On the Boat

I'm sitting in front of the purser's desk on board the M/V Malaspina, one of the grand old vessels in the Alaska Marine Highways fleet. Jessica and the kids are sacked out in our berth. The wind is whistling past the windows and the vessel is starting to pitch from side to side as we enter the big water of Chatham Strait.

We left Juneau at 4:45 am this morning, after another late night of preparations. I had no idea how stressful it would be to pack our house up and ready it for our move to Portland. In the end it came down to a several late nights and even a few all-nighters. With two kids out of daycare, some of the only time we had to work were when the children were asleep.

But gradually throughout the day, you could sense the stress waning in both Jessica and myself. We've done all we can to prepare our house for our guests and to make sure we've packed the right things for Portland. And now we are stuck aboard the Alaska Marine Highway for three whole days.

It's a beautiful thing to be trapped on a boat with nowhere to go. Time slows down. Reading a book, having a conversation over dinner, fiddling with a video editor while the children sleep - all these acts come easy and don't require stealing time from some other necessary chore. Granted, traveling with children isn't quite carefree (I am scared to death that one of my kids will pop out the door while I'm not looking onto the icy outer decks). But taking a three day ferry ride gives one some luxurious amounts of time.

In addition to relaxing with my family during this ride, I hope to reflect more on what I hope to learn during these next six months. Today, as I popped off the vessel for a quick run up Starrigavan valley near Sitka, I was thinking how much I would like to improve my ability to focus. I've become a little too much of a multi-tasker, I fear. I'm wondering if academia will afford me an opportunity to hone my ability to focus on one project for an extended length of time. Already since leaving the office, I have noticed my email traffic slowing to a trickle. Maybe it won't pick back up again. Maybe I will be able to spend hours reading or writing one piece at a time, without constantly being drawn back into my inbox.

I could totally be fantasizing here, but I would like to see if I can work on this during the next six months. While our world might be a lot more efficient since we've all learned to do six things at once, I wonder how much we've sacrificed in quality. How will our society continue to produce profound works if we can't spend more than 15 minutes on any one task at a time? I think I've become pretty skilled at doing a lot during a short amount of time, but what have I given up by evading long stretches of thought focused on a single subject?

I'm sure the academic world will have plenty of distractions. And I am sure that I will invent some more of my own (like this video I am trying to produce right now). But I do hope to take the time to slow down during the next six months and learn how to go deep. If now's not the time, I'm not sure when I will ever have a similar opportunity.

Sacrifices

I'm stealing a few minutes away from packing up our house (shhh...don't tell Jessica!). It's a busy week getting ready for our trip to Portland. We leave on December 30th at 4:45 am on the Alaska Marine Highway. The movers will come to get our stuff three days before. So its crunch time around here.

The end of last week was full of more emotions. One of the hardest things about leaving Juneau is thinking about the impact on my family. I am completely grateful to Jessica and my children for making the journey south to Portland with me. I couldn't imagine leaving them for even a short while to pursue this fellowship. It's also wonderful that the WT Grant Foundation Fellowship is so flexible as to allow us all to move south for six months. I reckon they realized that I couldn't have this rich research experience in Juneau, Alaska, and so are paying our way to move to Portland for six months. But even though the move won't cause our family financial strain, I do wonder about the impact on Jessica and my children.

Particularly hard was leaving Celia's preschool. She is five and has been attending the Juneau Co-op Preschool for the past three months. She attended last year as a substitute, but these past three months she's been there as a full student (three hours a day, three days a week). The teachers at the school are some of the most caring, intelligent, and devoted early childhood professionals that I've ever come across. Celia has forged a particularly strong bond with them and the school. She's also been doing exactly the work she needs to be doing there right now - learning how to interact and play well with others. This has been a challenge for her during the past year, and something that seems to have gotten harder for her at her previous day care facility. So it's hard to pull Celia from this wonderful place, just at the time that she seems to be making progress and creating good friends.

It makes me wonder whether the benefits of this fellowship opportunity will outweigh the costs. How can I say that this opportunity for me is worth more than the potential impact on my kids and spouse? Will I learn enough, will my work be important enough, to make it all worthwhile? Is it worth delaying Jessica's re-entry to the workforce so I can have this experience of personal enrichment? Is it worth removing Celia from the caring community of teachers, friends, and other families that nurtures her so well?

My hope is that moving to Portland for six months will provide Jessica and my children opportunities for their own personal enrichment. This may be my solipsism creating useful mirages. But I do think that the city will give Jessica the chance to maybe take some classes she wouldn't have otherwise had the chance to take. And we may find another wonderful preschool with just as much opportunity for Celia to learn. And the city might also provide great chances for Celia and Ferguson to have new experiences foreign to our isolated burg. I also have the sense that embarking on this adventure together will be the kind of intense experience that pulls us together and makes us stronger as a family unit.

But I still worry. And as ever the Catholic boy, I feel guilty about the sacrifices my family will be making on my behalf over the next six months and beyond.

Thank you, Jessica, Celia, and Ferguson, for taking this bold leap of faith with me. I hope the benefits to you, our family, myself, and the children affected by my fellowship activities will outweigh all that you are giving up to make this move possible.

How I Got Here From There

Today was my last day in the office. At the end of the day as I packed up my family photos and cleared my desk for someone else to use, I had a strange sense of peace. I had expected to have a flood of emotions. Here I was, leaving this place where I had spent most of my waking moments over the last seven years. But now, instead of being washed over with memories of the past, I felt a serene calm.

Maybe it was the rush of work on my way out. Maybe trying to wrap up all the loose ends of my position created sort of a natural rest. It felt wonderful to unflag all the flagged emails in my inbox and clear all the tasks on my task list. While much work remains at the agency, my piece has come to a close, for now. So maybe it's okay that I feel somehow at peace.

I have been reflecting a lot lately, though. I am about to embark on a total adventure, something foreign to my life during these years of increased domesticity. Uprooting our family and moving to a new town for six months might have seemed something trivial during my younger years. But suddenly it seems like a very big deal. We're planning to come back to Juneau afterwards and I will return to the agency. But at the same time, it feels like we're stepping out into the void of change. And who knows where the void leads?

This one of the reasons I started this blog. While applying for the fellowship, it struck me that this experience may be one of huge personal transformation. In many ways, it feels like I've already started a journey. It feels like leaving for Portland and entering academia is putting my journey on an even faster track. I hope that this blog helps me reflect along the way, and make thoughtful decisions as my journey unfolds.

As I take this next step, I've been thinking a lot of my beginnings. I've been in the youth mentoring field for seven years now. Like I said in a previous post, I didn't come at this work with a real background in the field. What I've come to learn has been picked up along the way. In college, I majored in English and History, and took a heck a lot of Italian. I didn't steep myself in social work theory, by any means.

I've been trying to think of the moment when I really got excited about applying research to the field of mentoring. Real researchers may scoff at this, but I think it happened when I read Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. Reading the book, I had a rush of ideas of how we could use science to do our jobs better at Big Brothers Big Sisters. From reading Gladwell, it seemed like dating companies knew more about making the right match than we did, and we've been at it for more than 100 years. It struck me that maybe a little research could go a long way in improving our programs.

Then I had an amazing opportunity in the summer of 2007. We were just wrapping up the planning for the statewide merger of Big Brothers Big Sisters. It appeared that my job in the new agency would change from Executive Director to VP of Programs and Operations. Somehow I was recommended for participation in the Summer Institute on Youth Mentoring at Portland State University. When I learned about the institute, I knew I had to attend. It would bring five of the leading mentoring researchers together with 25 of us from the field for a weeklong seminar.

I applied for the institute and was accepted. I even got a few scholarships from Big Brothers Big Sisters of America and Portland State. I was so excited to be going. And then, a week from the start of the conference, I cooked a big dinner for my friends Eran and Sonya. I spent the whole night after the party awake on the couch moaning in pain. When I called Eran in the morning and learned that I hadn't poisoned him and Sonya as I had feared, I knew I better go to the doctor. Eight hours later, I woke up from an emergency appendectomy at Bartlett Hospital.

My first thought when I woke up was to ask the doctor if I could still travel to Portland in a week. I was so worried that the operation would waylay me and I wouldn't be able to attend the institute. I think most of my family thought I was crazy, but after getting the doctor's permission, I was committed to going to Portland. I couldn't lift my luggage, though, due to the large incision in my belly. So I had to ask strange men to lift my luggage for me. How's that for proof of my interest? I even gave up my male ego to attend the institute.

I was not disappointed. That week was the most thrilling week of professional development in my career. For once, I had the time to slow down and really think of how and why mentoring works in the lives of youth. And it was like being in school again. I got to ask all the researchers a million questions (driving my fellow participants crazy, I imagine). It was all so fascinating to me. I had no idea that there was so much research out there about youth mentoring. My brain got all fired up, just like it used to do when I was a school boy.

I also got to know the institute's godfather, Professor Tom Keller. We kept up a correspondence, and he encouraged me to apply for the Distinguished Fellows program through the WT Grant Foundation. I had no idea if I had a shot at it, or even if my wife would go along with the project. But with Tom's help and Jessica's support, I threw my name in the hat. Now, almost a year later, I am about to become a Fellow. What a ride it has been. I am excited and a little bit fearful of where it will end.

Leaving

It's Friday night, and my last day of work is next Tuesday. I've asked for the last two weeks of December off so I can pack and get the house ready with Jessica. As I prepare to leave my job at Big Brothers Big Sisters, I am struck that I don't know how to say goodbye.

I've worked at Big Brothers Big Sisters for seven years now. I never knew how attached I would get to this organization and the people that work there. I will miss this place deeply.

I remember my first day on the job. I had no idea of what I was getting myself into. I was 29 years old and had gotten a job running an organization with no previous management experience. My first thought was, "what will these people think of me?" I realized that I was an outsider, that I hadn't paid any dues, and I was about to become the boss of people who knew a heck of a lot more about mentoring than I did.

That first day, it was just me, Jenny, Amber, and Natalie. There was a fellow in Sitka that had just been hired, but we were very small. I spent those first few months wondering what in the world I was doing, hoping that they wouldn't through me out on my ear for not knowing anything. I still have the "small box of courage" that my dear sister Monique sent me during my first few days on the job.

Somehow I hung in there long enough to learn a few things, I guess. Or maybe I faked it so well no one knew I was totally out of my element. Over the last seven years, I've gotten to know so many committed staff, and have shared joys and pain with many fine colleagues. We've grown into most of Southeast Alaska, and have since joined with our colleagues across the state into one team. What was once a tiny organization now employs more than fifty people statewide.

As I look to leave this organization for six months, it's my fellow staff that I will miss the most. We have so many caring, bright people working on behalf of Alaska's kids. And since we merged in August, 2007, I have had the great pleasure to work directly with many of our staff in communities across Alaska. I hope I can stay in touch, even though I will be out of state, and likely consumed by my work in Portland.

As I dive into the unpleasant but necessary task of finally cleaning my office and wrapping up my final remaining projects, I tip my hat to all the fine men and women committing themselves every day to brightening the lives of youth across Alaska.

Introduction

As I write my first blog entry, I hesitate. How can it be that I am now a blogger? Do I really have something to write that can add value to the amount of information on the internet? What does this mean about me that I am about to take the plunge and be in small part responsible for the blogosphere?

These are interesting questions, and we shall see as my internet story unfolds. As I start this blog, let me dedicate myself to maintaining a true voice, careful to use my words for good, and to not get carried away with this thing.

My hopes in this blog are to give myself time for reflection as I enter into my fellowship experience made possible by the WT Grant Foundation. I hope that this blog helps me process all of the experiences that I will be exposed to over the next six months and beyond. I also hope that I can write something of interest to my peers, so others can learn through my experience. And I invite any readers that I may acquire to send me notes and help inform my fellowship experience, so that I can make sure that my fellowship activities are more relevant to the field of youth mentoring.