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Welcome to Thinking Out Loud, a blog that contains postings from The Tampa Tribune’s Editorial Board and from various Tribune Community Columnists. Unlike the unsigned editorials that represent the newspaper’s institutional voice, the blog postings offer personal perspectives on the issues, personalities and events of Tampa Bay. We invite you to participate by posting your comments. We’ll do our best to respond.

Contributors:

Joe Guidry

Joe Guidry is the deputy editorial page editor of The Tampa Tribune. He is a Tampa native and a graduate of the University of South Florida. He is married and has an adult son.

Jeff Stidham

Jeff Stidham grew up and lives in Bartow. He has been with the Tribune for nearly 22 years, the last 10 on the editorial board.

William Yelverton

William Yelverton is a Tribune editorial writer who has worked for the paper nearly 22 years. He lives in the Dade City area.

Jim Beamguard

Jim Beamguard is a Tribune editorial writer. He is a native of North Carolina and a graduate of Davidson College. He and his family live in Brandon.

Jackie Papandrew:

Jackie Papandrew is a freelance writer and editor. Her syndicated humor column appears in publications in the United States, Canada and India. She lives in Largo with her husband and children. Visit her website at www.jackiepapandrew.com.

Camille Beredjick

Camille Beredjick is a senior at Chamberlain High School, an avid musician and a scribbler with a quirky sense of humor. In the fall, she will be attending Northwestern University to study journalism, political science and music, and she plans to pursue a career in journalism.

Jim Harnish

Jim Harnish is in his 17th year as Senior Pastor at Hyde Park United Methodist Church in Tampa. He and his wife, Marsha, have two daughters and two grandchildren. He is a graduate of Asbury Theological Seminary and received the honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from Bethune-Cookman University. He is the author of six books and numerous articles and studies. He enjoys playing with his grandchildren and cheering for the Florida Gators.

Angela Hunt

Angela Hunt is a novelist living in Pinellas County with her husband and two 220-pound mastiffs.

Sheryl Young

Sheryl Young was a Tampa Tribune Community Columnist in 2005-2006. A freelance writer since 1997, including the Tampa Bay Business Journal, Tampa Style Magazines, St. Pete Times and nationally in Better Nutrition, Today’s Christian Woman and more. She’s received a First Place Amy Foundation national "Roaring Lambs" Writing Award, and has lived in Tampa Bay with her family for over 20 years.

Christie Gold

Christie Gold teaches English and journalism at Freedom High School in Tampa where she advises Revolution, the school newspaper. She has been both the Hillsborough County Teacher of the Year and Florida Journalism Teacher of the Year. She lives on a small farm in Wesley Chapel where she trains as a competitive equestrian.

Natalie D. Preston

Natalie D. Preston is a karaoke singing, only-child pouting, Seminole Tomahawk waving, newlywed bride blushing, 50-state traveling, girlie girl who loves to shop, read, run and jump up and down on her soapbox.

Fernando Figueroa

Fernando Figueroa is a researcher, educator and lives in Riverview.

Gary Beemer

Interests include humor, politics, economics, community and world affairs, finance, people, religion, music, sports, current events, the arts and education.

Nicole Yunger Halpern

Nicole Yunger Halpern is an undergraduate at Dartmouth College, where she studies everything she can get her nerdy little hands on. Desired major: life. No, not necessarily biology. Life.

Kris DiGiovanni

Kris DiGiovanni is a Tribune Community Columnist, Huffington Post contributor, Daily Kos diarist, and teacher, who recently moved from NW Hillsborough to another planet - a small beach community in Pinellas County. She also blogs at www.sandscript.wordpress.com

H. David Braswell Jr.

H. David Braswell Jr. is an Information Systems Professional. He is a native New Yorker and a lifelong NY Giants fan. He attended college in California (Cal State Northridge) and moved to Tampa in 1998.

Sean Marcus

Sean Marcus teaches creative writing, journalism and reading at Chamberlain High School. He has one son and is expecting a daughter in early March. He can be reached at wuizabug@gmail.com

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What I Learned During Exam Period

Posted Aug 3, 2011 by Nicole Yunger Halpern

Updated Aug 4, 2011 at 08:22 AM

Take one.

I found the flyer on a bulletin board near the cafeteria where I ate breakfast. Since I eat breakfast at what most college students consider to be an ungodly hour, I didn’t have to shove anyone out of the way to examine the bulletin board. Flyers crowded the board: advertisements for salsa-dancing classes, public-policy speakers, a capella shows, pizza parties. Even during exam period, which would begin in a few days, student life contained more distractions than a three-ring circus.

Take one.

An arrow beneath the words pointed downward. Someone had snipped vertical lines into the bottom of the flyer. The snips had converted the bottom into a set of tabs. I’d seen such tabs before. They’d contained contact information of students hoping to sell futons or cars, or of psychology labs seeking test subjects (“Want a scan of your brain? Come to Dr. So-and-so’s lab! Test subjects must be male, left-handed, dyslexic, and allergic to Chinese food.”).

The tabs on this flyer didn’t contain contact information. They contained smiley faces.

No one had obeyed the flyer’s instructions. Perhaps the creator had pinned up the flyer at an hour even more ungodly than the one at which I ate breakfast. Why not? I thought. I reached up and tore off a strip. That evening, I taped it into my planner.

The planner reminded me to submit a report about Dartmouth’s public-speaking group. Every Wednesday, I co-led a meeting of students seeking to improve their speaking skills. During most meetings, I encouraged participants to smile. The advice sounds as trite as bringing fruit cake to a holiday party, but it works. Humans mimic each other’s facial expressions. The more you smile at an audience, the more the audience will smile at you. The more an audience smiles at you, the more confident you feel, and the less you shake like your seventeen-year-old self asking your crush to the prom.

I wonder what would have happened if someone had taped smiley-filled flyers in Congress’s bathrooms during the debt debate. I wonder what would happen if someone hung them in post offices next April 15th. I wonder if I have the gumption to post some myself. Do you?

Seventeen-year-olds do ask their crushes to proms, and I have spoken to audiences.

Since I might not have the gumption to post such flyers, I can’t harangue you into posting one. But I can harangue you about posting a smile on a more obvious medium. The message sounds as trite as giving perfume on Valentine’s Day, but it works. Whenever I turn to the page on which I taped that tab, I smile. Whenever I smile at audiences, listeners smile back. By the second time I saw the flyer, all its tabs had vanished.

Besides, the pizza given away at the parties advertised on college bulletin boards costs more than a smile. And you don’t have to wake up at ungodly hours to display one.