Me
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My first semester of grad school is drawing to a close, and it's been the most hectic three months of my entire life. I guess I shouldn't complain, since it has also been very enjoyable, but I am looking forward to a vacation. This week I am working with my team to finish up our semester integrative project. We present that on Friday and then our last class session is the week after Thanksgiving.
Currently the biggest dilemma regarding my MBA program is choosing a topic for my thesis / final project. My current ideas are pretty vague, with words like "technology", "international", and "non-profit" floating about with little in the way of actual plans. This is becoming a problem, since I need to have any travel scheduled by January or February in order to have time over the summer to actually work on the thesis. I'm finding that an executive MBA is a little more challenging in the sense that I don't have three months for a huge internship in the summer. This restricts the kinds of topics I can choose, since any really involved research I do has to be stuffed into two weeks of vacation from my job.
Back in August when I brainstormed over possible topics, I realized that if a foreign language was going to be part of the experience, it would have to be Russian. My French is too shaky for even intermediate business terminology, and would require a heavy commitment in time to get up to snuff. My Russian, which I haven't actively spoken since a research trip in 2001, had accumulated some serious cobwebs, but I knew that the grammar and vocabulary were buried somewhere, just waiting to be brought back to light. The problem was finding a tutor. When Kayla and I were planning our vacation to France, I hired a Belgian friend to come to our house and work with me for about two months prior to the trip. This time, I resorted to the Internet. The results have been encouraging. Each week I have a 45-minute lesson with a tutor I found through VerbalPlanet.com. For seven euro per lesson, she works me through the painful process of remembering a language I once spoke more or less fluently. We use Skype to talk for free and she posts a list of vocabulary to review each week. After about ten lessons I can finally converse without stumbling on every word, and feel reasonably confident that by the summer I will be back in decent shape. Assuming, of course, that I end up doing anything related to Russian.
November 11th, 2007
So I'm having this dream. I'm back at college, riding my bike up the hill to an early morning class. A single-strap bookbag threatens to strangle me as I stand up to crank the pedals, my legs burning, hands tugging backwards on the handlebars. My eyes are bleary from a late night studying business cases and eating cheap pastries pulled from the grocery store discount rack. I'm thinking about the litany of classes waiting ahead, and how there's little chance I'll be able to sneak a nap in between the cracks of my frenetic schedule. I finally pedal up to the bike rack. I drop the bag, lock the bike, then grab my stuff and head for the door of the building.
First order of business: breakfast. Strangely, my usual 6 a.m. bowl of Corn Squares has been replaced by a catered continental spread, replete with poppy seed bread and unpalatable granola smothered in yogurt. My fellow classmates seem oddly grown up, queuing in front of the breakfast donuts and chatting about world events. Something doesn't seem right....
Then it hits me. I'm no longer 19. This isn't the college I attended as an undergraduate. But what am I doing here? What bizarre sequence of events has banished me back to the academic world from whence I came, five years ago, eager to experience the corporate maze?
Eventually I awake out of my fog to realize that I chose to be here at 6:30 a.m. I chose to go back to school. What madness was this?! Goodbye free time! Goodbye family outings! Hello homework! Enter exams!
August 17th, 2007
For most of the years I attended Brigham Young University, I was among the most conservative of the Mormon school's clean-shaven youngsters. Now, looking back as one who passed through the veil of BYU's brand of conformity and beyond into a world of more independent thought, stories from BYU provide no end of amusement.
Two days ago BYU's student newspaper posted a story about students who were caught perpetrating illegal acts by BYU's ever vigilant Honor Code Office. The Honor Code folks were tipped off by photos from Facebook, the online social networking site.
My favorite account was of six female students who were turned in to the Honor Code office after they posted photos of themselves hanging out in their own dorm rooms "dressed immodestly". (At BYU, dressing immodestly often consists of shorts above the knee and sleeveless tops). According to one of the students involved:
She didn't consider the pictures bad or immoral, but was surprised when approximately 50 pages of pictures portraying the girls dressed immodestly were given to BYU's Honor Code Office with a note reading, "Thought you should know."
I can just see the consternation on the Honor Code official's face when he reviews these photos... of students in their own dorm rooms! So now apparently it's illegal to dress immodestly in your own bedroom at BYU. (laugh, choke).
Ah, BYU. Wish I was there. Read the original story here.
August 2nd, 2007
Saturday morning I woke up with my back covered in what looked like black fly bites. I immediately suspected that some renegade insects had penetrated the defenses of our house and feasted on my flesh while I slept. However, beyond some paranoid swatting at the lone fly I did find buzzing about the kitchen, I forgot the incident. Then Kayla took me up to the Moyie River to kayak. It was a great trip--about an hour and a half from near the border station at Eastport down to the Moyie Crossing picnic area. However, at the end of the float I realized that my legs were covered in welts--just like the "fly" bites I had earlier. I was justly outraged and wondered vaguely if I had contracted some sort of parasite.
Since Saturday it has been like a detective's mystery, trying to sort out the pieces of my new "disease". After several experiments I determined that the welts were caused by an insect, probably wind-borne, which attacked me within minutes of stepping outside the house. Liberal applications of DEET and complete clothing coverage helped, but if there was so much as a button hole not covered and sufficiently sprayed, the little buggers found their way in and began wreaking havoc. Welts sprang up all over my body, wherever the insects found passage.
Monday evening I decided to offer my body up to science in one last-ditched experiment. I would mow the lawn (a two-hour job) with no insect repellant and wearing only shorts and a tee shirt. This was my way of plumbing the depths of the problem, to see how nasty the critters could be. I had also decided that I couldn't stay indoors the rest of the summer, and that this would be my way of standing up to Mother Nature's assaults.
Well, the bugs won that engagement hands down. When I returned to the house my upper body was completely covered in red welts, big bumps the size of quarters merging around smaller bites that wove a tell-tale path from my belt line straight up to my neck. I conceded defeat and called a dermatologist.
Luckily, before I could shell out hundreds of dollars in medical fees, I began reading on the internet to try to self-diagnose. Based on my research, I believe that the culprit is some form of mite (tiny arachnids like chiggers or miniscule ticks). We are all being nibbled on constantly by various mites and other invisible creatures, but my body was having an allergic reaction to either a new pest or an unusual population explosion of the mite. The hives on my skin were my body's overreaction to the mite's nibbling. So, Tuesday morning I bought some strong antihistamine (Claritin), popped a tiny tablet and... was immediately healed. It's actually quite miraculous in my opinion. I go from complete misery to absolutely no sign of welts or bites anywhere, within 24 hours.
It's been like a rebirth. I spent all evening outdoors tonight, soaking up the beautiful summer and enjoying everything with new eyes. Being stuck indoors is akin to a serious disability for me... and I've been spared. I can't express how grateful I am for the miracle of modern medicine.
July 11th, 2007
A couple of months ago, my employer signed a deal to create an executive MBA program from the University of Idaho at our campus in Sandpoint. Coldwater Creek's CEO, Dennis Pence, is a longtime Sandpoint resident and has been jockeying to get our company listed as one of the "100 Best Companies to Work For". Bringing an MBA program to a tiny resort town is one of his many strategies for upping our rank in the polls. At first, I dismissed the MBA idea as being a bit shaky. The University of Idaho has never had a graduate business program, and frankly I don't expect the world's best faculty to be hanging about in north Idaho.
But my attitude changed as I began to consider my options. I've always had the MBA card tucked away in my back pocket, but I had envisioned a full-time two year program, preferably at some amazing school overseas. Then I began to do the math. Financially, a two-year MBA would be quite a setback. Tuition would run about $80,000 (taking as an example the University of Washington in Seattle). We could probably get by on $80,000 for personal expenses during the two years, including rent. The lost salary from my current job would be substantial. So we're looking at a hit to the bottom line of some hundreds of thousands of dollars. Ouch. Goodbye house. Goodbye savings. Goodbye north Idaho. Hello student loans!
After taking that cold shower of financial reality, the MBA program in Sandpoint started looking much, much better. What really set me on the path back to school was Coldwater Creek's offer to pay 75% of the tuition cost. It turns out money is a great motivator. Plus, classes are scheduled every other Friday and Saturday, so I am only missing two days of work each month.
Of course, this means I'll be insanely busy for the two years of the program. But my hope is that at the end of the experience, I'll have something significant to show for it. Some of my long-term career plans foresee the need to have an advanced degree, and this is a way for me to accomplish that goal without blowing my entire life off course to go back to school.
May 23rd, 2007
I've been contemplating several ideas lately from the book Siddhartha, by Hermann Hesse. Since first pulling this book randomly off the library shelf seven years ago, Siddhartha has become a significant cornerstone of my personal religious philosophy.
The book, a short work of fiction, traces the life and development of a spiritual seeker who lived at the time of the Buddha. Siddhartha begins life as a favored Brahmin's son, performing his religious duties to perfection and becoming the model young man, full of promise and sincerity. Yet Siddhartha is not truly happy. While others praise his goodness, he remains unsatisfied with the provisions of his own faith. He leaves his home and family for the life of the ascetic, seeking the elusive spiritual goal that his teachers cannot give him. Over time he realizes that asceticism cannot provide salvation either. After meeting the Buddha and realizing that no teacher can ever exceed the Enlightened One, Siddharta becomes a merchant, eventually losing the inner conviction that once drove his quest. Finally he realizes what he has lost, abandons his comfortable life, and becomes a ferryman's companion to learn the ways of the river. In this desire-less state he learns the meaning of wisdom, finds enlightment and achieves the goal of his lifelong quest.
My short summary cannot even begin to do justice to this masterful allegory. But the main reason the book has such meaning for me is that I see my own life traced in Siddhartha's experiences. Siddhartha's life mirrors each stage in my own spiritual path so far: believer, missionary, skeptic, materialist. I too have encountered the amazing teachings of the Buddha, but withdrawn from the promise of joining a larger religous community to follow my own path. I see my own spiritual arrogance in Siddhartha's impatience and individualism. The dangers of Siddhartha's immersion in the material world are constantly present in my own life. The abandonment of desire that Siddhartha undertakes late in life still looms in my future. The book has become both a guide and a warning.
I have become convinced that each person has a unique spiritual path to enlightenment. Like a fingerprint, each path traces a unique line through the same territory of desire, suffering, death, and rebirth. We encounter thousands of fellow seekers along the way, but each must ultimately find that course for which they are suited, whether by instinct or intent. I feel that the path I have chosen is more rare than otherwise. I have encountered very few fellow travelers. And in some sense I feel that the path has chosen me as much as I have consciously chosen it; as if I were living out a script that was foreordained from the foundations of my genetic inheritance.
May I be as fortunate as Siddhartha in the outcome of my own journey.
May 22nd, 2007
Kayla and the kids are down in Spokane this weekend, so I have the rare opportunity to sit at the keyboard alone, listening to the Vienna Boys Choir, thinking my own thoughts in an empty, dark house. It's a rare privilege.
I never realized how solitary a person I am until I got married and we had our first child. The need for peace and solitude was suddenly urgent, and I have never really stopped loving that moment when you leave the rest of humanity behind and find yourself alone. To be fair I should say that in the intervening years I have truly learned to like people, in a more genuine sort of way, than I ever did before. I love my family. But it is heavenly to have a piece of quiet once in a while.
Tonight I'm in a reflective, nostalgic sort of mood. I found a few blogs of former missionaries I knew in Russia and have been catching up on their lives (at least the part they commit to writing). There's nothing like the distance of the past to bring out the meaning in the daily meaninglessness of life. I recently saw a film called Everything is Illuminated, based on the book by the same name. The film's title comes from a line in Milan Kundera's novel, The Unbearable Lightness of Being: "In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine." That's how I feel tonight. Little rays of the past, all but forgotten, stabbing through the fog of the present to illuminate the way forward.
I once thought I lived a relatively sedate lifestyle. Replete with small adventures, true, but still slow-moving and serene. But in the last year my life has seemed to accelerate, speeding off into a horizon that unfolds so quickly that it is difficult sometimes to see exactly where it is heading. Really it's just little things. They all add up after a while. I've suddenly become involved in a community, which for me is a big deal. I didn't realize the impact moving to a small town would have on me personally, but it has truly made all the difference. I can't be anonymous here. I'm starting to recognize people at the store or walking downtown. I have an identity that is tied to a place... something so rare as to be almost nonexistent in our roaming, faceless culture. I am involved in two different singing groups here in town, as well as the indoor and outdoor soccer leagues. I like visiting the local art gallery and the farmer's market. I'm on first name basis with some of the librarians. All signs of a person beginning to set down roots after a wanderer's life.
I think a large part of this process has been my change in attitude toward my career. When I was fresh out of college, a job was an expendable thing, something easily won and easily exchanged. I had nothing to lose. Now, five years later, my job has become one of the major foundations of my life. (Reading that again, it sounds pitiful, but it's true... look at your own life and you will probably draw a similar conclusion). It's fashionable these days to disparage work, to long for the day when you can sit on the beach and sip Hawaiian punch and not deal with the grind of making a living. But I'd be completely dishonest if I didn't say that my job has become a huge part of my identity. As I've grown in my career, I have also become a much different person. Five years after graduating from college I suddenly find myself in a position where I value my job. I value what my job means to my family and my lifestyle.
I think I may be growing up after all.
May 13th, 2007
Winter is upon us in North Idaho. The last few days a light powder snow has been falling in the mountains and valleys, covering everything in a soft, clean white blanket. One of the things I enjoy most about winter is the "snow quiet", that calming acoustic effect snow has on all its surroundings. Everything seems frozen in the stillness of a deep, dreamless sleep.
Anyone who has lived in the snow-laden reaches of the world probably has special memories of newly fallen snow. I think my fondest remembrance is from Novokuybyshevsk, Russia, where I was stationed as a Mormon missionary in the fall and winter of 1998. My missionary companion and I were walking across a neighborhood on the edge of the older part of the city--the apartment blocks were in the style of early Communism, three stories high with something faintly resembling architectural character (unlike most Soviet construction from the 1950's on). We entered a parklike courtyard with snow falling thick about us, everything draped in the cold black of night. Something beautiful enveloped me, a warm feeling of home and connection with the natural world. It was so quiet, which was unusual in two years of beating the pavement of different Russian cities, constantly avoiding the harassment of careless drivers and the careening paths of tramvai's and buses. In that moment I was at peace. I heard no voice, saw no cars. The world was silence, and snow was its messenger.
November 26th, 2006
So it's time for that event of all events, that great pinnacle of early adulthood, the moment we've all been waiting for.... my ten-year high school reunion. A deliberate reunion of people who once were idiots and didn't know it, and who are now idiots and do know it, has to be one of the most complex emotional issues to face humanity, ever. Some people loved high school and hate the thought of growing old; others loved school but would rather leave the past dead and buried in the yearbooks. I suppose I'm in the middle. I had a lot of good experiences at Barlow High. I also spent a lot of fruitless hours during that period trying to be happy and achieving exactly the opposite. In fact, I don't believe I knew how to maintain a stable emotional and intellectual state until about the age of twenty-three or twenty-four. And that was only after graduating from college, getting married and having children. (You might wonder what raising children has to do with a stable emotional state: I wonder too sometimes)....
Continue Reading August 23rd, 2006
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