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Showing posts with the label Alban Institute

Hope or Fear?

"You chose a Wellesley grad who spent the first decade of her career broke, begging for freelance work, who constantly heard that she was under qualified or, later, overqualified (that means old) or basically just plain wrong for whatever it was she wanted to do. She eventually ended up with a really great job, doing exactly what she wanted to do, exactly where she wanted to do it: in the Middle East. And she got hit by a car bomb; they nearly took her legs off. She had to come back from the dead, roughly five times, and learn how to walk again. So it tells me a lot about you and your current state of mind that you all thought you needed to hear from me, with whatever lessons I had to offer from those experiences, as you leave college for the rest of your life. In short, you all want to know how to be bomb-proof, right? So, you're right: I learned a lot. Most of all, that every time I ran into a wall, I had two choices on how to face it: hope or fear." Kimberly Dozier, CB...

Chicago, Conference, Colleagues...

My flight here on Monday was odd. I decided to arrive at the airport very earlier. This was because my husband had to be to work at 5am. His job is in the vicinity of the airport. My flight was scheduled to leave at 6:50. By getting a ride with my husband I could avoid leaving my car at the airport for 8 days. But that also meant he had to drop me off at 4:30am, so he could get to work by 5. Now the airport in our new small town is little, nothing like O'Hare, where we used to live. Arriving at our new airport 90 minutes early is rarely necessary, let alone 180 minutes early. In the cool darkness of that early morning I quickly managed to get through the automated self-check in. And then proceeded to the security. I was feeling rather proud of myself for managing to pack enough for 8 days in one small carryon suitcase and a briefcase with my computer, books, knitting....yeah... Well, at this small airport, the security was not open. Gated and shut tight. Soon a line began to form. ...