Cloths of Heaven

A parting note to my students.

Why does he do the things he does? Where is the method in his madness? Is he out of his mind? Why are his expectations so unrealistic? What does he want from us?

Experiential learning is significantly more difficult to design, execute and deliver than conventional forms of learning. As an instructor it requires a completely different mindset. As a student the effort required to do well in such a course goes up by orders of magnitude. You can’t attack such a course with linear thinking. The payoff is in the impact it creates. Supposedly. Supposedly because without you participating as willing subjects, there is no joy.

“In that direction”, the Cat said, waving its right paw round, “lives a Hatter: and in that direction,” waving the other paw, “lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: they’re both mad.”
“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.
“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.” “How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.
“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.” — Chapter 6, Alice in Wonderland

To be fair, this course has always been about dreamers and dreams. You shouldn’t be in it, if you are not committed or married to one. In my last decade of teaching this specific version, my biggest challenge has not been unwilling students. Its been explaining to university administrators why this course should never be mandatory.

Insanity is more tolerable when it is by choice, not when it is imposed.

Barry Eisler, like Richard Morgan wrote about death and violent assassins with a taste for poetry and literature. While that really doesn’t reflect well on my literary preferences or my role models or your career choices, it is how I stumbled upon Yeats lovely poem.

Had I the heavens embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths,

Of night and light and the half light.

I would spread the cloths under your feet;

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet.

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Yeats lovely poem is where the answer lies to your questions. “Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”

As a dreamer what is the one thing you should do? There many routes that I have been recommended, but only a few that I would endorse myself.

All dreams have a price. Look inside and ask if you are willing to pay it. The course is a first test of that commitment. The quality of your output and the effort you put in is a mirror. Use that to decide if this life is for you. It’s perfectly all right to say no. I said no to working for myself immediately after graduation. I came back to it when I was ready. There is no shame in doing that.

The world cannot see what we see or believe. It would help if we could craft something a bit more tangible. Not the real world, full color, ready to go to war, model. Perhaps a scaled down version with some bells and whistles. If not a model perhaps an intelligent presentation of the core idea. Something with a bite, a punch, with impact. Something that I could hold in my hands and show the world.

Some of you have that. You built that. It was awkward and painful and all consuming, but you did it. Congratulations and well done.

Make it personal. From your perspective as a student, any and all courses must be mapped into a defining question. You must be able to find the answer to that question by applying the frameworks taught in that course. Both the question and the answer must relate to the real world. The more personalized the question, the more insightful the answer and the journey to the answer for you.

If you made it personal, you ended up far richer than your peers, your fellow students. If you didn’t, you didn’t. Your grades don’t really reflect academic merit. They reflect your ability to ignite that inner fire (another hat tip to W.B. Yeats) and put it to work.

Where do you go next? Lewis Carroll and the Cheshire cat have already answered this question for you.

Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where — ” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.
“ — so long as I get somewhere,” Alice added as an explanation.
“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.” — Chapter 6, Alice in Wonderland.

Live long and prosper, my children. And don’t forget to tread softly.