Good With Names

Nothing could follow the adrenaline rush of leading a kick-ass workshop on teaching for doctoral students last week. So, why am I so surprised to find myself bored at work today? This is supposed to be the way of university administration. Intensity ebbs and flows, as does pleasure in the tasks.

But seriously? Address checking? Our database gobbled up eight solid hours of the precious and shrinking cache granted to me for walking this earth. The Commonwealth of Virginia paid a creative, educated woman a day's salary to cross-check the address every single student in our doctoral program against the university's records. What a numbing use of the gift of gray matter.

It has to be done, though, and I am the one who suffers if I leave this little house untidy. Doing this work is really not so different from folding the laundry, except that it's less stimulating and harder on the eyes. Every working person faces unsatisfying aspects of a job. Artists complain about having to deal with gallery owners. Camp directors have to swim through tedious HR protocols during multiple hiring cycles in a year. Name your dream job, and I can find you some piece of it someone wants to hire out to a peon.

Sometimes, though, you can't get around being your own peon.

Our PhD program houses 160 doctoral students. Staying on top of their progress and providing them with accurate and timely guidance helps them (I hope) keep that final dissertation defense in their sites. Being a resource for the students is the fun part of the position. As I get to know them, I can tailor my approach to their personalities. What could be better for a dyed-in-the-wool extrovert? This may not my avocation, but parts of it sure fit my groove.

Monitoring the construction of 160 people's careers (while also attending to the 60-odd faculty members and two dozen bureaucrats working the scaffolding) is about as complicated as you'd think. I have days when I am right on top of things. I can field a call from a student in Nigeria about a small payment detail that needs to be resolved within the hour, and the student's situation pops to the front of my brain. That one happens to be a permanent U.S. resident in the 1-credit-per-semester dissertation phase of his research, an international student living abroad but not on a visa. I know exactly how to give him the right answer in the blink of an eye. On such days, I feel like I have the best job in the world.

Then I have moments like the one last week. The workshop brought in a manageable 10 participants, and I knew every one of them. They introduced themselves at the beginning. I had an RSVP list on my desk. You can imagine my mortification when I drew a complete blank on one student's name halfway through the session. This would only be a big deal if I were calling on people and trying to engage the discussion.. . . There I was, trying to model active teaching skills, and I not only forgot the student's name, I called him the wrong name.

I have only flipped the calendar thirteen times since the university first saw fit to hand me this title. Anyone can be forgiven for slipping on the details from time to time. Heck, this position doesn't require me to perform surgery or land airplanes or anything. The slip is actually a good reminder that I serve the students best when I learn who they are. In that moment, I could not have answered any question _blankname_ had posed to me about his next step in the program, because in forgetting his name, I also forgot everything about his research interests and his progress. I may love schmoozing and teaching and advising, but I also simply need to know who the students are. Their names are the keys that unlock those heaps of information stored in the file cabinets and, increasingly, in my own memory.

Today, it is true I am not doing anything more compelling than cutting and pasting data from one two-dimensional page to another. As the afternoon drags to a close and I slog to the bottom of the spreadsheet, something dawns on me. I know their names. I can look at any list of names anywhere, any list of thousands upon thousands of names of humans pulled from the phone book or even just the random sky, and I can tell you which among them belongs to a student in my program.

As I cut, paste, search, and check these records, I am looking again and again at the names of these 160 students who comprise my professional universe. I am learning them, the way a person memorizes passages of poetry or elements from the periodic table. Repeated exposure cuts pathways into the mind. Mnemonics form between names and the larger human composition. Simply by gazing for a day at this list of students, I place them in the larger geography of the planet as well as in the storehouse of my own memory.

Might it be the case that sitting still and attending to nothing more than a tiny collection of details, I become a better advisor? In addition to the critical task of creating order when chaos threatens, housekeeping may actually build capacity for both service and leadership.

It is a surprise and a delight to learn, once again, that the parts of my work I consider most mind-numbing might be anything but.

In Decision

He has just started the program. One week of classes are not even yet under his belt. Is now the right time to be asking? It is the only time, I suppose, but the uncertainty seems both late and premature. He wonders if this is the right decision, if the financial outlay will reap future benefit, if the career trajectory he imagines is just a fantasy. What of the girlfriend who wants to start a family, what of the student loan debt he already carries?

I walk him through a reasoned assessment of the costs and benefits. He has come to me for information not exhortation, and I provide it with care. Eventually, I lean back in my chair. This is hard for me. The lion in me wants to lean in and bare my fangs. Courage, man! Take the leap! Instead, I draw breath and offer up the deeper questions of his motivations. My restrained interrogation asks him to consider the increased credibility an advanced degree brings. For the kind of contribution he wants to make, does it help him to have that level of expertise in his field? How might the doctorate itself – aside from the depth of knowledge it requires – provide currency for establishing the future he envisions?

He is a builder of things, a doer, yes. But also, he contemplates. He explores. He questions. These latter gifts may be his downfall if he does not consume them in moderation. He can contingency-plan himself out of any plan at all. The allure of the right approach is one of the devil’s craftiest tricks. Security is an illusion, after all. Foxholes are safe. They are no place I would want to live.

In the end, I do lean in. I adjust my posture and my gaze by mere inches and tell him that this is his moment.  The door is wide open. None of us, not even he, has an endless supply of these. He has what it takes not just to do but to lead, to create, and to engage in the great conversation. He is at the threshold of a journey that few are offered and even fewer will complete. Scholarship and time and funds (meager though they may be) are on offer just for him. Starting now – and maybe never again – he can dive deep into the heart of what moves his world while also gaining capacity to provide for his not-yet family.

All of this is here, now, right before him. The investment may pay off and it may not. The question, of course, is not how to find the perfect way forward. It is how to choose a path suited to one’s feet, and to walk it wherever it leads.