My Blackboard Mind
The following essay was contributed by Coleman Cowan and is presented here in appreciation for mentors past, present and future, and the lives they have transformed.
No one succeeds by themselves. Look behind any successful person, and there is likely to be a mentor who has shaped the way that person thinks not only about themselves, but also the world around them. This is the story of how one person shaped my path in life in ways I am still coming to appreciate almost 30 years after we first met.
I started law school at Wake Forest University in 1992. If they admitted 200 students aiming for a class of 160 that fall, I’m pretty sure I was number 200, if not 205 or 210. I knew I had my work cut out for me. But I also felt like I had something to prove: That I could make it. That I belonged. To do that, I knew I would have to work harder than I ever had before. I didn’t know what would happen. I only knew that I wouldn’t let a lack of effort or drive be the difference between success and failure.
My days started when the library opened at 7 a.m., and usually didn’t end until it closed at midnight. After weeks of coffee-fueled days and sleep-deprived nights, I wasn’t getting it. I could see the pieces, but I couldn’t understand how they fit together. I began to think hard work was not enough. Then I experienced my first Charley Rose blackboard review session.
Great events turn on small hinges.
Professor Rose taught my section of criminal law. With his inverted 7up water glass and a poster board seating chart with our pictures on it laid out in front of him, Professor Rose patiently took us through the criminal law concepts of intent, harm, and punishment. I walked out of each class with a bit more clarity, but I wasn’t grasping how Regina v. Faulkner fit together with the Uniform Penal Code. I got the pieces. Not the puzzle.
Charley Rose
Over the course of an hour, Prof. Rose laid out eight weeks of criminal law on three blackboards across a classroom wall. I didn’t realize it then, but seeing him put order to what I had previously only seen as chaos, allowed me to begin fitting the rest of the pieces together. Things started to click. Not just in criminal law, but in all my classes. It wasn’t John Nash in A Beautiful Mind, but you get the picture. I was processing and understanding legal concepts differently. The way I thought changed, as did my view of my own capabilities.
My new Charley Rose blackboard mind not only got me through law school, it helped me master it. I went from being a perhaps-we-made-a-mistake-letting-him-in 1L to grading onto the law review and graduating with honors. But it didn’t stop there. My blackboard mind took me through a federal judicial clerkship and a successful practice as a trial lawyer. When that wasn’t enough, it took me through journalism school at Columbia University and a 10-year career as a producer at 60 Minutes. Oil futures story? No problem. Put it on the blackboard. High-frequency trading story? Blackboard. As Steve Kroft and I worked through a script for a story on thorny medical, social, and law enforcement issues stemming from lack of treatment for severe mental illness, I could see a blackboard with a year’s worth of reporting running through my mind. (That particular blackboard won me an Emmy, by the way. Thanks Charley Rose.)
Through the years, Charley and I have kept in touch, meeting for lunches when I came back to North Carolina, more often now that I’ve returned to practice law again. When he decided to retire a few years ago, I had a hard time understanding how future law students would experience Wake Forest without him. We’ve become good friends. But I still have a hard time calling him Charley instead of Professor Rose.
Coleman Cowan (center) enjoys Emmy night with co-producers Graham Messick and Eve Salomon.
What did I learn sitting in that classroom with Charley Rose in the fall of 1992, and for the three years that followed? I learned how to put order to chaos, and that if I worked hard enough, I could master any topic, no matter how complex. And I could do it anywhere – in a courtroom in North Carolina, or in the screening room at 60 Minutes. The blackboard mind given to me by Charley Rose took me not only through law school and a successful trial practice. It also launched a career which sent me on reporting adventures around the world.
Great events turn on small hinges.
Charley Rose forever shaped the way I understand the world around me. For that I will be forever grateful.
Coleman Cowan of Durham is a shareholder in the Law Offices of James Scott Farrin. An Emmy Award-winning producer for “60 Minutes,” he is a member of the NCBA Professional Vitality Committee whose contributions appear on the committee’s website page and NCBarBlog component. A member of the NCBA Litigation Section, Cowan is a graduate of Wake Forest University School of Law (1995, J.D.), Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism (2007, M.S.), and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1992, B.A.)