This post was first published on my Perfect Moment Project blog.

John Dille and me at Cronkite’s 2014 graduation ceremony.

For the last three years, six semesters to be precise, I have co-taught a 400-level required journalism course with John Dille, the wise man in the video above.

John and I have made a great team.

We teach a course about the Business & Future of Journalism. John is awesome talking about ‘Big B’ Business. And I share lots of information about what newsrooms are doing these days to attempt to guarantee that they’ll be around in the Future.

John had taught the class on his own for two semesters before I signed on. It didn’t take long for us to get in step with each other, using some of what John had taught before and adding new wrinkles to the class syllabus. The topic is a moving target and we are constantly updating our class content. But even so, after six semesters together, we’ve gotten into a pretty smooth routine.

We were lucky to have each other.

I was very lucky to teach with such a caring, passionate educator and journalist. And I think the best students leave our class understanding that too.

In the final minutes of the final day of each semester, we offer some last words of advice to our students. I tell tell them not to be afraid to change directions along the way and to remember that they are snowballs – always accumulating knowledge, experience, skills that will serve them well no matter what they do.

John tells them the story caught on video below.

Because Spring 2014 at the Cronkite School of Journalism has been our final semester (we’re going to take a little break), I was moved to record the tale that John always shares during these last minutes that we still have the students’ attention. It’s a winner. Even graduating seniors stop and take note. You should watch it.