On the Cusp
My world today seems balanced on the cusp. Sometimes that just happens to us all, but I am really feeling it today for one reason or another. To begin with, I start my Spring Semester class on business ethics tonight. It is something I have aspired to teach for some time and now its about to begin. I am going for my second Pickleball lesson today with Kim and have my own new racquet and new tennis shoes (the other pair separated from its sole after just one Pickleball rally). I expect we will become regular social Pickleball players. I wrapped my Hobbit House in Tyvek yesterday and got my extra jigsaw blades needed to cut the remaining two beams. I am perhaps one or two days away from finishing everything I expected to do myself on the Hobbit House. And I now have four trips planned and on the docket for 2022, so I think it is fair to say that we are on the cusp of restarting our old travel program. Two are motorcycle trips (Moab and Spain/Portugal), one is a family trip to Ithaca in the summer, and the most imminent one is Cusp, cusp, cusp, cusp.
One of the nice things about writing a contemporaneous blog like this is that I get to start stories one day and sometimes finish them the next or some time later. In December I was on a roll and wrote as many as three blog stories in a day and just stacked them up to the point where I got as far as eleven days ahead of myself. The biggest challenge to that is in the juggling of stories that are not so time sensitive. You find yourself pushing certain stories further and further forward to the point where you wonder if what you wrote was at all relevant. Then you reread them and think “Wait a minute, this is a good story that needs to get published…”, and suddenly you are back on track. Well, today I am chasing the dragons tail and as this morning’s story published, the story cupboard was bare and I need to get something positioned. That is both good and bad. Sometimes when forced to write I yammer on about inane topics like I have in this paragraph, and sometimes I come up with interesting themes that inspire me to write some of my best thoughts. As I woke and remembered that I have to get a story written today, I looked at the start of the story from yesterday morning that got interrupted by one of the cusp activities notes above. Today I find myself convinced that the cusp topic is worthy of pondering more and was well-conceived when I began it yesterday.
To begin with, I had my first Ethics class last night and enjoyed it quite a bit. Since it was a Zoom format (mandated by the University since we are not to start in-person instruction until next week for reasons of Omicron) I only virtually met my 34 students. I think there were 34 in attendance since the need to multitask while teaching with Zoom can be daunting. When you are on stage with a gathering troupe of eager students, students who are paying good money in the early part of their careers to add an MBA to their credentials, they want value for their money and that means not waiting for the last stragglers (some people are always early like I am and some people are always late…and you know who you are), so checking for attendance while launching into a complex topic like ethics and also watching for text comments from students who are trying to be polite and not interrupt is a true multitask challenge. I am a focus player at whatever I do and while I can do some multitasking, my passion for whatever I undertake means I must shut out distractions. The first lecture was my way of introducing the course content and justifying why a required ethics course is important and valuable to them, not just perfunctory. I also felt it was important to establish my bona fides, not just as an experienced and accomplished businessman who could recognize and delineate ethical issues, but one who both saw the value of all sides of the ethical arguments and still had a history of coming down on the best possible side of them. That is a hard proof to make without sounding egotistical, but I think I gave them some examples to prove my points. I also wanted, like any entertainer (and good teaching must engage and entertain in my opinion) to give them reasons to think that our classes would not be boring and that they would take away valuable insights. All a tall order, but I was pleased with the way it went even though this introduction was 90+% one way with me telling and showing them. I promise that the forthcoming lectures will better balance them participating as much as me lecturing.
I awoke this morning with some sense of mild relief that the opening class went well and I could fill up two hours or air time on this topic. Actually, I over-planned and have material (specifically an interesting ethical case study) that I will use during the third class. next week my friend Steve Larsen will come in to teach the Theranos case study. I am having them watch the Elizabeth Holmes docudrama to prepare. Steve is a great guest lecturer for them for several reasons. To begin with Steve began as a theologian and then shifted to entrepreneurial business as a Silicon Valley CEO eventually. Perfect background for exploring the “fake it till you make it” dilemma represented by the Theranos case. Steve is also a very diligent guy and based on the extensive reading and preparing and revising and questioning of me about the class and the classroom that he has done, it is clear that he is taking this assignment seriously. I am very much looking forward to his lecture next week and I won’t lie, I am happy to have two more weeks to think and learn about how best to conduct my third class the week after. One of the best things about teaching once a week is that you really feel good when you finish your class and realize that you have a whole week to think and to do the other things you have on the cusp.
We also took our second Pickleball lesson yesterday so that cusp is getting its edge taken off of it. I had new shoes and Kim had a new skort (skirt/shorts) and we both had our new Pickleball racquets in hand. We like it so far and have bought four racquets so that we can play with visitors (everyone wants to try Pickleball). In fact, next week we have arranged another lesson except it will be for us and Steve and Maggie Larsen. I love integrating aspects of my life and here I am taking a motorcycling buddy that I have enlisted to help me teach ethics and I have coerced him (and his wife) into playing Pickleball with us. I am Pied Pipering in many directions, don’t you think?
I should add that I will also be ready to show off my Hobbit House by next week when Steve and Maggie arrive. It won’t be finished because the tree trunk front pillars are not yet on the horizon, but I am betting that my cusp advancement will by then have the beams up on the entire roof and maybe even some of the roof boards in place (testing out just how bad my jigsawed beams will allow the barrel planking to lie). I will have the stucco wire mesh up and may even have hired some more day laborers to help me stucco the beast.
Once I take an early spring motorcycle ride with Steve before we go Pickleballing, I will have advanced all of my cusp activity to a very nice place. As it turns out, being on the cusp is proving to be a very energizing and productive time for me.