Hi Everyone!

I want to start this newsletter by saying I am not perfect. I make mistakes, and it was brought to my attention that in last week’s Noah Kahan piece (by Noah Kahan super fan Rylee), despite writing Vermont like 10 times, I accidentally stated that he was from Maine. I have since edited the evergreen site, but I can not edit the email version. 

I am not trying to point fingers, but if I had to, I would blame my middle school social studies class that opted to skip a memorization quiz for the 50 states and capitals. Because of that, my northeast geography is virtually non-existent, and I deluded myself into thinking that Vermont is a city in Maine rather than its own state.

This is all to say that while I am trying to do as much research as possible, errors can occur, especially in a weekly journal that I do alongside all of my other life responsibilities. That said, I want to share what’s happening in my life, but I never want it to exit reality and become another fictional narrative. If you ever catch an error, please let me know. I appreciate it!

Now, let’s find out What’s Up With Will…

WE ARE SO BACK! It’s the start of second year in my Master’s program at San Francisco State University, and I am excited to share what’s in store for this upcoming semester.

First up, as I mentioned in earlier newsletters, I am teaching two sections of the public speaking class! This time around, though, I am trying to be more laid back and open the floor to more discussion, trying to create an educational space where our class collectively co-creates meaning¹. In this regard, I have already noticed that my confidence and composure as a teacher are stronger, and I feel much less of a control freak. For instance, one question about how we see communication in our day-to-day lives led to a discussion of how posting music to an Instagram Note can be representative of passive aggressiveness to someone else! I also learned some new Toronto slang, “Gerk”! From my understanding, it is akin to fighting with someone else. The more you know!

Since I did quite a detailed breakdown of what happened in my class last semester, going forward, I am only going to focus on interesting moments as well as thoughts I am experiencing as an educator. Most of my schedule, lesson plans, and assignments are the same, so instead of boring you with the particulars, I want to highlight new experiences with the course.

I am signed up for a class that I liken to a study hall for the Communication Studies Master’s program. It’s a space where students come to meet others in the department, get acquainted with the program, and work on anything that you need to. I didn’t realize when I signed up originally that I was going to be the only second-year student in the class, but I am happy to get to know the new students and share any of the wisdom that I may or may not have developed over the past year. That being said, I am also going to be the Graduate Assistant for this class! I am excited to heighten my role as a mentor in this class as well as apply some of the ideas I had taking this course last year to improve it. 

My last class of the semester is an Interpersonal Communication graduate seminar. In addition to introductions, most of the class was spent providing a brief overview of all things interpersonal. We dived into the main theories of the field: theories of message processing, theories of message production, and other social constitutive theories. It was a lot of information, but honestly, I loved it. As much as you want to discount the banking model of education, I love a good PowerPoint to disseminate a ton of info about a particular topic. I have found interest in the social science parts of Communication Studies, so I have high hopes for this class!

Going off of last week’s conversation with my professor exploring Applied Anthropology, I sat down with an Applied Anthropology professor to ask some questions about the field. On that front, I have a good news / bad news / good news situation. Good news #1 is that they thought exploring ideas of expertise, knowledge, and confidence could be an interesting topic to explore in a Ph.D. program. The bad news is that they told me that since I want to go down the academic route, I shouldn’t focus on Applied Anthropology, as that field is geared more toward industry after graduation. Good News #2, though, is that they suggested I look into Linguistic Anthropology, as it seems to line up with my interests, and along the way I could pick up the applied skillset. 

I started researching Linguistic Anthropology, and the more I dived into the literature, the more it started to make sense. I found an idea that’s known as language socialization, which focuses on how we use language to socialize people into cultural domains, knowledge, and practices. Then, I reflected on my wine bar education paper, and it pairs exceptionally well with my research question of the strategies that wine bartenders reported using to expand a customer’s wine knowledge. I also got to see the extent of language socialization through my own experience in my wine appreciation class. It was through interactions with others more knowledgeable than I that I was able to learn more and become more knowledgeable about wine. 

This weekend, I read a ton on language socialization and rewrote my paper from that lens for an upcoming submission to the Western States Communication Association. Fingers crossed it gets accepted!

That’s a lot for the first week, and I only expect to be busier school-wise as we continue onward. Yet, I am so excited to be back at school for my final year!

In my study hall class, I wrote how I’ve been in California for three years and in that time, I have increasingly begun to consider myself Californian. That being said, I know that I am missing a crucial piece of Bay Area history that prevents my full assumption: the Grateful Dead. Despite being in the Mecca for Deadheads, the only thing that I have learned of the Grateful Dead in my three years here is that Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia is a nod to the lead guitarist of the band. That was going to change this week.

The Giants had a Grateful Dead night this week, so I put on my tie-dye Giants jersey (that I got at another Grateful Dead Night two years ago), and joined Seb for a grand olde time at Oracle Park. As we walked through the park, I saw countless other fans wearing tie-dye, and felt a bit like a poser. I might have looked like a fellow Deadhead, but I was decidedly not. Thankfully, Seb was able to provide me with a primer on the Grateful Dead, but as the Giants won 3-1 against the Cincinnati Reds, I had more questions than answers. I was going to have to do some follow-up research.

The Haight Street Center for the Arts had the exhibit “Forever Grateful”, which pays tribute to the legacy of the Grateful Dead. I figured that I would hop on a train and uncover what truly makes the Grateful Dead so special. However, as they were a band, I knew that I couldn’t just go see a museum. I had to listen to the music, so I read through online forums about which Grateful Dead album to start my foray, and many online stated “Europe ’72” as the place to start. ²

I popped in my headphones, and I was surprised by the twanginess of their music. With a name like the Grateful Dead, I was fully expecting heavy metal / old school rock n’ roll, and not the Folksy, bluegrass-y, country-ish rock band that I was jamming out to. It felt kind of cool watching my surroundings as I walked off the train and to the exhibit. It felt like seeing San Francisco in a new light, with a soundtrack that they had especially chosen for themselves. 

According to the museum, legend has it that in December of 1964, Ron Mckernan, showed Jerry Garcia the first Rolling Stones album and said, “We can do this.” Garcia, who taught guitar at a music center, and McKernan, who was the janitor, recruited the drum teacher, Bill Kreutzmann, a fellow guitarist, Bob Weir, and Garcia’s friend Phil Lesh as bassist. This eclectic group of musicians developed an equally eclectic philosophy of music: everyone in the room was part of the show.

The museum was three stories of Grateful Dead paraphernalia, and packed full of Deadheads (I’m not exaggerating when I say that it was the most crowded weekday museum day trip that I have ever had). In one room, concert posters adorned the walls; in another, there was a collection of painted envelopes they used to let people know where the next show was. That’s not to mention the photos of the Grateful Dead playing in front of the crowds, which embodied their participatory musical philosophy, and a 1:4 scale Wall of Sound, a massive custom-built PA system used in their 1974 tour. 

Every artifact was meticulously preserved and highlighted just how influential this band was. As I left, I felt a deeper appreciation for them. Moreover, I was ecstatic that I could hear Grateful Dead in conversation and say, “I like Ramble on Rose” as opposed to, “I like their ice cream flavor”.

After all the hubbub from this summer’s World Cup, I was eager to go to an actual game.  I know that soccer has never been America’s sport, but I was curious if this World Cup might have changed things. Would there be a surge in popularity? Or would things go back to the same old, same old? Thankfully, Rylee and I scored tickets to this past weekend’s Oakland Roots Vs. Orange County SC, giving me a chance to find out!

When we walked in 20 minutes before game time, it was pretty empty. As I grabbed a Mango Michelada and made it to our seats, the stadium finally started to fill out, but no more than what I remember the last Oakland Roots game we went to over a year and a half ago(💐 Three Years... 4/20/25). It was a majority of kids in the stands cheering and screaming, which surprised us at first. We later found out it was Back to School Night. In partnership with Oakland Unified School District, each student who shows up for the first two weeks got a free ticket. 

Even if there was no nominal difference in the number of fans at the event, I was excited to use the soccer knowledge I had acquired over the month of zealously watching daily games. Yet as the play was occurring, I realized the skill set I honed over the World Cup had faded in the past month. Soccer isn’t like riding a bike, and I found myself confused as to when things were offside and penalties were called. The one thing I did notice was that there were no hydration breaks, a rule it seems that did not make it out of the World Cup. 

This isn’t to say that I didn’t have a blast. Quite the opposite, actually. I loved being in the crowd, relearning this sport from Rylee, and cheering on the Roots as the game ended 1-1. The halftime alone was worth the price of admission, featuring Bay Area Rapper FRAK who freestyled Mac Dre with Mbappe. It’s just interesting that this experience didn’t feel tangibly different from prior soccer games. Granted, this is a sample size of one, so maybe soccer fever has taken other parts of the country by storm. It does have me wondering, though, if soccer will ever be a major sporting institution like it is elsewhere in the world.

This soccer game at the Oakland Alameda County Coliseum also has another question lying underneath. This is the last season that the Roots will play at the Coliseum, as the venue was sold to build a mixed-use development.³ I was happy to get to go to something that is such an important part of Oakland History, but what does it mean to have an Oakland without the Coliseum? I guess we will soon find out. 

I am going to be on campus a lot this semester, so I am going to have to get a bit creative to find ways to entertain myself (it’s not like I don’t already have enough stuff to do like grading and my own course assignments). Fortunately, someone used technological wizardry to create a playable version of Mario Kart on YouTube. If you see me on my laptop, I might be getting work done, but I also might be grinding for a PB!