Archive for February, 2009
Conquering Your Fears Without Breaking Your Leg February 4 2009 no responses
This post could also be called, “Lessons I Learned in Ski School.” I’m writing from Snowshoe Mountain Resort in West Virginia. My internet connection could go out at any moment so I’m going to keep this brief.
We’re up here for a school ski trip for my youngest son. I’ve skied one other time in my life. That was a few years ago on some bunny slopes on another school trip. (You’re probably seeing the pattern here that skiing is not something I would come up with on my own.) My biggest lesson learned from that first attempt was having some sense of control is a good thing when you’re flying down hill on a couple of boards. Unfortunately, that was one of those lessons I learned through the absence of control rather than the mastery of it.
So, when my son and I went out yesterday morning, I was purposely aiming myself toward small groups of trees as a bailout option for when things got a little too crazy for me. Even with that brilliant strategy, I spent a lot of time going end over end. It takes a long time to get down the mountain that way. After a few of those runs (if you can call them that), it was time for ski school. My son helpfully suggested that I get in the beginner’s group as he had me completely sized up. So, I was pretty much the oldest person in my group by a range of 30 to 35 years. Lesson one, if you want to learn anything get your ego out of the way.
Lesson two from yesterday was to lean forward and look where you want to go. That helped a lot although I still spent a lot of time during the lesson and afterwards falling on my butt. Probably my best wipe out was after the lesson when I somehow ended up on my back sliding down the hill head first with my skis tumbling behind me. I’m sure it looked really cool but it kind of hurt like hell.
I’ll be honest with you, it took a lot of willpower to get back out there again this morning. Brad (my son) and I started out on our own again after I made him promise to stop every so often to see if I was still alive. We got to the first big downhill and I promptly wiped out and lost both skis. Again, to be honest, I would have figured out the quickest way off the mountain and called it a day at that point but Brad is a naturally great coach. Very encouraging and even in the midst of my flailing identified some things I was doing right. We made it down together and then made a few more runs.
Then it was time for day two of ski school – all the 5th through 8th graders and me. We learned today how to keep our skis parallel while turning. To my amazement, I was getting it. Making those smooth turns and being clear about where you want to go, picking some short term targets on the slope can really help you stay under control (makes me wonder about the efficacy of picking some short term targets in the rest of life). I’m happy to report that on my last three runs (which had a bit of challenge to them!), I didn’t fall down once. Came close a couple of times, but recovered and stayed with it.
So, lesson three – the worst time to quit is when you’re feeling frustrated. If I had done that this morning after that first run with Brad, my story about myself would have been, “I suck at skiing. Never doing that again.” Now the story is, “This is actually kind of fun.” I don’t think I’m headed for the senior Olympics anytime soon, but that wasn’t my goal in the first place. Have to wrap up now. I’m due to meet Brad for some afternoon runs.
Cora Louise Nelson February 2 2009 one response
When you stop and think about it, there have been people in your life that have shaped you in ways so deep that you begin to take their lessons for granted. Dr. Cora Louise Nelson was one of those people for me. She was my economics professor at Davidson College and I just learned in the alumni journal that she passed away at age 90 last November.
If you’ve ever seen the classic movie, The Paper Chase, with John Houseman as the intimidating grand inquisitor of first year law students at Harvard, then you have the initial picture of Dr. Nelson. She set an unyielding standard of excellence and expected her students to live up to it. With a mixture of respect and fear, her introductory econ course was known on campus as “Coranomics” because of the distinctive way in which she taught it. It was with a great deal of trepidation that I gathered the nerve to sign up for it at the beginning of my junior year.
In our first class, she began by explaining the virtues of the textbook we would be using, Economics, by the Nobel Prize winner, Paul Samuelson. In Dr. Nelson’s mind, no other text was worthy of her student’s need to learn the discipline that she described as “the division and allocation of scarce resources.” It was as if that book was a sacred document to her. Apparently, I agreed because I still keep my copy of Economics on the book shelf in my office.
Dr. Nelson expected us to be as passionate about economics as she was. As the Davidson Journal reported, she ascribed to what she described as the credo of economists – “a dedication to freeing mankind from the servitude of deprivation.” It was serious business to her and she expected us to take it seriously. Her deal was simple. If you did the homework and the reading every night, you would do well in her class. She told us up front that she would reserve the right to test our commitment by giving us unannounced “writs” (her term for a pop quiz) at the beginning of any class. She had this uncanny knack for sensing when the time was right to send a message by standing at the front of the room, casting her steely gaze across the students and announcing with the slightest trace of a smile, “Put your books and notes away, I think we’ll have a writ.” You could feel the groans of agony barley being muffled.
I’ll never forget her description of how she could tell the students who were not ready for final examinations. She used to say that she would stand in her office on exam day and look out the window as the students walked from their dorms to Chambers (the main academic building on campus). She would note that some students would walk in a perfectly erect fashion not tilting their heads even the slightest bit to the left or the right out of fear that the “knowledge they had crammed into their heads the night before might run out of their ears.”
Dr. Nelson was a pioneer. In 1942, she was one of the first female cashiers of a state bank. Beginning in 1956, she enrolled at the University of North Carolina where she earned her bachelor’s and Ph.D. degrees in economics in just eight years. She was the first female faculty member of the North Carolina School of Banking and the first female professor at Davidson to be granted tenure and a full professorship when the college was still an all male school.
What did I learn from Louise Nelson? Certainly, a lot about economics that I still remember and utilize to this day. (I’m so glad that the knowledge didn’t fall out of my ears.) The bigger lesson was about the connection between preparation and positive results. That approach made a complex subject pretty simple actually. I think the other big lesson from Dr. Nelson is that high standards matter. If, as a teacher or a leader, you are clear about them and hold people accountable to them, they will not only meet your expectations but learn and accomplish more than they thought they could.
Thank you Dr. Nelson. Just want you to know that I’m keeping up with my reading.
Scott Eblin is an executive coach, speaker and author of 
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