The working conditions of professional skateboarders are rarely investigated in academic literature or traditional skate media (e.g., Thrasher Magazine). This article contextualizes skateboarding labor and compares its professionals with other freelance contractors in the precarious neoliberal economy. It also explores the role of social media in skateboarders’ careers; while experiencing data mining and the fetishism of digital devices like any other online user, pro skaters must adopt platforms (e.g., YouTube) for their career advancement, as greater notoriety leads to corporate sponsorships. I outline the multiple hats that skaters wear, such as the sponsored athlete, the walking advertisement, and most importantly the emerging social-media adept. Within this context, the article further details the coercive forces keeping skaters amenable to sponsoring companies and industry insiders, such as the pejorative label of “kook.” Finally, I explain a contradiction that the profusion of Web 2.0 use has led to slight but not proportional coverage of skaters’ working conditions.

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1. One host humorously tweeted, for example, that "a group of white men is called a podcast" (Jelfs 2021, 255).

This article documents the design, delivery, and evaluation of a first-year experience (FYE) course in media and communication studies. It was decided that CMNS 110: Introduction to Communication Studies would start to include elements to address a perceived and documented sense of disconnectedness among first-year students in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University. These elements included coping, learning, and writing workshops facilitated by various services units across campus. We present results fromsurveys and focus groups conducted with students at the end of the course and discuss the predicaments that the new realities of an accreditation and audit paradigm—under the cloak of the neoliberal university—produce. On one hand the FYE course may help students transition into a post-secondary institution; on the other hand, too much emphasis on the FYE can result in an instrumental approach to education, jeopardizing the integrity of the course. We offer some insights into the challenges and opportunities of implementing FYE curricula within a large classroom setting.

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