For the multitude out there who continue to read this blog despite my febrile attempts to scare you away (and yes, I did seem to suffer brain fever there for a while as I fought off the desire to continue the easy life of a business tyke), I invite you to join me on the skip and hop through the field of Academia.
The view from here...how do I describe what I see? Flattened blades of last year's forgotten grassy undergraduates - trampled underfoot by those more eager to migrate to the other side - like bodies long ago turned to dust that fell beneath the throngs of Cincinnatians rushing forth to see The Who? The what? No, The Who, a once-famous band relegated to the Muzak rack dedicated to dinosaur rock.
Fields such as these find themselves hosting whole civilizations uninteresting to all but entomologists, herpetologists and crazy hippopotamuses. Armies of ants and legions of locust, spiders with mites and grubs on antlions.
My research, no matter how much fun such searches would be had I decided to study the earth while crouched on one knee, takes me into the hallowed hallways of ITT Tech, where we will hope that wonders never cease.
Today, although I'd already received the textbooks and teacher's courseware, and filled out the paperwork to become of ITT Educational Services, Inc., a temporary employee (an adjunct instructor, to you academic types), I'd yet to step into the Land of Higher Education.
My feet are now wet. I've sunk to my ankles in the Bog of Big Thoughts.
I took two more steps and left my business shoes behind, now barefoot but carrying with me a crisp cravat I'd snuck into my casual business sport coat, with soiled business pants but clean business shirt to cover my girth.
'Tis strange, this new terrain. In the corporate world, I'd say that those with whom I worked seemed to hold back their personalities in an understood constraint. Inside the walls of this academe, to display your personality is part of the product we're selling.
Product? Selling? Can words such as these dare find themselves lurking on the circular stairs of an ivory tower?
Indeed, they can. For you see, institutes of instruction incorporate industrial insights. In the universe of ideas, malleable brains represent raw material and instructors the research department, engineering department, factory workers and everything but shipping/receiving (and the debate still rages over who's running that department).
As I traipse and tramp 'cross this emerald illusion, where some can't see the simple solution for dissolving minds first into quality samples before mixing and pouring the new batch of Internet-ready bodies, I'll let you know when I find the connecting road I seek, taking me from the world of seven-year olds at promising schools like KIPP to a place and time showing those closer to twenty-seven that their promises were put on hold until now.
To those future students of mine who know me not just yet, I invite you into my classroom, where we'll soon see that hating school is okay and deploring homework is itself a chore. We're not getting together to get better. Put those thoughts aside. Instead, let's look at life from where we're at. That's right. We're in what everyone but me calls a recession. People are losing what they thought was a job. I don't live in that world and now, neither do you. We're here to redefine what we're all about.
So hop aboard this double decker bus with me. We're going for a ride. Imagine I'm the tour guide. This urban/suburban, hiphopping crowd, just as likely these days to wear a turban, 's not going to waste time on convention. We're rewriting history. What you thought was all this stuff about school, that in ancient times you wrote off as uncool, is done. Instead, what you've got is a new life. Look at your fellow riders. Uh-huh. That's right. We're riding to freedom. We're in the fast lane to the next big "what's it all about."
How's that going to happen? Well, the secret's with me now but not for long. But I'll give you a little hint. Ever heard of Junior Achievement? Well, what if you walked into a college class and found out that your so-called school work was really a way for you to make money? Imagine your schoolmates are really your business co-owners. So when you thought you were having to learn something new for a few years just for the opportunity to put a piece of paper on the wall that's supposed to get you a better future, you were instead actually making money in the lessons themselves?
Think about it for a while. I'll see you in class in a few weeks.
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