Thinking about Africa

Last week, I spent time with 25 participants in the Young African Leaders Initiative. Trust me when I say I was truly humbled to be conversing with the group, as every one of them is equally or more skilled in facilitation.  They are well educated, well read, and well spoken.

While waiting for the entire group to return from lunch, I reviewed the schedule for their experience here and saw a detailed, packed agenda of sessions, events, and activities.  When I saw it, I understood why the early arrivals seemed tired.

A week later, what the group said to me has caused me to wonder (again) about the tendency of academic institutions to do what we've always done, rather than what might work better.  If I understood what these young leaders were saying, they know the challenges they are facing in Africa, they largely know what they need to do, and the realities of their lives make it difficult to plan, think, and act for the longer term. They describe Africa as in "a constant state of emergency."  The need for quick action competes with the need for thoughtful building of coalitions to achieve the goals for their communities, organizations, states, and continent.

These leaders are here in the United States for six weeks.  And I am still wondering after my brief interactions with them whether the academic "challenge" for these leaders is best served by the appearance of rigor in the schedule, the topics, and the presenters.  One wonders whether the academic challenge is how to use the six weeks (while they are at least physically removed from the crises) to collaborate on meaningful deliverables that reflect their diverse perspectives--deliverables (action plans, proposals, budgets, training plans, etc.) that have been created by the collective, allowing these leaders to model collaboration, return with useful next steps, and develop the network they will need to draw upon when the next crisis threatens.

The schedule might look less scholarly, but the outcomes might be more lasting.

It's all connected

Grand Central Terminal.  It embodies history, architecture, advocacy, politics, fiction, romance, astronomy, art, travel, industry.  It's more than metaphor for how everything is connected.

Recently, I was fortunate enough to attend the Best Teachers Summer Institute, made all the more enjoyable by the proximity to New York City.  And I found myself standing quietly inside Grand Central, watching the bustle, hearing bits and pieces of conversation, and cataloging all the dots that intersected in that space and time.

For me, the dots began with childhood impressions of Jackie Kennedy Onassis, who advocated for the preservation of Grand Central, intersected a work of fiction (and the love who introduced me to it) featuring Grand Central, and included the quiet moments in the midst of a busy terminal surrounded by strangers with whom I had no and every connection.

One of the gifts of time is the breadth of perspective that allows us to see more clearly from a distance. And it's odd to be a better teacher now than in my earlier years, largely due to breadth and distance that allow invisible webs of connection to be seen...or at least felt.

Perhaps not being able to articulate very well (in the classroom) how everything is connected to everything matters less than being willing to stand quietly in the midst of it all.  That, I can do.

Gone to the next adventure

The morning was cool for June and a bit cloudy.  Before I finished my rounds at the local farmers' market, the clouds turned darker bringing the first of several small showers.  Undeterred, I made the planned trip to the national cemetery and to spend some quiet time walking and remembering.

The most poignant part of the cemetery for me is seeing the headstones marked only with Unknown U. S. Soldier.  I always wonder about families somewhere whose loved ones are buried here.  Unknown. Unnamed.  Whether sentiment or reality, I think my best photographs from the national cemetery have been taken while surrounded by these unknown soldiers.

But today, for the first time, I saw a headstone that stopped me in my tracks. Surrounded by headstones with epitaphs for beloved wives (those who chose to be buried here are memorialized on the reverse side of the soldier's headstone) is a headstone with the words Gone to the Next Adventure. It's perfect. It captures everything about living life to the fullest, accepting transience, and embracing the chance to learn here before moving on. And a relationship that honored not just this adventure but also the next one.

I hope my time as a mother, daughter, sister, friend, lover, or teacher has some positive impact on others; I know for certain these roles have taught me much and provided more adventure than I have often (too often, perhaps) been willing to embrace.  But I love the thought of a next great adventure and rushing to embrace it when this adventure concludes.

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Other cemetery visits:
My cup runneth over 
It's rarely the one we think
The dark side

A still and quiet moment

The longer you teach, the more students touch your life. They make an imprint, graduate, and move into the next chapter of their own lives. Each beginning is fresh and new to the graduate, a time of pride for the family, and a moment of reflection for the faculty who are privileged to teach.

It's so easy to get lost in the number of papers or projects to grade, the grades to be submitted, the flurry of deadlines to meet, or the dance of grade disappointment.  What matters to me in this particular moment, however, is a different tally, the one that represents the reason we do what we do.

This semester's teaching tally is two undergraduate classes (34 students), two graduate classes (36 students), and two Honors theses.  And from that teaching, twenty-one graduate students receiving degrees tomorrow (a third of whom have traveled from Panama) and another 10 or so undergraduate students who've allowed me to guide them through running a retail business or writing a thesis or both.

While the students may not know how much they have challenged me to think, stretch, laugh, and risk, I am a better teacher for their brief sojourn here. So in this still and quiet moment before the Honors ceremony, the Graduate School graduation party, and the pomp and ceremony of commencement, I am thankful for the silent brush of butterfly wings on heartstrings.

Whether or not you see it...

On a chilly and foggy morning, the invisible suddenly becomes noticeable.  It isn't really invisible, you see, but easily overlooked until circumstances make it impossible to miss. In this particular case, what suddenly becomes visible is the almost-magical carpet of webs spun nightly along the ground, between plants, across grasses, and at the top of the most unimaginable spindles.

What makes the sight so breathtaking is knowing that the webs are always there; we just don't see them.

Much as fish don't see water and the prejudiced are sure they aren't, many things in life are invisible due to attitude, upbringing, rank, privilege, status, nationality, or a plethora of blinders, blind spots, and blindfolds. It's so difficult to see what's right in front of us that the wise intentionally seek different perspectives in the knowledge that collective sight is sharper and less obtuse than individual sight.

And the foolish among us?  They seek the bland homogeneity of agreement, convinced that the number of people who see it (or don't) is the litmus test of "truth."

Milestones

This year, the Panama Canal has been in operation for 100 years, including the Miraflores locks. One of three sets of locks along the canal, the Miraflores locks are the most proximate to Panama City, making them both the most visited and the most recognized.

I've spent the last four days teaching classes as part of an Executive MBA program in Panama.   As is so often the case, I could never have predicted that I would be marking a personal milestone in Panama City in the same year that the canal celebrates a centennial.

Over the past week I have tasted authentic empanadas, marveled at bunion trees, walked for miles (with both sunburn and blisters as silent witness), photographed the marvel that is Panama City, developed relationships, and wondered about the life we plan versus the life we live.

For as long as I can remember, I have seen photographs of Panama, including the locks, the trees, and the first house in which I remember living.  I'm not sure how to describe revisiting all of these many years later, mindful of the importance of this place to my parents, the distance I have traveled personally since leaving Panama, and the profession which made celebrating this milestone possible. Though it may take a while to find the words, I am thankful for the experience.

The Panama Canal celebrates 100 years. I am celebrating my small part.

Relationship "failures"

Conventional wisdom has it that relationships (or lack thereof) consume more thought and reflection as we age and/or as we are reminded of our mortality through illness or death.  Our television and social media habits seem consumed with relationships--situation comedies, "reality" T.V., and dramas where the interactions among the detectives, sales representatives, doctors, attorneys, or other variety of co-worker are as important if not more important than the outcome of the specific case or incident.  And classic literature, whether prose, poetry, or play, is, essentially, a study in the nature and complexity of relationships.

And yet, in higher education, how often do we take the time to examine what constitutes failure or success in relationships?  How do we know we've failed? How do we define relationship "failure"? What did we learn from those interactions we deem to be other than a success?   And perhaps the most important question: Why does it matter?

If our emphasis is entirely a sense of urgency to accomplish whatever the objective(s) may be or how many countable things (dollars, sales, awards, grade points, tweets, houses, toys, etc.) we can acquire, why focus any attention in our education or in our lives to the relationships that will matter the most when those very lives are brought into sharp focus?

Perhaps we are too busy being successful in other areas to give relationships much attention. Perhaps that doesn't really matter, as long as our students get good grades, good jobs, and a good lifestyle.  Does it really matter if we get along with our colleagues, work well within our department, support our team, or take the time to put people at least on par with work?

Turns out that it may matter to employers.  And that we may need to help our students see and understand their relationship failures, something Google calls "intellectual humility." 

Without humility, you are unable to learn. It is why research shows that many graduates from hotshot business schools plateau. “Successful bright people rarely experience failure, and so they don’t learn how to learn from that failure."  [How to Get a Job at Google.  The New York Times.  February 22, 2014.]

This may be a bit of a challenge in traditional higher education, where the emphasis on research, publication, and tenure may have left the mentors and teachers ill-equipped to mentor and teach. In my own college, for example, there is a strong commitment to using business simulations to prepare both our undergraduate and our graduate students for the world of business and the making of good business decisions.  

If one thinks about that for even a few minutes, one wonders why we would prefer a teaching method devoid of the relationship dynamics upon which future success will depend. And don't even begin to explain how the teams in which we place students for the purpose of completing simulations replicate future relationships in the workplace. They don't. Never again are our students likely to be with surrounded by equally bright co-workers focused on a single task that they all know how to address with the least possible work for the greatest possible common and equal benefit.  Legally and ethically, that is.

Perhaps the relationship failures (or lack of attention to them) in higher education start somewhere in the formation and preparation for an academic career.  One does wonder.