Vocaboly.com

[Guest]

The New York Times
November 10, 2005
For One Student, a College Career Becomes a Career
By SAM DILLON

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.


Photo:
http://tinyurl.com/8blmb
Caption:
Erol Reyal for The New York Times
Johnny Lechner has had four majors and accumulated 242 credits.


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."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/10/national/10johnny.html

COMMENT: It wouldn't be a big deal except that all his 12 years were as
an undergrad ... how boring. I was a student for 22 years at 4
universities in 3 countries (undergrad, law school, grad school, more
grad school) and collected at least 6 degrees, and never thought much
of it. This guy gets publicity.