacker a la Van Wilder) aka marketable, he wouldn't have any of this success. Still, it stings because...I guess, if I were to be honest with myself, I'm bitter that he can get a break just sitting on his ass, whereas I feel everything is a strain for me: waking, working, breathing, dating, talking, planning, waiting, worrying. In short, I wish I was him, not me.
Yeah, I know, I'm not the only one who has to work and struggle. I also know a violin is playing, boo-hoo to me and that I shouldn't be so bitter...fuck off, all of you.
For One Student, a College Career Becomes a Career
By SAM DILLON
Published: November 10, 2005
WHITEWATER, Wis. - Nearly every college has some screwball who never seems to graduate, lingering year after year as classmates move on. And then there is Johnny Lechner.
In his 12th year of college here, Mr. Lechner has parlayed life as perpetual student into a lucrative personal brand. His genius for self-promotion might have earned him Phi Beta Kappa - if only it had been applied to his studies.
He has appeared on "Late Show" with David Letterman, "Good Morning America" and other shows, describing a roisterous campus lifestyle of beer and merrymaking.
National Lampoon is promising to pay his tuition, and the makers of Monster Energy Drink deliver 30 cases a week, along with advertising posters and condoms, to the house where Mr. Lechner lives and parties, in exchange for his endorsement of Monster as "the official energy drink" of his 12th college year.
He has signed with the William Morris Agency, which is marketing a reality television series based on his life at the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater. And in recent days he has referred to interviews with The New York Times on his personal Web site, anticipating new publicity from this article.
The dizzying whirl of sudden celebrity has not been easy, Mr. Lechner said.
"I'm really stressed out," he said. "All the money, the book deals, the agents. It's just crazy."
The marketing hoopla whipping up around Mr. Lechner, 29, is making it difficult to separate fact from fable about his college career. He has compiled a 2.9 grade-point average and in one semester got straight A's. But in the topsy-turvy logic of the entertainment world, a record of debauchery has become central to his success, and friends say he has taken to exaggerating his Animal House credentials.
Mr. Lechner is not entirely unique. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings said recently that she had found a student who had been enrolled in college for 17 years. Still, in an era of national anxiety over global academic competition, some state officials are indignant that Mr. Lechner's record is attracting a spotlight.
"The guy's been a student for 12 years, and he's bragging about it?" said State Representative Robin G. Kreibich, chairman of the Assembly's Committee on Colleges and Universities. "I wonder how many kids can't get in because he's staying on so long."
University officials denied that Mr. Lechner's lengthy enrollment had prevented even one qualified student from gaining admission. But he was the beneficiary of a tuition subsidy given to all in-state students - until the last school year, when the Wisconsin Board of Regents imposed a surcharge virtually doubling tuition for students who exceed 165 credits. (Mr. Lechner has 242.) Wisconsinites call it the Johnny Lechner rule. This year his tuition is about $9,800.
Martha Saunders, the Whitewater chancellor, said that some faculty considered Mr. Lechner a bit of an embarrassment, while others believed that "we're a community of scholars, and he just loves to learn."
But Richard Brooks, a silver-haired philosophy professor who is Mr. Lechner's most recent academic adviser, looked peeved when his student announced in a meeting between the two that he had made little recent progress toward completion of his senior thesis, in which he will reflect on his undergraduate years.
"The reader should come away convinced from this thesis that you actually did learn something," Dr. Brooks said. As a liberal studies major, Mr. Lechner must complete a thesis, which can be formal and footnoted or personal and reflective, his final requirement for graduation. Mr. Lechner said it was stressful to reconcile his identity as a laid-back student with the image that his marketers now expect of him.
"I'm not out getting hammered every night," he said. "People expect me to have crazy stories about being in threesomes, nights at the bar that end at sunup - but that's just people's imaginations running away with them." He paused.
"I don't know how much of a market there is for a guy who's merely a good student," he said. "But I want you to know me as I am, rather than as the animal they're making me out to be."
When Mr. Lechner enrolled in college in 1994, the Internet was practically a baby and his current girlfriend was starting fourth grade. He has since drifted through four majors - education, communications, theater, women's studies - and watched hundreds of friends graduate, get jobs and marry.
Mr. Lechner has stayed on, pursuing a coffeehouse career as a singer-songwriter and accumulating more than twice the 120 credits required for graduation. His parents are divorced; his father is an engineering executive, his mother a convenience store manager. During his first two years they helped pay his tuition, but since then he has paid his own way, working part time and taking out $30,000 in student loans, he said.
Mr. Lechner said he hardly noticed the semesters flying by during his fifth, sixth and seventh college years because he had found a "comfort zone."During his eighth year, he said, "I realized it's a great story, and I started thinking about my book." He resolved to go for at least 10 years
"There's a big difference between saying I went to school for nine years, and saying I went for a decade." he said. "It's more amazing."
A friend created a Web site, johnnylechner.com which is headlined: "There is a time and place for everything. It's called 'college.' " The site displays pictures of Mr. Lechner strolling across campus, drinking and hugging beautiful co-eds.
Last spring, he e-mailed Wisconsin newspapers. The Wisconsin State Journal published a profile of him that provoked frenzy in the entertainment industry.
CBS flew Mr. Lechner to New York to appear with Mr. Letterman, who asked what college was like.
"People expect me to be like, 'We're going to toga parties and doing keg stands,' " Mr. Lechner responded. "Don't get me wrong - these things are happening."
One person who watched the show was Orin Woinsky, a National Lampoon vice president based in Los Angeles, who saw similarities with the 2002 movie "National Lampoon's Van Wilder," about a fictional seventh-year college senior who refused to graduate.
"Johnny was the real-life Van Wilder," Mr. Woinsky said. He walked the news into the office of National Lampoon's chief executive, Daniel S. Laikin, who responded, Mr. Woinsky said: "Get in touch with this guy!"
Mr. Woinsky sent an e-mail message to Mr. Lechner offering to pay his tuition, sponsor his graduation party and hold a job open for him at National Lampoon.
Talk radio hosts from around the country called Mr. Lechner.
"I heard him do his first phone interviews," said Megan Seeboth, a 21-year-old undergraduate who was dating Mr. Lechner at the time. "He said he spent all his time playing basketball, drinking all night and at parties, and that's the complete opposite of how he lives. He just thinks that's what will sell.
"He's going out once a week and he's going to class."
Ms. Seeboth, who broke up with Mr. Lechner in September, said that part of his reputation was deserved.
"It was very difficult being in a relationship with a guy who girls were throwing themselves at," she said.
Adam Steinman, a senior producer at Lion Television, a British company that had a camera crew follow Mr. Lechner in September, said: "People love him. He brings people together."
But some students find Mr. Lechner annoying, said Brian Wolfe, a political science major who defeated Mr. Lechner by a vote of 511 to 281 last spring in an election for student body president.
"Johnny has his little core of buddies," Mr. Wolfe said, "but a lot of people think, 'Why doesn't he just grow up?' "
Mary Martin, a Los Angeles producer who knows Mr. Lechner, said that hard-working students across the nation might share that view. "But," Ms. Martin added, "it's also every 40-year-old guy's dream to do what he's doing."
posted by Basil Epicurus at 2:57 PM
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