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Bind Ambition; a rant

Ambition is the last refuge of failure. ~Oscar Wilde

Hungry. Restless. Itchy.

It is in your bones. You have it or you do not. I am not trying to mystify any constructs here, I am getting to the heart of the matter.

Motivation. Ambition. You are always doing what you are motivated to do.

For those who are indeed ambitious, there are some critical steps necessary to develop functional activity and connect that activity to achievement.

Acknowledge
Define
Plan
Discriminate
Sleep

Acknowledge the flood of interests, curiosities, and knowledge that you have. No humble-brag. No intended arrogance, here. It is important to have some self-awareness. I will touch on that in other sections as well. You are someone who has made it this far because you are motivated and love to know about things. You have developed a method for mastery of plenty of domains and you know enough to be an asset to many other people and, if you are not careful, you will be stretched thin and get nothing done.

Define your core interests. I know, it is hard. It is like picking your ONE favorite record or your SINGLE favorite book. Nearly impossible but not impossible. What is the one you couldn’t live without. Well, the same has to be true of your primary contribution. What will people say about you when you are dead? Gone? What is on your career tombstone? What is engraved on your retirement watch? What will they say? Will they agree? Does it match your ambitions?

Plan for success. You have whittled your interests down to a single one. That was the hard part–or was it? Find the true beginning. Is there enough of a foundation on which to stand or do you need to revisit? Is it worthy of a full meta-analysis as a foundational paper or project? Even if you have a solid foundation, it is probably worth a full review for your own work. It is probably publishable, as well, especially if you can connect your work to a notable anniversary or new interpretation of the established publications. Map out your three, six, and twelve month activities and mix them up among local and national speaking engagements, opinion or provocative scholarly articles, and eventual publication of original work. Every thing you write should be publishable, even if it is a letter or opinion to a periodical or critical response to a publication. Always have an iron in every fire at every stage of the game and always be ready to tell someone about it.

Discriminate among your projects, prospects, interests, invitations, and pleasures. Do not be a hoarder. Keep a list and either complete a project or kick it off the island. Remember, you are always motivated to do what you do. If a project is on your to-do list too long, you are probably not that into it and will either A) never get it done; or worse B) hate it when you do.

Sleep. Go to sleep. Sacrificial sleep. Do not allow the distractions to win. The work that you do is necessary, important, and does not belong to you. Put it on paper and let us have it. It is not simply a “contribution to the field” that piles upon piles will justify your position. It may be one thing — or the only thing — that pushes some critical ideas to the surface.

WEEDS

Nick Nolte did not have it this good. Think about it. Weeds. Growing, adapting, and developing at a breakneck pace. Some of the greatest diversity and hardiness in your yard, forest, or garden is coming from those things you cannot seem to shake. Your prized flowers and foods wilt after a few days with no rain but it seems that that weeds thrive! It makes you wish that you had a value or a purpose for them. Some weeds have even adapted to become valuable to some–Bio-promotion!

Can we make the necessary changes for our selves in the context of learning and development? Can we embrace the adversity? Adapt? Change? Thrive, even? Of course we can.

These binary robots in the earth outside our homes. They have one task–grow. What is yours?

Why dance?

From all the tweeting and all the talk and all the writing, you may have known about a certain fundraiser on May the 4th. I agreed, about a year ago, at the coaxing of several past contestants that I would compete. We would all compete and go toe-to-toe, as it were, in the dance fundraising arena. The gauntlet was thrown. I like to raise money. I love to raise money for Miller Rothlein. Their creative work is superlative. Their educational mission is active and is unified with their creative work. Superlative. As a board member, you cannot ask for more. A mission that you can explain and that is evident in the daily operations of the company.

As the competition drew nearer, I found myself thinking of my performance–after all, I was expected to DANCE. I started thinking about all the ways to have fun with this: the theme, the music, style of dance…the options, the options! The event was going to be Star Wars themed since it fell on (unofficial) Star Wars day, May the Fourth. What did I want to do? DISCO. When I was in the single digits, I had the 45 (rpm) recording of the Theme from Star Wars performed as a disco. It was awesome.

Halfway there.

Costume? Han Solo. Partner? Princess Leia. It was all coming together. My dance partner, a professional from NYC who dances regularly with Miller Rothlein, was excited and was having fun with the theme as well. We had a great time working with our choreographer Scott Lazarov–this guy is the real deal. I was excited. It was coming together. My daughter was excited. She came to a rehearsal and liked our routine. She asked if I was going to win the competition. Four year olds love competition.

Dadaí, what are the prizes?

There are three.

Are you going to win them all?

The triple-crown? I hadn’t consider it.

Yeah. The triple crown.

As the evening of the event drew nearer, I found myself thinking of…myself. Doubts. Fears. Questioning. After years of thinking outside of myself–projecting as far as I could about the company–my world was shrinking. Who would be there? Some of my students would be there. Would I embarrass myself? Am I the fool? Would colleagues see the video? Would it be passed around with whispers and laughs?

Is that a problem?

I was not concerned about my ability to perform the routine but what someone might say. These are not the types of things that occupy my mind. If you asked someone if these are the kinds of things I spend time considering, they would laugh. Not me.

“He doesn’t care about what people think about him.”

But now. I was dual-minded. Juggling my confidence and my terror. Not thinking about my usual things–family, friends, fun, education, loves of my life…

I am a deliberate. Thoughtful. A pragmatist.

So, why?

My daughter needs to know.

My students need to know.

I need to know.

It’s fun.

When I came to my senses, I remembered that the answer to it all is that same excellent answer that I gave those students years ago. Aaron Copland gave it as the best reason to listen to music. Most of humanity acknowledge it as the best reason to do just about anything.

Because you like it.

But there is more. And I do not write this as some kind of prophet, savior, example, or anything of significance. I am not going to shake the foundations of the world with this. I have to recognize the patterns. Not those that would come from my dancing. But from the empty space that would exist if I chose not to. Way to go, Bartleby.

You see, dancing was going to be normal. It is what people do when they are happy, confident, and loving life. It is what we do in the car on the way to school and how we choose to express our every bit of emotion and connectedness. It is how we ARE. Every gesture, every movement choice, every facial expression betrays our true mind. It is beautiful.

Choosing not to dance. Choosing to sit on the sidelines. This time. Would make the statement. Undermining. Relegating that expression to private areas. Telling my daughter, my students, my friends that there was something wrong. There was a time and a place but not here. Not now. Not me. Not you.

Selfish.

I was talking to friends last week about pitches. Pitches that you may and may not hear as an adult–remember the mosquito? The trick to “hearing” these pitches is that when they are present, you may not hear the pitch but you will notice the negative audio space. It is as if a color has been removed from a painting. Those in the industry will understand that it is as if “air” had been removed from the audible range. THAT is what I was risking. The cavalier creation of negative space. Boink.

Look. I’m nobody. My life is going to have no bearing on so many people.

BUT.

For some, believe it or not, I am defining boundaries. Sounds big, I know. But I could not help but consider the influence that could be had on those I love and those I do influence.

My daughter, my wife, and all of my family.

My students, co-workers, and acquaintances.

NOT those who would question or mock

but those who would hear that discussion.

Dancing is fun. We had a blast.

My daughter told me I was great. Score.

Pedagogy and its Discontents pt.2, Lead me where?

“It is impossible to escape the impression that people commonly use false standards of measurement–that they seek power, success and wealth for themselves and admire them in others, and that they underestimate what is of true value in life.”

Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents

Let us not make any bones about the situation. The teacher is at the front of the room and hold the keys. There are places that students cannot go. There are places that students can go. There are places that students may only go if the teacher takes them there. Say what? This is the 21st century. This classroom is flipped. We are unlearning. Delearning. Relearning. It is our new pedagogy. You can’t front on that.

Or can you, Biz? Will you front on that? Is it the content, the context, or the process that is of value in the classroom? Some mix of the three, perhaps. Maybe, even, a fourth entity–the interaction of them all. In the same way that you may not separate nature and nurture, it is unlikely that you may separate the content from the context or either of them from the process that brings them to light. Further, it is unlikely that by explicitly valuing one part of the mix that a teacher or student will be sure to have the desired influence over those components.

Do you follow? If I, as a teacher or student make explicit statements of value, the reaction of students may be to value or devalue or, perhaps, to have no change in their valuation of the component. Some rebel while some draw near. It depends on how that serves their needs for safety, belonging, esteem, or actualization. Remember Maslow? Not to oversimplify, but if you have ever tried to teach a hungry student, you are probably missing more than my point.

Getting back to the matter at hand, students respond to the content, context, and process–along with the demonstrated valuations by the instructor in a given manner. They may follow, rebel, or have no change in their value of the experience. The teacher, assessing the response, may ‘course-correct’ mid-stream-of-thought BUT what may happen is not entirely predictable! Change on the part of the teacher–either re-emphasis, over-emphasis, or a decreased emphasis–may result in a different overall response.

The most significant (read risky) overall response may be an overarching loss of interest should the instructor effectively abandon ship on the premise or the beliefs that were held at first. Any teacher still holding the torch of pedagogy as a method of a priori distribution of information should probably have a widow’s walk built and learn a new lament. The kids are alright.

“And yet, in making any general judgement of this sort, we are indanger of forgetting how variegated the human world and its mental life are.”

Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents