On the first day of my third quarter, we separated the men from the boys. The profs wanted to make sure that before we signed away the next three months of our lives to the broadcasting gods, we were there for the right reasons.

No talking heads, no stars of the television screen. You want glamour? Go read the magazine. Or go call Hollywood and see if they'll take you.

They showed us the infamous NBC 6 Miami tape, where the honest and hardworking reporter is fed to the sharks because of ineptitude in the control room. Everything that could possibly have gone wrong for her went wrong in two days, the most momentous of which was when the Cubans arrested for trying to swim to freedom in America were released ten feet behind her, right as she did her standup announcing that they had not yet been released. This, of course, happened after she had waited eight hours in the rain for that one moment. Yeah, it was so horrible to watch that my professor, former executive producer of NBC Nightly News, had to leave the room.

Are you sure you know what you are getting yourself into?

And as if that weren't enough of a test of our fortitude, today was the day of the dreaded first critique of our on-air performance and appearance. It was comical how nervous we all were in the moments prior to the round table review. We floated jittery disclaimers about things we thought we had screwed up, as if that would excuse any of it! And we were obsessed with disparaging the way we looked on camera. A huge bunch of babies we were!

But like a booster shot, in the end it wasn't so bad. Anne was more into helping us pep up our storytelling technique than giving us hair and makeup tips. The makeup, she said, is mostly an effort to combat the harsh lighting that is necessary for a clear and visible broadcast. And the right hair draws viewer attention to your face, which tells the story. It really isn't about beauty and glamour...in theory it's just about maximizing the audience's capacity to understand the information you as the anchor or reporter are trying to relay.

Once we understood this (I can only really speak for myself, but I am now part of a team so I accordingly use we), our hangups with the way we look on camera melted away. The focus is making a story come alive, not to wow thousands of people with a dazzling white smile. If you want to see that kind of thing, watch movies.

It is unfortunate however, that it takes an attractive person (usually an ideal) to focus the eye and the attention of the average viewer. But that's an issue with society, not broadcast journalism. I do think BJ is guilty of playing that human nature card with ratings. I would not say broadcast news is completely above any of that talking head hollywood crap either. But in its design, it is meant to be.

And to further test our mettle, tornado warnings tonight for the county of Cook!