Rhode Scholarship
I grew up in awe of Rhode Scholarships. There was something about its student/athlete mix of excellence that made me think that these thirty-two annual selectees were uber-special. The scholarship has sought to “instill a sense of civic-minded leadership and moral fortitude in future leaders.” I thought it was noteworthy when I heard that Bill Clinton was a Rhode Scholar. Then I met my friend Frank in 1991. Frank is a good sixteen years my senior and one of the smartest people I know. Hearing him talk about satellite communications or the formation of the internet out of DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) was something that could hold my fascination for hours. When I mentioned the Rhode Scholarship on some casual occasion, he smirked and said it was not the big deal that the Marshall or Fulbright scholarships were. Indeed, Frank is a Marshall Scholar, and damn proud of it. He studied at the London School of Economics for his post-graduate journey.
When I attended Cornell University (not a slouch school to say the least…in fact, many say that what Cornell lacks relative to Harvard in admission exclusivity, it makes up in academic rigor and is a harder school to STAY in than Harvard), I was on a mission of discovery. I am glad that I was not vocationally focused for most of my four undergraduate years, as it gave me the opportunity to explore learning for learning sake. It was not something I had as a mission or a conscious goal, it just was what it was. I cared very little about my grades (other than micro-competitiveness if someone I knew was in the class) and just sort of floated through school without a care. I’m not sure I was embracing the life of the mind as much as I was doing a survey of thinking in many directions. Again, not a bad thing at all, as I would go on to advise all my children when they each entered Cornell.
I did get ambition eventually and directed my learning into finance, but not until I absolutely had to choose something in my senior year. I’m happy it happened that way because what it has done for me now is that as I have moved beyond vocational ambitions (sort of, since I am still working, just not thinking about working much longer). I find myself now in a new learning phase. I haven’t consciously chosen to occupy my time with new learning, like my shift to vocationalism, it has just happened. While I was teaching finance at Cornell for ten years, it felt like I was emptying a vessel that was filled over forty years of work. I was glad to pour it out on some 2,000 students over those ten years. I’m not sure it emptied me of finance, but it certainly opened my mindshare for other things.
I started by choosing Audible books to “read” that I would never have kept on my bed stand over the past fifty years. I chose things that just interested me as I searched the online files. I listened to the Tales of Marco Polo and then a book on Genghis Khan. I listened to books on the middle ages and about modern political thought. Before trips I would read books like Havana Nocturne and Istanbul, a history of the city over the ages. Before a Baltics cruise, I read about the Almost Nearly Perfect People of Denmark. I was not aiming to learn anything, and I was certainly not interesting in being an expert at anything. I have always opted for the “Jack of Trades, Master of None” philosophy. But I was on a learning tear nonetheless and quite enjoying it all.
While on one of several Viking Cruises (the best cruise line these days, in my opinion), I was inspired to seek out the cruise director and ask if Viking had any interest in my teaching skills. I figured maybe there were some free cruises in our future since I had Ivy League credentials and had a topic space of Retirement, which I had published on and which I knew I could make an interesting lecture series. The cruise director spoke to me like someone who had made this polite speech thousands of times. They had no interest and they only focused on destination-based lectures. Bah, humbug. That put me in my place and for some reason dampened my learning interest momentarily.
What use was knowledge if you couldn’t share it? Not a particularly admirable thought, but an honest one to me nonetheless. Luckily, I have recovered from that and am back to reading about all sorts of interesting things, now just for my own benefit and perhaps to include here and there in my writing. I like being a better-read person and I like being able to make obscure, but interesting references in my writing. I do it because it makes me feel good and ultimately, I suspect that is why any of us do anything.
I am currently reading every book by Yuval Noah Harari, an Israeli who has an amazing grasp on our world past, present and future. I started on Sapiens, moved on to Homo Deus and am now listening to 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. It has contextualized everything happening on MSNBC for me. I am back to thinking that lifelong learning is the only path worth taking in life. It makes me anxious to get up every morning.
Lately, I find myself doing most of my shopping through what I see on Facebook (don’t tell Mark Zuckerberg that his experiment is working). Recently I saw an advertisement for something called Road Scholar. I am apparently late to this party as it is a very large network of like-minded people who want to travel and learn as they age. I was amazed at how big the offering of trips is on the website. This is a not-for-profit collective of people who want to travel well (not really on the cheap) but want to do it enough that they are seeking extreme value. I have noted that they are about half the cost of a Viking or National Geographic trip to the same location. Not having done a trip with them, I can’t swear you are getting comparable quality of accommodations or dining, but it looks pretty close. What I like is that there seems to be a genuine linkage of learning and activity. They even post their activity level rating for each trip (something I have seen on the “active” Nat Geo trips). What I think it different is that the gauge of activity seems to be less from crawling to running and more from slow walking to quick walking. I like that.
I don’t know that this is just about me wanting to be a Rhode Scholar before I die, but I like the concept of Road Scholar, the travel collective. I am sure we will try one of their trips (Kim is already introduced to the website and finding it very interesting). Maybe it will give me a chance to meet like-minded new friends or maybe it will just be a value-packed trip to someplace like the Nile that we want to make. I will never be a Marshall Scholar, Frank, but I may yet make it to a Road Scholar.