Changing Streams

The justification of the status quo goes, "don't change horses in the middle of the stream."

But sometimes when the status quo isn't cutting the mustard (to mix metaphors), you have to change horses. And sometimes you even have to consider changing streams.

I'm in the middle of pondering such a stream-changing course. As a tentative step in that direction, I've been redesigning several websites I have, including my personal site (which is just my name dotcom if you're curious). I'm converting it from a 'pure' HTML/CSS website to a Wordpress Content Management System (CMS). This is also known as a "blog," but if you didn't know better you'd think it was just another "website."

While converting dozens of former "pages" to now "posts," I came across the series of commentaries I wrote for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram as a community columnist in 2005 and 2008. One of them struck me as particularly pertinent to my current pondering, even though it turns six years old this month. I think it's worth re-visiting.

August 27, 2005
Special to the Star-Telegram
Next week, I begin a new job. I've been invited by the Department of Communication Studies at Texas Christian University to teach a course in general semantics.

There's a bit of irony in this.

In 1979, I was an Air Force lieutenant, navigating KC-135 air-refueling aircraft at Carswell Air Force Base. I successfully applied for a program in which the service would pay for my master's degree and send me to the Air Force Academy to teach English.

To get a head start on my master's, I took two graduate classes at TCU. That's where I first learned about general semantics.

I never finished the master's program. Life circumstances intervened. I resigned from the Air Force in 1982, moved back to the Metroplex and began a 19-year career in the defense electronics industry.

During that period, I learned to carve out a niche for myself as a generalist in an engineering environment. I completed a variety of productive assignments, from system engineering to marketing to cost/schedule planning to business strategy to program management.

But I wasn't happy—somewhat in the way that a fish flopping around on an August sidewalk isn't "happy." When the new millennium rolled around and the world didn't end as predicted, I had to make a decision. I could not continue doing what I was doing. I wasn't satisfied with carving out niches for myself.

I knew what I didn't want to do, but I didn't know what I did want to do.

A friend referred me to Helen Harkness, a career counselor-therapist-coach in Garland. I enrolled in her program and, during the next year, learned more about myself, my needs and my motivations than I thought possible.

At first, I wanted to do my own thing as a consultant, but consultants tended to be specialists, not generalists. Then I tried to put together a business plan for an Internet-based social center for single adults. I knew what was needed and had some great ideas on how to fill those needs, but I couldn't figure out how to get someone to pay for it. That detail greatly weakened my business case.

By the summer of 2001, I decided that what I really wanted to do was teach. I was reverting to what I thought I had wanted 22 years earlier.

I knew I would have to make a financial sacrifice to teach, particularly in public schools. I sold my house, traded down cars and put all my household goods in storage. I was prepared to travel light and live Spartan. I'd find a small school in a small town with a small cost of living.

I spent hours each day on the Web sites for the 20 Regional Education Service Centers in Texas, scouring the job openings. I mailed more than 100 letters and resumes. I completed dozens of employment applications. I attended a statewide job fair in Austin where districts with hard-to-fill teaching positions pitched themselves like weight-loss products at the state fair.

I learned a lot during this process.

I learned how much bureaucracy is fed by paper credentials. I learned that it would cost me about $5,000 to "earn" (or is that "purchase?") those paper credentials to become a "certified" teacher.

I learned that teachers are valued in direct relation to their pass rates on the TAAS (now TAKS) standardized tests. I learned about the district-to-district disparities in teacher salaries and medical insurance contributions. I learned that in the public education world, self-serving myths die hard and hypocrisy is usually scratching somebody's back.

More than anything, I learned that although I wanted to teach, I really didn't want to become a teacher.

So I pursued another path down a similar trajectory that, two years and several circuitous circumstances later, resulted in my current job as executive director for the Institute of General Semantics.

Now I have the opportunity to teach a subject I love at a prestigious university. It took four years, but there's not a standardized test in sight.

Harkness has just written a new book titled Capitalizing on Career Chaos. I recommend it to anyone who might be feeling like a fish flopping on the August sidewalk.