\u201cThe Generational Baked Ham Story\u201d<\/a> or c) but Shane you\u2019re not suggesting changing a process that was put into place by \u201cinsert favorite title of favorite exec here\u201d etc. I think this is why I find my job so very appealing and frustrating all at the same time. Oft times business processes and logic is created and followed without anyone ever questioning \u201cthis is good, but can it be better\u201d like 3M or others. Sometimes the conclusion is, yes it is the best, most practically achieved way to do something (believe me this happens from time to time but isn\u2019t the most common discovery) and with it learning the intricacies and wisdom of fore-runners is quite a pleasurable discovery. What is discouraging is when people hide behind the title, or the past or anything else in an effort to maintain the status quo or not being willing to try to discover something better.<\/p>\nThis is where I am not comfortable with life in general. I am often found saying that \u2018if you aren\u2019t falling, you aren\u2019t trying hard enough\u2019. I remember hearing an old great uncle of mine while Dean of Physics at a prominent private university state that he would never hire straight A students when hiring on his projects. He would say that too often when presented with failure, these students didn\u2019t have coping mechanisms to carry them through until they either discovered success or determined that a certain process failed. Instead, he would rather a \u2018C\u2019 or \u2018D\u2019 student because he was able to have these students accept failure and continue through the process until the ultimate outcome was achieved. This always perplexed me while I was a student and whilst I was avoiding life while snowboarding too often and working odd jobs and stopping out from my education. After finishing my degree and entering the workforce, I am understanding his philosophy more and more. I often think that many people desire to achieve more, but they are too often suppressed by the status quo to believe they are worth more or they have never been expected to achieve more than monotony in their work responsibilities.<\/p>\n
Back to Higher Education. I left an environment at Utah State University that embraced my ideology even though in the moment I was too blind to understand this. I was lured to the Ivory Tower only to be further disappointed that by living my ideology I was at risk of being destroyed because I wouldn\u2019t shackle myself to the way it has always been done mentality and to wait my turn. I struggle with those in Higher Education that believe a degree defines someone. Yes, it is extremely important to achieve a certain level of education, but if that discipline makes you blind to the ability to use the concept of transference and persist in using that intelligence in cross disciplines that degree isn\u2019t worth much more than the paper it is printed on. That being said, institutional or real-world wisdom and experience through trial and error are often just as important as learning theoretical and practical applications via channels of education.<\/p>\n
Anyway, I am interested to see what successes and failures I have in 2010. I like to use the term \u201cpotential strength\u201d for weakness and \u201cpotential learning opportunity\u201d for failure. My wife mentioned in passing that I should write a book, but I imagine I would offend most of my audience along the way. I suspect I will be frustrated as normal while at work, especially while I am in the farm leagues after being used to being in the lights and in the majors. There are things that are more important like strengthening my family at this time and being on \u2018cruise control\u2019 while at work is so that I may do just that. In the next few weeks I am to assist \u2018leaping\u2019 to the next point release of the SiS (Student information system) we use at the university, something I have already done at another university, but gleaning the trust of a good old boy network and those that protect others to save their own proverbial ass along the way has been a burden. In short, it will be an interesting year professionally. It should be a great year as a family and hopefully Liz, Dennis and I will be able to welcome another little one into our family as we try to grow it. We hope in July that we will have a new home so that we may be happier and distance ourselves from this poor rickety old shack that is our current residence. Anyway\u2026more to come later\u2026another splendidly bland observation from Shane!<\/p>\n
#2010 #Checkin #Personal<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19883,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","_eb_attr":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","rs_blank_template":"","rs_page_bg_color":"","slide_template_v7":"","wprm-recipe-roundup-name":"","wprm-recipe-roundup-description":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[817,450],"tags":[828],"class_list":["post-7866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-prnci","category-2015-check-ins-and-before","tag-tag-reflections"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7866"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7866\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24313,"href":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7866\/revisions\/24313"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}