Reflection on the Program: As I see it now

Oi! What a journey.

We began it together, you and I. We end it together.

The you, the I. The beginning, the end. This journey, or another.

It is one and the same.

What makes it special is what you bring that I do not. What I bring this time that I won't bring next. What you contributed when we last met, that I carry with me now, that I will pass onto another.

I began the journey in September 2004 and I was 37. It is impossible to reflect on the adult learning program, and what it's meant to me, how it's impacted me, without reflecting on my life in total. The growth I've undergone in the last seven years has been nourished by participation in this program; the effects of the program on my life have been magnified by all the other ingredients, internal and external, that make “me”. The list includes my relationships; my work life; where I live and with whom; my world view; travel; local and national events; my coping mechanisms; decisions within my control; events beyond my control; where I am in my adult development. The list is too long to complete, my purpose is only to give you a sense of what is important within my context.

I recollect when I took my first class –the Adult Learner—I had no idea where I wanted the program to lead me. I sensed that I was on the right track, however, and over the years this notion has intensified and solidified. “On the right track” has strengthened into “passion” and “career path”. In short, I appreciate both the content and the process of learning about how individuals and groups and systems learn and grow and change. The program is designed, the teaching delivered in such as manner as to reinforce, by employing, the adult learning strategies we will to facilitate the learning of others. The experience of it has aligned with the subject matter. Perhaps of all the program dynamics, this aspect has been most powerful.

I still don't know where the program will lead me after graduation. I've learned, through my experience (and as I've been told) to trust the process. The vista is wide. I just need to choose a direction, when the time is right. For now, it's best to keep the vista as wide as possible.

I've plodded through coursework and much has changed: my oldest child has gone off to college and will graduate himself next year. My youngest child is in high school and but two years away from his first major life transition into adulthood. I have moved homes twice. My partner in life left me and we since came back together. My household went from dual income to single and I changed jobs. My notion of self, who I am and what I can or can't do, transformed. My health, my body has changed. My habits have changed. I became depressed and felt so low that I would never crawl out of the hole. And while this was a terrible, horrible place to be, it was an important experience to have.

Spoken and written words that I used to experience as two dimensional objects have become deep, wide and rich. I feel what it means when I read things like, “The best way to help yourself is to help someone else”, or recollect lines from movies such as this one from Cast Away: “The most wonderful thing in the world is the world itself.” What was once in the head (a sometimes superficial and silly place) now lives in the body. Nothing has lasted forever, but I've tasted more of what life has to offer and I've learned that it tastes better because it doesn't last. Once tasted, it lasts forever.

The same is true for my experience in the program. There have been highs and lows, such as:

• The high I experienced during ADLT 623, Process Consultation, when my partner and I (so well matched were we! I learned so much from her!) delivered an intervention with our client organization that was powerful and almost perfect. Peter Block would have been proud if he'd witnessed the final meeting, during which our clients had flashes of insight into their inner workings and ultimately took ownership for their problems and their future.
• The low I experienced when Dr. Carter provided me feedback on the final essay for that very same class. Her feedback was that my paper was not one of my best works (how could an input so divine lead to an output so disappointing?), and I know she was being gentle when she spun it in that way.

About myself, I have learned a number of things. It is possible that I would know these things without having been a program participant and contributor. It is possible I would have engaged in the process of reflection and understood these things about myself without a master's degree in adult learning. If that were the case, my reflective process would have been incomplete and the outcome of it not nearly as sweet.

I've learned that continuous learning outside of my work and every day life is essential fodder for my being. It is important that I have time to read, to reflect, to dialogue with those who are dedicated to a similar learning objective. In this way, I connect to ideals and bigger concepts that keep me striving for goals beyond what is practical today. This is aspiration. This is where vision is born. Goal seeking is meaningless and daily activities perfunctory if they do not exist within a bigger vision for and connection to life.

About my work style, I've learned that I am best if I can focus for 30 to 45 minutes at a time, take a 5 or 10 minute mental and physical break, then return to task. The only circumstance under which I work differently and better is when I write what my brain has already contemplated, organized, and synthesized. When that happens, hours pass and I am submerged in the process. I emerge not breathless but renewed.

I've learned that I have strengths and am able to see bigger things that sometimes others cannot. I've learned that I can infect other people with what I see and that other times, I perplex myself with how badly I miss the mark and fail to make the connection. I'm truly an introvert and if I don't force my mouth to open, I lose opportunities to create newness with others, to contribute to and be enriched by the group. I've learned that no one else can take responsibility for me in the same way that I can. I am in charge of myself, I take charge of my learning. It is my mouth to open, my ears for listening. That's one way to look at it, anyway.

I've learned about you. All the yous that exist only because there is a me. I don't mean that arrogantly. I mean it in the way that I have learned to look at it after reading Paradoxes of Group Life, Smith & Berg's text (an optional text at that!) for our Groups and Teams class. The you that exists because there had to be a me, and in order to make me, I had to separate myself from the universe, the oneness, and create boundaries where I began and ended. Everything else was the “not me” and over time, I began to call know the “not me” as “you”. And with more time, I forgot that the you was really the not me and that the not me existed only because I needed to find a little place in the greatness that was just “me”.

I've learned that I can count on you in the same way that I count on myself, that I want you to count on me, that I am offended if you don't. The best way to help yourself is to help someone else, remember? We are better, singly and as a whole, when we allow ourselves and each other to fully express, and to offer up the most of what we have to give, which is simply ourselves.

The most wonderful thing in the world is the world itself.

Oy.

[Oy or Oy vey is often thought of as a Yiddish call of dismay that literally means oh woe! There's a famous joke that goes like this:

Abe is traveling on a bus to to Coney Island about to fall into a sweet nap when suddenly he is jolted awake by the sound of an old Yiddishe bubbeh saying from the back of the bus: "Oy, am I thirsty, Oy, am I thirsty!"

This is repeated over and over again every few minutes. "Oy, am I thirsty. Oy, am I thirsty." Finally, Abe gets up and brings the woman a bottle of water and goes back to his seat to relax. The bus is quiet again and Abe’s just about to nod off when all of a sudden he hears from the back of the bus: "Oy, vas I thirsty… Oy, vas I thirsty…."

The commentary on the joke goes like this:

With the cry of “Oy vas I thirsty,” the woman on the train reveals that complaints are not always a symptom of need. The complaint itself is the need and thus can never be slaked.

But perhaps the lady on the train is an enlightened one disguised as a kvetch. For normally, once our thirst has been slaked—once we get what we had thirsted for and hankered after—we forget about our former state of need. It does not take long for the gratitude and joy to wear off and our new situation is all we can remember. We are now entitled, smug—and bored.

Not so our lady on the train. Indeed she chants with joy, gratitude and contentment: “Oy, vas I thirsty!”

Oi! is also an Australian rugby chant that is used to answer calls of “Aussie, aussie, aussie” at sporting events and the underarm clubs frequented after the game.]

In the early days, during that first class, the feelings of uncertainty were powerful. We shared how uncomfortable we were as nontraditional learners, returning to school after long hiatuses. Thank god for that first class, which I can see in hindsight is designed to offer only what participants can bite and chew, to not overwhelm and choke. Even so, my rhythm was awkward and clumsiness lasted for years. My class members in The Adult Learner, all of them, graduated and moved on long before I. It took me time to hit my stride but I cannot forget those with whom I forged a relationship in that first semester we all returned to school.

As my degree program comes to a close, I experience no anxiety or uncertainty about my ability to achieve academically. The process, my experience, has taught me that I can. Indeed, it's not worth worrying about one iota. Trust the process. It's the same “learning to trust the process” I underwent as we started the Capstone class. Overwhelmed by the enormity of the research project we undertook, my little brain could not think beyond where to park my car and how to get to the right floor on the hospital. I focused on that alone and after a few tries, I no longer needed to refer to the carefully constructed instructions provided to us by our client group. Once I found the right place in the hospital, and figured I could do it again, the rest of the research project activities (interviewing and debriefing and coding and interpreting and writing and presenting) happened, lived, rolled out and on into each other with an inertia we could not interrupt. In hindsight, it seemed to happen, then conclude, all on its own.

If I needed to, today, I could find those hospital floors with my eyes closed.

The beauty of this program is that it allows a great deal of self-pacing; I probably stretched the flexible balloon as far as it would go. The upside to all that: I figured out how to integrate a masters degree program into a sometimes turbulent life. The downside: I delayed connecting with a true peer group until this past year or so. I ran alone for a good portion of the race. Now I am closing in on the finish with a group of people that have become great running buddies. It's unfortunate I did not engage with the group until now, but we are fully engaged as the finish line is in sight.

Oy vey. What a journey this is! What a journey this was!

In the beginning, we watched waves build on the horizon and slowly, painfully approach. The sun rose, the sun set and in time, we witnessed generations of birds migrate south and returned north. The wave that is now upon me knocks me to to my knees, takes my wind, and with the gentle and persistent pull of the tide, flows back to Madam Ocean. To make more waves. To crash on other shores.

At program's end, I realize that my PARTICIPATION as a student was and is not isolated from the PRACTICE of my chosen discipline. The learning has been the living. Education and experience are one. The two have been merged so well into the program, we have been so well immersed in the theory, the projects, the dialogue, the reflection, that boundaries are erased between classroom and office, between students and employees, between concepts and practice.

Two days ago, a classmate proudly displayed her new business cards after Capstone was complete and noted the addition of the initials M.Ed. Behind her name. For the next 24 hours, the notion that I too would write M.Ed. after my name sank in. I wondered why this was important to me and I have slowly and fully concluded that it is because I worked so hard for it. It means so much to me because my pursuit was not really about the degree at all but was rather about finding and fulfilling my passion. And in that pursuit, a pursuit that required I give nothing less than my entire being, I have achieved something that is significant.

I wrote earlier in this reflection that spoken and written words I used to experience as two dimensional objects have become deep, wide and rich. A past boss of mine told me many a time that his master's degree was a gift he gave to himself. Today, I feel his words deeply. In giving to myself, I have and will continue to give more, the most, of myself to the world.

Oi!