Conversations with a Bus Driver

So I'm at the annual leadership retreat with all of my fellow Boothies and between directing around approximately 600 first years between the 40 of us and trying to make sure that a.) no one dies, b.) no one gets left behind, c.) everyone is having a fun time and d.) everyone is actually doing something and learning from all the activities that are planned--I didn't really plan on learning anything myself from a life perspective. I knew I was going to learn a lot from my other facils-- how we work together, and how we function well or don't function well in certain team dynamics, but I didn't think I was going to have any leadership-y type realizations during my time here-- mostly because I would probably be too tired or too anxious about my first years (strong indications of potential over-protective mom syndrome in the future, which really means that I should stay away from that sort of thing for everyone's sake) to be able to reflect deeply on my life.

Sometimes things happen unexpectedly though.

This morning we went on a ropes course-- my first years got to play on high ropes and challenge themselves and do some low ropes courses that were focused more on team skills I watched my first years learn about each other, gradually get more comfortable with one another and form tenuous, but genuine new friendships. I was reminded that, no matter how old I feel or how much I feel like I've lived through, things can begin again. Things will always begin anew. This was me just a year ago! But how easy it is to forget that things can change and grow-- in a year, I'd forgotten that these types of new things could happen. After being so enclosed in my own mind, watching my first years reminded me that the world is much bigger than what offer letter I get and what my title is after business school. School loans will always linger on my mind, but it doesn't have to consume me. There are other things to look forward to.

On the way home, I started talking to our bus driver. He told me about when he first moved to Chicago, the houses he had bought and sold over time and the way the city had been changing. He shared his concerns for the economy and his worries on how he would be able to retire one day with his wife, and it struck me that, even though me and the bus driver are light years apart in almost every respect-- our goals in life-- are the same.This was crazy to me because I've been trying to figure out what I wanted out of life for the better part of the last year. Business school does that to you-- creeps into your brain and asks a lot of uncomfortable, overarching, super-broad, inescapable life questions. Especially now that the internship is done and the first years and anxious to begin their process of recruiting, it becomes hard to separate what my career could be and what I want from life. Being someone who often confuses these things, it was important for me to gain that perspective again. Even if it was from the most surprising of places.