Robert Strauss ’73 featured by UC Berkeley for return to Graduate School of Journalism
Strauss studied philosophy at Carleton.
Robert Strauss ’73, now a 73-year-old master’s student at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, returned to the school this academic year to complete his degree after a 50-year leave of absence. In this first-person narrative, he tells Berkeley News about his decades-long path back to campus.
I first came here in 1973, after I graduated from Carleton College in Minnesota. My journalism career had started because I always loved sports. My sophomore year, there was a woman I wanted to date, and she was going to become the editor of the paper at Carleton. She said, “Would you be my sports editor?” I said, “Sure.”
Well, she never comes back to school, and now I’m the sports editor. Being the sports editor really meant I had to write the whole sports section. After this experience, I applied to journalism schools and ended up coming here. I wanted to be in California.
After my first term, I go to Dean Edwin Bayley, whose portrait still hangs in North Gate, and I tell him that I’m leaving. I’ve been going to school from age 3 to 22, and it’s been a long time. I don’t want to stay. He says, “Why don’t you take a leave of absence?” But I never came back.
I’ve had many careers since, I suppose. I started out as a sportswriter, but I’ve had every type of job. I worked at Sports Illustrated magazine when that was a big deal. I worked in TV a bit, not as a reporter, but as a producer. I also had a restaurant in Philly — Jerry’s. We had down-home cooking, everything you hoped your mother would make. I was a TV critic. My specialty was whatever I knew the editor of.