18 May 2015 - Pittsburgh
Words (re?)learned the past two days:
vitiate: spoil or impair the quality or efficiency of sapiophile: what you’d think it means from the prefix + suffix
In other news, I finished my MBA at Tepper and graduated this past weekend. As with other graduations and transitions, I’ve gotten the “What do you think of your experience?” and “What are you doing next?” questions several times. The answers to both involve a detour into song lyrics, politicians, and a movie. Let’s start with the song lyrics.
In the dark of the night, I was tossing and turning And the nightmare I had was as bad as can be It's scared me out of my wits A corpse is falling into bits Then I open my eyes and the nightmare was *me*!
and
Every so often a man has a day He truly can call his Well here I am to seize my day If someone would just tell me when the hell it is
I enjoy the different characterizations these lyrics create. Pippin, our hero, whines about missing purpose and looks to others for validation. Rasputin, in contrast, celebrates his rather unfortunate circumstances[1]. While we judge characters on more than five bars, these selections make me admire Rasputin and disdain Pippin. In both cases it’s the agency, the volition, that inspires or frustrates. Rasputin uses his gifts, Pippin does not.
Whether one faces misbehaving griffins and a leaky roof or just needs to find the last Romanov, both situations would be served by following Teddy Roosevelt’s admonition to
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Despite being a maddeningly vague and practically tautilogical statement, this feels right. For me, it strikes the right balance between acceptance and obligation–it acknowledges the limits on our reach and abilities while refusing to release us from our duties. Say we adopt this mantra; will we judge results? How? As a child of the nineties I was raised with exhortations to “do my best”, but over time my attitude has shifted towards this (warning: language). If you skip Sean Connery the more elegant version comes from Winston Churchill:
It’s not enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what’s required.
We’ve wandered from the original questions–what am I doing next?
Specifically? No clue.
Generally? Following Teddy and Winston.
What does this entail? In the short term I’ll stay in Pittsburgh, keep talking to alumni (and strangers!) about career possibilities, and continue working on my personal fitness, coding, and musical goals. I’ve struggled with this kind of situation before, but based on the past several years I’m far better equipped to handle this time. All in all I may be closer to Pippin in knowledge, but I’ll be matching Rasputin in execution.
[1] I’m conveniently ignoring history (and morality!) by using a movie villain. Deal with it.