Woody Allen supposedly once said that 80 percent of success in life is showing up. I’d add, showing up and paying attention.

Most journalism students here are aware of Jim VandeHei, co-founder of Politico.com in 2007. His photo is on the Alumni Awards Wall of Fame. He is the only journalism graduate to have earned an honorary doctorate. And he’s the only UW Oshkosh graduate to be impersonated on Saturday Night Live.

Jim’s last semester at UW Oshkosh overlapped my first. He took one class from me.

My class was a perfect storm for creating monster senioritis. Jim was coming from a summer spent at a successful internship in Washington D.C. He had a job waiting for him there once he graduated; the class was outside of his emphasis; and he had a professor still getting used to the class, the department and the campus.

So what did he do in my class? He listened. He contributed. He put effort into the assignments. He worked hard enough to get an A.

Jim VandeHei isn’t successful because he took one class from me, but I do believe he is successful because of the way he took the class. I suspect he approached it the way he approaches every person and every situation: as an opportunity to learn something new. Just like other successful people do.

I often hear complaints from students about classes they find boring or pointless. But it’s possible to learn something during every experience. As I tell my students, even listening to my boring lectures can train them to focus, which will be a good skill once they start attending staff and committee meetings.

So pay attention. Especially in public relations, you never know when information about the rocks of Wisconsin or 18th Century French poetry may come in handy.