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It turns out that the year 2022 will be a year of anniversaries for me. Every year is in some way of course, but this year is going to be one with a series of landmark anniversaries, you know those with a 0 in them. At NASPA this past week, I realized that I attended my first NASPA in…

Apparently, my spot on the introversion-extroversion scale shifted back toward introversion during the pandemic. Between that and the fact that I had let my TSA-Pre status lapse since I wasn’t flying anywhere, meant that I was a bit unprepared for my trip this week. In fact I whined about it a bit (or more than…

Success – it’s one of those words we all know and use. On campus we talk about student success quite a bit. But when I ask people to define it, the question often that question seems to stump them. I think because they assume we all have a common understanding. Surely it means that students are successful,…

Have you ever tried to find a quote, book, or article that you read in the not too distant past, but you have no way to find it? I certainly have and I’ve tried different ways to keep track of such things, but nothing really stuck until I ran across the idea of the commonplace…

Suddenly, books are scary – again. Books, those things that were going to disappear thanks to technology, are in the forefront of our awareness again. Discussions of banning books, removing books from school libraries, and even book burning are all over the internet. Which points out the irony of trying to get rid of physical…

There are many ways to mark the passage of time. There’s the watch hand, or rather the change of the digital clock face. There’s the calendar with large X’s on each day. Or worse, there’s wondering just who is looking back at you from the mirror some mornings. There are many more that we all…

There are so many voices coming at us right now. Literal voices at home, at work, from the media. There are also voices coming at us from all that we read. Some of these voices are unhappy, demanding ones. I’m sure all of us have had the thought, ‘if people from both sides are yelling…

I grew up in Oklahoma which means I can sing the state song. I’m pretty sure anyone who went to elementary school in Oklahoma can sing this song. It helps to have a state song written by Rogers and Hammerstein meaning it’s actually singable. But it’s also because every year, we sang and performed the…

“#I was today years old when I learned….” Sometimes a hashtag, sometimes a meme, it’s a phrase that identifies something ordinary that surprised the user. Here’s an example I found today. “I was today years old when I learned that it’s called ‘breakfast’ because you are breaking your fast.” (In full disclosure, I figured this…

I’ve read a lot of leadership books over the years. Traditional ones by traditional authors like Warren Bennis and John Gardner. Textbooks specifically about leadership but also about organizational design and communication. Not-so traditional ones by poet David Whyte and Quaker teacher Parker Palmer. Books designed for business, education, and non-profit leaders. And perhaps the only…