Happy Thanksgiving

Happy (American) Thanksgiving to everyone.

This marks my 20th year working in admissions and as I think about all for which I have to be thankful, being able to do this work that influences if not changes the lives of children and shapes institutions in which I believe is really quite awesome, in the truest sense of the word. (Awesome: top of the list of abused and overused words such that their original meaning is now diminished if not lost! Unique is probably second.)

And this profession would not be such a rewarding pleasure without the incredible colleagues with which I share it. Some of my admissions colleagues have become some of my closest friends. I feel privileged to share their profession and their lives. They work tirelessly on behalf of what is best for students and schools and do so with honour, integrity and character. I have learned so much from so many who have insight, creativity, thoughtfulness, intelligence, and compassion.

I wish everyone a refreshing, renewing, relaxing and reflective Thanksgiving, and I thank everyone for the manifold ways in which you shape and better my life, professionally and personally.

Like Attracts Like

I’m in South Africa visiting one of my dearest friends. He is just one of the “good guys”. I’ve seen him leap from his airplane seat to take the arm of elderly passenger and help her navigate herself to the lavatory and I’ve seen him bound across the street to open a door for someone whose arms were full of packages, bags, and dry cleaning. He’s that person who maintains a meticulous list of everyone’s birthday and phones them with best wishes. His gmail and Skype contact lists are bigger than my inquiry pool! He befriends everyone he meets.

So it should come as no surprise that when I met some of his friends at a dinner tonight, they seemed likewise. Like attracts like, right? And this got me to thinking about the power of branding and how its power should be equally strong at attracting the right students and dissuading the “wrong” ones. If our messages are authentic and clear, then the right students will be engaged while the wrong ones will further their search elsewhere. And that’s okay. In the end, we want appropriate applicants, not all applicants, right?

(Or do we? On a related, interesting note, check out this New York Times article on the explosion of college applications sent to me by Kristin Dabney, whose daughters attend James River Day School in Virginia.)

I was recently looking at the new website for Shimer College, the Great Books college in Chicago and noted I could enjoy their viewbook online (someday a whole other blog post on whether or not sharing your viewbook online is a good idea—I’m not convinced). Upon first inspection, one thinks this book is the antithesis of what the marketing people have been telling us what to do with our print materials. There’s way too much text, not enough or big enough pictures, and too much reading to trudge through. Who is going to bother??

Students who are excited about going to a Great Books institution. That’s who. If you’re not interested in reading the viewbook for Shimer, than you’re surely not interested in the curriculum for Shimer, or any other Great Books college. I’m not sure if this was done on purpose or not, but posting their viewbook online may be the first step in Shimer’s inquiry qualification process.

If so, bravo Shimer!

Horn Talk

I write this from Lagos, Nigeria, where the traffic appears utterly insane, relegating rush hour in NYC or LA to the category of “civilized”. There really are no lanes, the number of cars that can fit alongside one another is defined solely by the trenches and drop-offs paralleling the road. Motorcycles zip in and among cars and taxis, and everybody seems to be driving without any acknowledgment that other cars, lots of other cars actually!, share the road with them.

But as you chew on the unavoidable exhaust and pay closer attention, you come to appreciate a semblance of organization that is executed by horns. People don’t lay on them as they do in North America. They’re not horns of anger or rage. Different numbers and durations of horn blasts seem to indicate different things and as cars move in and among each other in tight proximity (so close that anyone who can, folds in their side view mirrors) and without benefit of defined lanes, it seems to work. The horns actually tame the wild beast that is the traffic. A colleague on this trip, Harry Lynch, the headmaster at Newman School in Boston, has named this “Horn Talk”.

When you enter a different land (and I mean that literally or metaphorically when maybe a single-sex day school visits a co-ed feeder school), it helps to know the language. Actually, it serves you well to know the language. Visiting Nigeria, a former British colony, I had to be conversant about GCSE’s and A- and O-level examinations. If you visit a Montessori school it would be good to articulate the five categories of learning. And if you want to recruit from a Sacred Heart school, you’ll go a lot farther knowing about the “goals and criteria” that manifest their values and education. Honor and respect them by taking the time to speak their language first before you expect them to speak yours.

It’s easy to think that if “they want to come to my school, they need to speak my language” but if you’re in admissions, it’s more important you speak theirs first. If you’re successful, the result will be that they then want to speak yours. HONK!

Ted Sorensen, R.I.P.

Last night Ted Sorensen died. He was the author of the famous line uttered by John F. Kennedy, …ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country. Those of us in our positions can easily start to feel as though our whole school communities are exclaiming to us, “Ask not what we can do for you. Ask what you can do for us!” But, at the end of the day, are we not in our position—even drawn to our position—from a place of wanting to do for our schools and for our students?

I think the most successful among us are so due in part to a core belief in the institutions and/or students we serve. I suppose one can work in the business office or on the grounds crew or, dare I say, even teach in a classroom—and possibly do so quite well—without believing in them. They tend to their small part of the operation with not much investment in the greater mission or effort. But we can’t do that. We have to believe in the institutions we serve in order to be both happy and successful and we have to believe in our students.

On this Feast of All Saints, maybe it would behoove us to pause and remember those who have gone before us, who have served, encouraged and lifted us in our personal and professional lives. Family, friends, mentors, professors, colleagues: although some may be gone, all had a hand in defining our life’s course. They served us in order that we might serve others. Ask what you can do…

Kennedy also said, Things do not happen. Things are made to happen. In the name of our students and our schools and those who came before us, what will you make happen today in their service?