This month celebrates
Thanksgiving—also known in our house as the holiday smushed in between the
Goetz family rush of birthdays (August 2nd for P, September 20th
for Joe, October 29th for yours truly), followed closely by Halloween,
and Christmas. It’s the holiday with multiple stops to visit multiple families
in our beloved ‘Nati—and multiple helpings of turkey, taters, punkin’ pie,
cranberries and such at each. Then it’s off to the train display at the Museum
Center on Friday followed by a visit with Dad and Gaile on Saturday. Suddenly
it’s Sunday and though we’ve talked about Pilgrims and Indians and Plymouth
Rock; and Black Friday and How Many Days ‘Til Christmas and Santa Claus, the
weekend has gone by so fast that we’ve somehow forgotten the essence of what
it’s all about: giving thanks.
To keep me
on the straight and narrow path of thanks giving, and from letting this month
go by in an instant, I’m doing the thing where every day I give thanks for
something new and different. And I’m posting most of my thanks on Facebook. I’ve recently
had a love/hate relationship with our ubiquitous social media friend, but
decided giving thanks on Facebook was the best way to hold myself accountable
for not missing a day. Yes, it’s trite and cliché and all that jazz, but, much
like my blogging, I’m not doing it so much for others, rather to take inventory
and self-reflect. You loyal blog readers (all two, maybe three of you) are just
along for the ride—and I’m lucky if I’ll even get you on board long enough to
weather the storm that is getting my thoughts down on to paper in a way that
makes some kind of sense.
So far my
thanks have been a mix of the practical and the emotional kind, the immediate
and more profound, long-lasting kind. Every day the theme of my thanks has
either been in direct reflection of that day, or something that has been on my
mind for quite some time. It really depends on what rises to the surface as
most relevant on any given day.
My thanks
for today falls into both the emotional and profound, long-lasting category. It’s
a thank you I have been carrying with me for nearly four years. It’s been the
driving force behind much of what I have done in my professional life. It’s
long overdue.
I would like
to thank an individual who will remain unnamed and I would like to thank her
for lighting an UNBELIEVABLE fire under me that fuels me even on the darkest of
my professional, working days.
It’s story
time.
Rewind to
Friday, December 5, 2008. It’s a cold night in Bloomington. A beautiful, crisp
winter night, but darn cold.
I am at the
retirement reception of my boss from the previous four summers, the director of
the IU Honors Program in Foreign Languages. It’s a night to celebrate her
contributions to the Program over the last fifteen plus years. It’s a night for
her students to pay tribute and express to her their gratitude for their
‘summer of a lifetime’ with the Honors Program. It’s a night for the University
and her colleagues to honor her faithful commitment to the Program.
I am there
in the same vein. She was my boss for four summers, and though she only supervised
me during the summer, we had a professional and a personal relationship the
whole year round. I respect her. And much like the students, I wanted to
express my gratitude for affording me an incredible opportunity to teach for
such an impactful Program. I am there to, appropriately enough, give thanks.
But it’s also
a little weird and here’s why: while I’m attending to pay tribute as a former
instructor for the Program, I’m also there as the Director delegate; I’m
assuming directorship of the Program that I just spent four summers teaching
for. I am taking the reins from my former boss.
I am
experiencing a mixed bag of emotions: I’m thrilled to be taking my dream job at
age 27; after all when I interviewed to teach for the Program as a naïve first
year graduate student in the fall of 2004, I told Jack that the job I REALLY
wanted was the director’s job. And now I have it. I’m excited for the
challenges of the Program, as well as the autonomy and creativity that I was
not getting in my previous position. I’m also daunted by the fact that three of
our eight Program sites are in countries in which I do not speak the language
(France and Germany). And I’m very, very aware that the my predecessor, though
she couldn’t be more than 4’11” and 95 pounds soaking wet with a backpack on,
and she has the world’s the tiniest feet, she is leaving me with some
incredibly big shoes to fill.
As I make my way around the reception, interacting with high school
teachers, students, and University administrators alike, I’m simultaneously
stoked about the position I’m stepping into and freakin’ scared pants-less. I
learn quickly that I’m being watched, as many people are wanting to know more
about the young woman (some might even call me ‘girl’) moving into the Director
position. I can sense that many think I’m not up to the task, while others are
genuinely intrigued at what brought me to this point and moved by my
enthusiasm. In short, I learn that listening and observing is best, and when
it’s time to speak, to do so with confidence, assertiveness and conviction.
Some moments I feel on top of my game and other moments I feel, um,
stupid. I am having more of the latter kind of moments, so I scan the crowd
looking for my anchor—Jack—and find him. He’s mingling with everyone from the
janitor to the Vice President of International Affairs. He’s good at this kind
of thing. I admire him for that. He smiles at me, and it helps me find the
confidence I know I have within me.
Then I overhear a group of individuals talking about the ‘direction’
the Program is taking. As I do my best to pretend I am engaged in the current
circle of conversation in which I find myself, I am bending my ear something
ridiculous to try and find out what’s being said in the other circle. I hear
low mumblings, infused with a tone of doubt and scrutiny. I don’t hear much,
but what I do hear loud and clear is the laughter (almost cackling) of one
person in particular who predicts the Program will go under in six months.
It is her that I would like to thank.
Thank you for, in that moment, shaking me out of my self-doubt and
firmly placing me on the path of moving forward and not looking back.
Thank you for inspiring me to mobilize forces and add another
French-speaking site so that we could serve more French students across the
state—in only our second year into my directorship.
Thank you for giving me the confidence to even conceive of moving
into the Eastern world with our Program, a need that has been growing strong ever
since I began.
Fast forward to now. I am fresh returned from a trip to Hangzhou, China—still not over the
jetlag, in fact. I remember when the idea for the trip was first born back in
June. I was hesitant, even resistant to the idea of opening a program in China.
Why? I’m not sure. I found a number of excuses that seemed appropriate and
justified. The model of our Program in
China would have to be different. And why mess with the unique, more
importantly, highly effective model we currently have in place? Parents won’t agree to send their children
to China. If they are filled with trepidation at the thought of their
children going to Europe or Mexico, how will they even think to let them travel
twice as far? We will be shooting
ourselves in the foot if we offer a program in China; Chinese seems to be in
direct competition with German, a language we’ve had in our profile since the
Program’s inception in 1962. How can we justify what in my mind was pitting
the two languages against each other?
But those were all excuses masking the ultimate human fear: the
unknown. I was resistant to the idea of China because I didn’t know China. But
isn’t that why I got into the field of study abroad in the first place? The
challenge of discovering the unknown, of pushing yourself beyond your limits?
And more importantly, discovering yourself in the process of
discovering the unknown and pushing your limits?
Jack, not only my anchor, but my gut-checker, reminded me of this one
day this past summer when I was having a particularly challenging job day. I
was dealing with a mini-crisis abroad, and had gone to a meeting about China
that hurt my brain to even wrap around. Every meeting about
China seemed to bring about more questions than answers. It was all a little
more than I could handle at that moment in time. I was also low on sleep, as I was just
coming of the heels of a pretty significant student health issue from over the
weekend that sent one of our students home. I grumbled something about how it
used to be so nice to have laidback summers (note to myself and readers: since
I have taught for the Honors Program in the summer of 2005, I have NEVER had a
laidback summer, so I must have really been delusional that day), and here I
went adding China to my plate when I already had enough to ‘deal with.’ Without
missing a beat, Jack called me on it. He said to buck up, that he knew me and
thus knew that deep down I was excited about China. I asked him how he knew and
he responded “You like the challenge. You would be bored without it.” BINGO.
As soon as those words were articulated (ain’t it funny how you
sometimes just need to hear things out loud for them to really click?), I embraced the challenge of China rather
than fought it. And here I am. Several days of meeting with the Education
Bureau, the University and the Foreign Affairs Department in Hangzhou, and it’s
looking pretty promising that we will open a Program in China in 2014. There’s
no guarantee we’ll even get this up and running, but I’ve done plenty of research
on the ground. Now it’s time to roll up my sleeves and dig, see what can be
done. Time to stretch ourselves (myself),
move out of our comfort zone, go East. If this does come to fruition, our Program will have to tweak its model,
yes. And there will be parent concerns, without a doubt. Will our German
Program suffer as a result? I think not. We will be proof that languages can
coexist. We will simply fight even harder to promote German, as we have done
every year for the past four years.
And to think, the drive for what I do burns so bright partly because
of what that woman said. I’ve always been driven, ambitious, more likely to
take on more than take on less (sometimes to a fault) and most importantly,
passionate about what I do. Combine that with an extremely dedicated office
staff who also believes wholeheartedly in what we do and 35 or so talented
instructors who have a passion for language and the culture that speaks it, and
you’ve got a formidable team to carry out our mission. But you throw a doubter
in the mix and DANG!—you’ve just upped the ante. Game on and challenge
accepted. Thank you, unnamed individual, for articulating your doubt.
No worries, friends. I’m not a vengeful or spiteful person—not in the
least. So I do not think of her and get angry. Or even. No one is keeping
score. Instead, I think of her and am appreciative for the external motivation.
Her voice resonates in my head on the days when I am not motivated enough on my
own or by the idea that the students on our Program are having a meaningful
study abroad experience as young and ripe 17 year olds. There aren’t many days
that I need to fall back on her words to give me that extra push, but you
better believe they’re always milling around in the hidden corners my mind when
I need them. They will help me to never be complacent in my work.
And they will help me to always remember that haters gonna hate.
Nay-sayers gonna nay-say. And party poopers, well, they gonna poop. It’s how
you react to them that makes all the difference.
So to the person that shall remain unnamed—thank you for helping me
pave my professional camino, a camino that has shaped who I am as a
person and the kind of work I hope to dedicate my life to.
I leave you now with a glimpse of China, a beautiful country, like no
place I have ever been before. Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore. And that’s
not a bad thing.
 |
| The sun setting over West Lake |
