{"id":4364,"date":"2009-04-11T20:52:16","date_gmt":"2009-04-12T03:52:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/?p=4364"},"modified":"2009-04-12T06:29:48","modified_gmt":"2009-04-12T13:29:48","slug":"yachtclubsunset","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/2009\/04\/11\/yachtclubsunset\/","title":{"rendered":"On Boats and Big Boulders"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Celebration of Service for our Schweitzer Fellowship<\/a> cohort was last Wednesday at New Orleans Yacht Club.<\/p>\n

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Paul and I got there too late for the boat trip.\u00c2\u00a0 So we were stuck enjoying the sunset from the pier.\u00c2\u00a0 We weren’t entirely sure what to expect from the night.\u00c2\u00a0 We knew some program funders would be there, as well as some from the new group of Fellows.\u00c2\u00a0 As part of our fellowship requirements, we prepared posters for viewing during a cocktail hour.<\/p>\n

When we sat down to dinner, our program director asked each of us to come up and talk to the crowd about our projects and memories about the Fellowship year.\u00c2\u00a0 Impromptu speaking!<\/p>\n

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Have you ever had one of those moments where you are up in front of a room of people and notice someone unexpected in the audience, maybe someone you’ve been sort of nervous about seeing, and have a total freak out mid-speech?<\/p>\n

No?<\/p>\n

Oh, well, me neither.<\/p>\n

That whole shuttering blinking thing I did last Wednesday when I saw one of my committee members smiling at me in the audience?\u00c2\u00a0 Yeah, that wasn’t me losing my train of thought or being distracted by the !!!OMG!!! running through my head.\u00c2\u00a0 Not a bit.<\/p>\n

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That was how Paul met my Committee Member Extraordinaire, whom I could call Dr. Comforting, Dr. Calming, Dr. Confirming, or Dr. Consoling and still not quite capture what this particular person brings to the table.\u00c2\u00a0 It had been a LONG TIME since I’d checked in.\u00c2\u00a0 My committee chair (the one who is suppose to guide everything I do) had strongly suggested I sort of keep the rest of the committee on the sidelines until I had a pre-defense draft ready for review… an appealing choice, but one that was freaking me out.\u00c2\u00a0 What if I alienate another member?\u00c2\u00a0 Or, what if I ignore my chair’s advice and get thrown off track by someone else’s comments?\u00c2\u00a0 Ack!\u00c2\u00a0 The confusion!<\/p>\n

So far, my way of handling it was to ignore everyone.\u00c2\u00a0 A wonderful strategy if my goal is to never finish, or so it seems.<\/p>\n

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Bottom line is that Committee Member Extraordinaire was INCREDIBLE when we spoke after the speech.\u00c2\u00a0 I told her where I was and what I was doing and was honest about the advise from the chair.\u00c2\u00a0 “I think that is great,” she offered, “I love it when people can work that independently.”\u00c2\u00a0 It knocked the wind right out of me.\u00c2\u00a0 Then, she pleaded with me to speak with public health students about Schweitzer, congratulated me about taking over (temporarily) as program director, and just generally made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.\u00c2\u00a0 (Note, this is distinctly different from how committee members usually make one feel.)\u00c2\u00a0 Paul turned to me afterward and said, “I love her.\u00c2\u00a0 She is fantastic.”<\/p>\n

“I know,” I answered.\u00c2\u00a0 I forgot how supportive she is.\u00c2\u00a0 How could I forget?<\/p>\n

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Seeing her and getting all of that out in the open took a huge weight off my shoulders and I feel so much more prepared to finish this thing.\u00c2\u00a0 I am starting to see that it is something I truly can do…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Celebration of Service for our Schweitzer Fellowship cohort was last Wednesday at New Orleans Yacht Club. Paul and I got there too late for the boat trip.\u00c2\u00a0 So we were stuck enjoying the sunset from the pier.\u00c2\u00a0 We weren’t entirely sure what to expect from the night.\u00c2\u00a0 We knew some program funders would be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[88,89,105],"tags":[18],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4364"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4364"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4364\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4372,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4364\/revisions\/4372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}