What Really Matters - November 7, 2013

Last fall I was asked to do a presentation on campus for the L.D. Johnson, "What Really Matters" lecture series. You'll see below that this was not the first time I was asked but this time I decided to accept the invitation and give the talk. Below is a transcript of the talk. While friends had recorded it (so Paul could watch it since we wasn't in Greenville when it happened) and I had hoped to upload the video somewhere for those interested in seeing it (as opposed to reading it), we couldn't find a way to do that (the talk was an hour long). Anyway, for those of you interested, the text is below. If you're a regular reader of the Muddy Hyena, you might recognize some of the stories. I hope you enjoy!

I was first asked to do this talk back in 1996. When asked…I panicked! I was in my third year of teaching at Furman and there was no way, at that point in my career, that I could stand up in front of my colleagues, friends, and students and tackle the incredibly challenging question of “What Really Matters?” I turned down the offer. So when Vaughn asked me again last May…I panicked…but ultimately decided I couldn’t pass up this opportunity to tackle this difficult question again. I, like speakers before me, would like to acknowledge the wisdom of L.D. Johnson for inspiring this lecture series that has been in place since 1982 and I would also like to thank all of you in the audience for coming out tonight to hear my talk.

As many of you know, I currently live my life on two continents. When I’m not here teaching at Furman, I live in Botswana with my husband Paul (during our summer break and over the Christmas holiday). In fact, over the last several years, when I’ve been directing Furman’s Southern Africa Study Away program, I’ve actually spent less time in the Unites States (about five months of the year) than I have on the African continent. In light of this, I’ve decided to honor the African tradition of storytelling and as such have organized my presentation into several sections that begin with a title and a story and then offer some explanation of how these relate to what really matters to me.

1.  Find your way – The Southern Cross

Paul and his telescope

The Southern Cross is an iconic constellation of the Southern hemisphere. Four stars in the shape of a “cross” or kite along with two additional stars for its tale or pointers make up this well-known constellation. This first story is about the Southern Cross.

She stands tall, authoritative yet unassuming. She is gentle in her manner, always curious, never threatening. Her feet are firmly anchored over the Southern pole as she travels among the stars. She appears just when the Sun of the day has slipped away. She’s with us all night, rotating ever so slightly until practically standing on her head. Travelers of the Southern hemisphere use her to find true South. Four stars make up her kite shaped head and two her long neck. An imaginary line from the back of her head to the tip of her nose intersects with one that runs perpendicular to the middle of her long neck dropping unabashedly to the earth at precisely true South. No matter what time of the night or angle of her head and neck, it never fails.

The bushmen of the Kalahari say that she was placed there as a reward for her selfless good deed. During the time when man and animals talked, the Sun behaved in such erratic and unpredictable ways. He would rise sometimes in the East, other times in the West. He would set North or South with a force from a gust wind. There was no pattern. No plan. He would stay up at times for minutes and others for days. The uncertainty of it caused great chaos. All living things were bewildered. That is, until, Giraffe offered to stand up and show Sun the way.

She pointed to her height as the key to the dilemma. With confidence she claimed that she would guide Sun to rise in the East and set in the West. Tall, helpful, with the patience of a guiding parent, she invited Sun to join her in her journey across the sky. She reached with her long neck to show Sun the way. Smooth. Well-paced. Predictable. The world rejoiced. All living things benefited from her diligence. Day after day until Sun understood.

With the routine in place, Sun rising and setting daily with utter certainty, Giraffe’s job was finished. And for her efforts she was placed in the sky to guide others who might need help finding their way. She was quite pleased.

         

My husband is an avid astronomy buff and I have heard many stories of the Southern skies over my seven years of traveling back and forth to Africa. He draws on his experiences with the Bushmen of the Central Kalahari to incorporate their stories about the stars into astronomy shows he offers clients traveling to Africa on safari. I use this story of the Southern Cross, a constellation visible only in the Southern hemisphere that people use for navigation purposes, to talk about the importance of finding your way: to discovering your calling, passion or vocation.

I was the first person in my family to complete a college degree. I had no idea what I was doing when I chose to go to St. Michael’s College outside of Burlington, Vermont. My parents and I had visited colleges and went on tours but I think ultimately the reason I chose St. Mike’s was because I had a nice weekend visit there during the fall of my Senior year in high school.

          Fortunately for me it was a transformative decision that introduced me to life on a liberal arts campus. I had always enjoyed school (or at least since my fourth grade teacher told me I was smart and I stopped crying and started studying) but I loved college! I thrived in immersion Spanish courses, was challenged by philosophy courses on the history of intellectual thought, blossomed on my winter break month-long trip to study migrant workers from Northern Africa in Paris, embraced the wisdom of the Sociological imagination and grew in ways I never thought possible during my summer in Venezuela working in underprivileged neighborhoods of Caracas with the sister parish of my small Catholic college in Vermont. I met people who challenged my world view and changed my life forever. With the guidance of an invaluable mentor, I decided I would pursue a career in academia at a liberal arts college. So off to graduate school I went and my five years at Yale only confirmed my initial desire to teach at a small liberal arts college.

2.  Don’t be afraid to make a mid-course correction – Elephant Chase

Elephant and vehicle (just to give you a sense of the size)

On Saturday morning we head up to Zwezwe Pan in northern Botswana in Savute National Park to find some elephants. We’ve seen impala, giraffe, warthogs, wildebeest, an amazing array of birds (lilac breasted rollers, horn bills, bee-eaters, tawny eagles) but no elephants, so we go looking. We come across a herd and my excitement turns to panic within seconds as the large matriarch of the breeding herd takes one look at us, shakes her head in an aggressive way sending her large ears flapping, trumpets to signal her attack and starts running full out, right for us. I should note that this was my first experience driving in the bush.

Paul says, “Put it in reverse and go, go, go”. After one false shift into low gear, I quickly correct and put it into reverse and I am driving as fast as I can backwards down a two tracked dirt spoor. All I can hear is the trumpeting and Paul’s continuing “go, go, go, go” so I punch it and keep navigating backwards through the bush hoping not to run into a tree or stump or get stuck in the sand. The incident seemed to last a long time until Paul final signals it is OK to stop at which point I realize my heart is racing and I feel like I’m going to be sick.

Fortunately for me, I didn’t even get to see her charging us since I was looking in the other direction, attempting to see where I was going behind us. Paul reports that she came to within about three feet of the front left bumper…trunk tucked, ears back, head down with full intention of ramming us. Later that night, when I asked him how scary the incident was on the “scary meter” (a scale of 1-10 with 10 meaning terrifying!) he said it was hard to say, as he was already making a plan of what to do when she hit us and flipped the vehicle, as he was sure she was going to do that. He claims that’s about as close as you can get to actually being hit without being hit! He put it at about an 8 ½. That’s pretty scary!! The good news is I didn’t panic and I’m apparently a pretty good driver when going backwards in the bush being chased by an elephant.

I would imagine that, in some ways, I am very similar to many of you in the audience.  I’m a hard worker, at times a perfectionist and, once I figured out I was pretty good at school (if I studied and spent lots of time preparing for things), I had a plan. I would finish my graduate degree (as quickly as possible), go on the market, find a job, work as hard as I could to get tenure and promotion and live happily ever after. And for the most part that worked pretty well, until I got there and realized that might not be all there is to being happy.

Graduate school had the unfortunate consequence of narrowing my focus, and my life, to almost exclusively school. While as an undergraduate I played two musical instruments (clarinet since fourth grade and the alto sax which I took up in college to play in the jazz band), fluently spoke Spanish and enjoyed traveling to new and interesting places, graduate school crushed me into a fragment of myself and when I wasn’t taking classes, studying for comprehensive exams or working on my dissertation I was teaching classes at a variety of universities in the New Haven area and catering in order to survive financially.

While in graduate school I met my first husband who, many of you know, taught at Furman for a number of years until we divorced. This was a sad and difficult period of my life. Even more focused and dedicated than me, my first husband was very driven and as a consequence, we both bled Furman purple for years and while I think the university and our students benefitted from this dedication, our marriage and personal lives did not. When we were both promoted and earned tenure I thought, “Now we can have a life. Now we can breathe and enjoy this,” but I realized our visions for what that meant were quite different.  Much like the elephant charge, that turned a routine day in the bush into a quick mid-course correction and, in that case, a backward retreat, I realized I had to do something to “save myself.” I had to be willing to make a mid-course correction.

This was probably the most difficult decision I’ve ever made and it felt like the ultimate failure. For someone who likes to “do things right” it was especially difficult to leave what looked like, from the outside, a “perfect relationship” where two academic Sociologists had found work at the same university, but it had to be done.

Around the same time in my life, I feel fortunate to have participated in one of the Lilly sponsored “Theological Exploration of Vocation” workshops which helped me put some deep thought into what really mattered to me and how I wanted to rethink my life after this mid-course correction. As such, in addition to making major changes in my personal life I also decided that I was going to make major changes in my career.

Early in the seminar, we discussed the work of Parker Palmer and read his book Let Your Life Speak.  Palmer, quoting Friedrich Buechner, describes one’s calling as that place where “one’s great joy meets the world’s great need.”  This notion of matching individual desire, motivation and skill with society’s need truly resonated with me.  The notion became particularly salient when I was completing one of the seminar’s writing exercises, which involved drafting our own obituaries.  While it might sound a bit morbid, this very challenging exercise caused me to reflect on actions I had engaged in or tasks I had completed over the course of my life (projecting also into my yet unlived future) that I would most want to be remembered for.  In reflecting on my life and career, I realized that the moments when I was most excited about my work were when I was conducting research and using my knowledge and skills to effect a positive change in the community.

I decided I was going to do research that, while it may not lead to publication, it might have an impact in the real world. I started “practicing sociology as a vocation.” While I had done some “applied sociological research” in the past, which means using sociological research methodologies to advocate for real world changes (e.g. needs assessment for the hospital system examining the needs of the growing Hispanic population), from that point on I decided to use my sociological skills to work with local organizations to do evaluation research asking difficult questions about whether their programs worked or not. Did they accomplish what they set out to do?

For the next several years I did lots of work with local agencies in the Greenville Community including the United Way, Greenville Free Medical Clinic, the March of Dimes and a program called “Healthy Connections” which placed workers in low income schools to try to get eligible students signed up for Medicaid. All of this involved using sociological research techniques (e.g. survey construction, interviewing, field research and observation) to assess the effectiveness of programs and make recommendations for improvements.

To this day, I continue to try to do research with this goal in mind. Most recently, I’ve been working with an organization in the village of Maun that we live in, in Botswana, called Women Against Rape to explore issues of defilement (sex with a minor) and to work to craft programs to reduce its incidence.

For me, then, practicing sociology as a vocation means using my expertise as a sociologist, as a medical sociologist, and as a researcher and statistician to better the community I live in.  By using my skills as a sociologist, I not only work to improve the lives of people in the community, but this mid-course correction in both my personal life and career allowed me to better focus on what really mattered to me.

3.  Do what’s right and have integrity, even in the face of adversity - Lion in camp

We had just finished dinner at a camp site in Central Kalahari Game Reserve. Fifteen clients from Spain were sitting around the fire chatting in Spanish when one of them, looking over my shoulder says, “Que es eso?” Meaning “what is that?” in Spanish. In the light of an almost full moon, I turn to see a large female lion walking around behind us, her sister following in short order as they circle around to where we are seated at the fire. Paul calmly says, everyone stand up and get closer to the fire. Without a second thought, I position myself between the lions and the clients. Somehow I recall a variety of Spanish commands, “be calm,” “come over here,” “be quiet,” “be careful,” etc. I’m not sure what it says about my personality that I remember the commands best?! But they do come in handy when a lion approaches your camp when you’re on a five-day trans-Kalahari safari with Spaniards. Who knew I’d ever need my Spanish for that scenario?

We all quietly draw closer to the fire and Paul instructs one of the other guides to start the vehicle so as to intimidate them out of camp. We had suspected they might be coming to visit when we saw them just at dusk as we were driving to our campsite. One male and two females strolled down the road in front of us settling in at the junction of two dirt tracks to make their long guttural moans marking this territory as clearly theirs. If only I had had the presence of mind to audio tape their call but I was so awestruck by the depth of the tones and the vibration of my own chest that all I could do was manage to involuntarily get the hair to stand up on the back of my neck.

Unfortunately, the younger of the two sisters is looking a bit “cheeky” – kind of like my mother’s old cat Delilah used to look right before she pounced out from underneath a chair to attack your leg as you walked by. My niece Becca described her as “cute but fresh,” and that’s one thing in an 8 pound house cat and quite another in a full grown female lion. Her tail flicking a bit, eyes staring right through you, head down, ears slightly back…she seemed to be sizing us up as a potential appetizer.

Paul instructs, “Slowly make your way to the vehicles. Nobody run. Just back away.” We move as fast as “slowly” will allow and pile into the vehicle. It seems like an eternity as we wait for Paul to join us and I’m thinking, “I should have driven this vehicle more often and learned how to use the satellite phone.” My brain going to “worst case scenario” if, heaven forbid, something were to happen to him. Fortunately, Paul joins us in short order and we are on the move to “push” the lions out of camp. While one vehicle has already gone out to do this, when they turned back towards camp the lions just followed them back. We decide we need to “drive” them off farther.

It is believed that animals see a vehicle as a large object (not a vessel carrying small objects that can be eaten) so the idea is that we will “intimidate them” by approaching them and flashing our high beams at them. The male lion seems uninterested and makes his way off down the road not even looking back. The younger of the two sisters, the cheeky one that came within three feet of the circle of chairs around the fire, is undeterred. She strays off into the grass hiding behind a bush until her more responsible older sister waits for her in the road, spots her, then crouched down like a house cat and springs on her. She grudgingly gets back on the dirt track and starts walking. When we’ve hit a stalemate and they won’t go any further, we turn back.

Fortunately, they don’t return to camp and when the sun comes up in the morning we all have an amazing story to tell our friends that they will find unbelievable. Not many people can say they had three full grown lions come into camp in the Kalahari! 

I never would have guessed, in a crisis moment like this, I would have placed myself strategically between clients and an oncoming threat. But, without thinking, I did. I feel this story parallels my efforts in my day-to-day life, to do the right thing and have integrity, even in the face of adversity.

If asked, I hope my students would say that I am tough but fair. In all the courses I teach, whether it is on campus in an Introduction to Sociology course or traveling around Southern Africa directing a study away program, I try to hold my students to high academic standards. I do this, despite the fact that my life would be easier if I required less of them. I do this because I think it’s the right thing to do. By challenging my students I feel they get more out of their education than if I simply let them coast by, if I lowered my standards.

Prioritizing integrity also means, at times, I rock the boat. If I see an issue that I feel strongly about that needs to be addressed, I step into the fray, sometimes in the face of adversity and challenge it. If I cared less about my work, about Furman, about my department, about my students’ education, I would find it easier to be less passionate. But I care a lot and it matters to me that I maintain integrity and do what’s right when it comes to teaching and being a responsible department member and university citizen.

In terms of teaching, one of my priorities is showing how the sociological imagination can cause a change in perspective for the people that embrace it. Sociology, for those of you who don’t know, examines the social causes and consequences of human behavior. We want to know why people do what they do but we move beyond individualistic explanations for human behavior and explore the importance of context (time, place, situation, and status) to explain the choices they may make. In doing this, all Sociologists may face resistance to viewing the world this way, especially in light of our very individualistic American way of seeing things. Culturally, it is a challenge for us to see beyond our own individual efforts. We have been raised in a climate that sings the praises of a cultural narrative where we are the captains of our own destiny, where our success or failure is based solely on our own efforts. But the story is often much more complicated than that. And while I certainly don’t want to deny the role personal responsibility and effort play, as C. Wright Mills explained, our lives are an “intersection of history and our own personal biography.”

In my own story, for example, while my efforts in undergraduate and graduate school certainly contributed to what successes I may have achieved, they would not have been possible if I had been born in Botswana or if the arrival of Staples office supply store in the next town over from my hometown had put my father’s small family run office supply store out of business ten years earlier. If not for a unique set of circumstances, the path of my life could have been very different (despite my best efforts). 

 

4.  Enjoy what comes - Mangos, tomatoes and giant mushrooms

Me and Giant Mushroom on trip to Tanzania

My husband and I love to travel. Both of us can drive for days and days without fatigue or boredom, simply absorbing the scenery and landscape. We’ve been fortunate to have had the opportunity to make several “overland” trips in the last few years. This involves packing everything you might need into a Toyota Land Cruiser – tent, bedroll, gas canisters for cooking, fuel, water, cooking equipment, food, toiletries, toilet tent, bucket shower, sun screen, bug spray, malaria treatment…you name it, we’ve got it. We’ve been to Zambia, Tanzania, Malawi, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique; we’ve traveled extensively over much of Southern and into East Africa. Beyond a general direction that we plan to head in and some sense of the date we need to be back, we head off without much additional planning. On trips like these I set my wrist watch alarm for 5 PM because that’s usually about the time when I start to worry that we need to find a place to sleep for the night. My husband never worries. He is famous for “making a plan”, which is an African phrase used to explain one’s ability to adapt to whatever situation may arise.

One of my favorite things about this type of travel is the diversity of landscape, people and products that you encounter. For example, on one three week long trip from Botswana to Tanzania and back we drove through “belts” of “bands” of different produce. First, we encountered mangos, miles and miles of people selling mangos stacked in tiny pyramids on handmade rickety tables on the side of the road. Next, we moved on to tomatoes, shifting to teetering stacks of lush red tomatoes for sale. Finally, as we wiz down the road small children run to the side of the road carrying mushrooms the size of large pizzas, hosting them up as we approach to try to entice us to buy from them. We stop along the way and hunt and gather from what’s available. On that trip to Tanzania on New Year’s Eve, we cook up one of these giant mushrooms with garlic and butter and feed an entire restaurant of guests!

          People sometimes ask me what I miss most about the States when I’m in Africa, or about Africa when I’m in the States, and I respond by explaining that I really try to enjoy what comes where I am when I’m there. Like these long overland trips, if you worried about getting tomatoes when you are in the mango zone you might miss the amazing thing right in front of you. While my life on two continents has its drawbacks, it certainly has afforded me a unique perspective on both worlds.  The ability to step outside the familiar helps you see things differently when you return. No longer do I find myself as caught up in the micro-politics of things. Having one foot in each world creates a certain perspective that I find very valuable.

          It has also helped me to see how little I actually need to be happy. Our American cultural focus on consumerism and materialism seems quite misplaced when living in another world where people struggle to meet their basic needs. The role of the media in shaping these needs becomes quite transparent when returning to the States from a place where I’ve persisted for months quite happily without anything they are trying to sell me. And while I still struggle with the heat of a Botswana summer during the Christmas holidays and long for a cold white New England Christmas, there is something to be said for swinging in a hammock between acacia trees watching a zebra migration through the Mkgadikgadi pans on Christmas morning. Ultimately a cherished lesson I’ve learned about what really matters from my life on two continents is to enjoy what comes. 

5.  Do something that matters - Ducking Rescue

 It was a sunny spring day in May in Greenville, South Carolina. I decided to bring my husband Paul and his son, Nikolaj, and daughter-in-law, Trine, visiting from Copenhagen down to the Reedy River to see the town. Walking across the pedestrian suspension bridge we stopped to look at the waterfall of the Reedy that used to power the textile mills that sustained Greenville for decades. Now, the area has turned into a local attraction for tourists and locals alike to come and enjoy the views.

As we’re standing on the bridge looking down at the waterfall Paul notices one, two, three tiny little ducklings at the base of the falls struggling to make their way to safe ground. Initially we thought they might actually live up under the rock they were swimming to for safety but then, when the third one got washed further down and tried to go back up the waterfall, we realized they might not be there on purpose.

Just then a woman approached us and pointed out the mother and six struggling ducklings at the top of the falls. They were being pulled down closer to the top of the falls by the current and then swimming with all their might to safety for a moment of reprieve only to be washed down again to repeat the cycle over and over. She mentioned that this had been going on for well over an hour. Oh no…something must be done!

I get on my cell phone and dial 411 to ask for the animal control but sadly when I call I’m informed that they close at 5:30 pm (it’s now after 6 pm) and I’m instructed to call the State Department of Natural Resources for “after hours wildlife concerns.” Back to 411 but unfortunately when I get the number, no one answers. It just rings and rings. Now I’m desperate. I dial 911 and blurt out, “this is not a human emergency but a duck emergency…there are ducklings being washed over the top of the Reedy River Falls.” To which the 911 operate gasps, “Oh no!” I explain to her who I’ve already tried to call and she struggles to think of another option.

She mentions that she could send some officers but they would be no help and then remembers a volunteer organization for wildlife rescue and rehab. She gives me that number. I dial it and encounter the most bizarre automated phone system that I’ve ever heard. “Please listen carefully to this message as it will direct you to the volunteer who can help you with your particular wild life emergency. If you’ve found an opossum dial 27. If you have a bird emergency, dial 40. If it has a sharp beak, dial 42. For a rounded beak, 47.” OK, those aren’t the real numbers but you get the idea. I finally get to the duck lady and explain the situation and she says she’ll be there in 20 minutes…with nets.

I rush back to the others and explain what has transpired. Paul says, “They’ll never make it that long. They are getting fatigued. Let’s go Nikolaj. We have to do something.” This is just one of the many reasons I love this man. I don’t think I know anyone else who would jump into the Reedy River to save distressed ducklings.

We cross the bridge, jump over the wall leading to the grassy area near the river and wade in. The next thing I know, Paul is at the ducklings. The mom is squawking like mad and Paul is catching ducklings as they scatter to get away from him. He’s downstream from them so as they lose the battle against the current he scoops them up and puts them into a green plastic shopping bag that Nikolaj had. He fills it with the ducklings he’s snatched. Nikolaj is behind him catching those he misses and Trine has scaled the 25 foot rock face to get down to the bottom of the falls in order to get to the ones that have already gone over. I’m standing on the banks…dumbfounded. I’ve re-arranged the contents of my purse for duckling carrying (Paul always laughs at my fascination with bags…I like to think of them as “gear” and this one is perfect for duck rescues as it is lined with some sort of waterproof lining).

Next, I see Paul about mid-stream chasing a stray that is making its way towards the middle of the river. At one point, he slips and falls at the very top of the falls and I think…oh my god, after all he’s been through in his life, he’s going to die in the Reedy River. Feet up, green bag held high so as not to squish the ducklings, and bam! He slams onto his rear end and elbow into the rocks to break his fall. Undeterred he drags himself up with the stray duckling safely in the bag and makes his way to the other bank.

I rush back across the pedestrian bridge. A stranger helps me get Paul’s attention by whistling and we make the transfer from the green shopping bag to my purse so he can go to the lower level of the falls and see if he can find any others. In the meantime, Trine has managed to rescue one from the bottom of the falls and scale back up the rock face using one hand. Nikolaj is up to his neck in the Reedy River trying to go to the location at the bottom of the falls we originally saw them and Paul is headed back out to help.

By this time, the wild life rescue and rehab people have arrived with a box and two nets. I dump the contents of my purse into the box. 1,2,3,4,5 and a 6^th one that doesn’t belong with the others (it’s a different species!). The lower falls retrieval produces 3 more. A total of 7 from the original group with the mom and two of the second species are saved. We load the siblings into the box and head back up to the top of the river. I made sure to take a close look at the mom so I’d be able to return them to her if we caught them. I see her across the river on the other bank. She is squawking at the top of her little duck lungs, I’m sure she is in complete dismay about what has just happened. Her ducklings are peeping like crazy. I’m sure trying to find their mom.

I crouch near the bank of the river, tilt the box in the direction of the river, hoping to angle the sound across the expanse. She is going “squawk, squawk, squawk”…they are going “peep, peep, peep.” This goes on for what seems like an eternity. We are so close to a reunion but yet so far. Finally… she hears them. I see her head turn and she dives in the water and starts to paddle. “Squawk, Squawk, Squawk!” In unison they desperately reply, “Peep, peep, peep.” She paddles like mad. When she gets close to the bank and makes her way up the side, I slowly dump the contents of my box, her family, onto the bank and they waddle their way over to her.  Success! I almost cry. OK, maybe I cry a little.

The whole time, as the events are unfolding, we’ve been watched and assisted by a variety of onlookers. Some are pointing out where ducklings are from the bridge. Others are peaking in my purse to see the tiny ducklings all hovered together. One group of teenagers has been here from the beginning. They were actually there before we arrived and saw the first few go over the falls. They’re the type of teens you might turn your nose up at if you saw them walking down the street. Their bangs are a bit too long and eye-liner a bit too thick. They look like trouble or at least like non-contributing members of society that you hope will someday “grow out” of this phase that they’re currently in. As I retreat from the scene of the duck family reunion one of them says to me a bit choked up, “Man, we were watching it all happen but we didn’t do anything. We just watched. We need more people in the world like you.” Perhaps we did more than just save some ducklings that day.

         

My final story and remarks this evening center on doing something that matters. It recognizes that sometimes it is the experiences you have that matter most. I love my work. From the beginning of my career at Furman I have been doing what the University has come to call “Engaged Learning,” that is connecting academic materials to real world experiences. In the early days of my career, a colleague in the Philosophy department, Doug MacDonald and I developed what we call “The Medicine Program.” This unique program combines my Medical Sociology course with Medical Ethics and real world observations in the Greenville Health System. This is an exciting and invigorating way to teach. When observing with my students in the hospital, I am learning right alongside them. While we never know what interesting cases we will see, we always see interesting cases. From brain surgery to babies being born, we get an insider’s view of health care delivery with all its successes and challenges. It is my hope that this program may make future doctors better doctors, more aware of the role social factors have in shaping health outcomes (e.g. social class, race/ethnicity and insurance coverage). I hope that it will make all of my students better patients or caregivers for patients; roles all of us will likely face at some point in our lives. By better understanding the social causes and consequences of health and illness, we are all better able to see the impact of our culture and the unequal distribution of resources on individual health outcomes.

          Similarly, directing study away programs to Southern Africa, and participating in programs in Cuba, provides me with an opportunity to engage with the real world and open up my students’ perspective on global issues. Building off a long tradition at Furman of study away programs in developing countries that try to move beyond a touristy understanding of the areas we are traveling to, I work to create opportunities for students to be “close to the ground”  in order to have authentic experiences in these areas. And while I could certainly explain to students, from within the four walls of a Furman classroom, how cultural factors affect the spread of HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa or caution them about the downsides of offering aid to developing countries infused with Western values that make this aid less effective, it means so much more to bring them there and create opportunities for them to engage with locals.

By staying in the homes of locals made of mud and dung without running water or electricity during their rural homestay, playing with children who have lost their parents due to the AIDS epidemic at an AIDS orphanage, or carrying water from a central tap to shacks in an informal settlement, students see and experience these things firsthand. While reading about struggling health care systems in developing countries and activist nongovernmental organizations is one thing, touring a state run facility in Northern Namibia and talking with workers at local NGOs creates a far more powerful impact.

          Since 2009 I have poured myself into directing high quality study away programs to Southern Africa. The preparation for such trips often begins well over a year in advance, and when the trip happens I am with the students 24 hours/day, 7 days/week for the nine weeks that we travel together. And at times, not always, but occasionally, I see a student’s worldview transform, like mine did that summer so long ago that I spent in Venezuela, and that makes all that effort worth it.

People sometimes ask me why I didn’t have children and this is a difficult question to answer. I was never one of those people who thought they would have children, but there are ways in which perhaps one of the most important things about parenting is shaping the next generation. I hope that, through my teaching and directing of study away programs, I play a small but meaningful role in the shaping of other people’s children (students on these trips sometimes call me “Mama K” so I guess in some ways I have 20 children at a time for a period of time).

One of the most important things I hope comes from students’ study away experiences is a better understanding of their place in the world and what it means to be a good global citizen. It is the recognition of how all of us here, at a place like Furman, have won the “womb lottery.” Simply by the accident of our birth we have had privileges many in the rest of the world will never know. We live and study on this beautiful campus. We are afforded the privilege of the “life of the mind” for at least a period of time. Most of us do not need to worry about where we will sleep tonight or if we have enough money to feed ourselves or our families. In my opinion, with this privilege comes great responsibility. It is our job to work to make the world a better more humane place. In order for this to happen, people must first understand the world outside of themselves. This is what I hope my study away programs, and all of my classes, help students to see. This, in my opinion, is the first step to bettering the world. You have to understand in order to want to change. In that way, I hope the work I do when directing study away and teaching students at Furman constitutes doing something that matters.

The other lesson of this duck rescue story involves sharing your life with people you love because, in the end, that is an essential part of what really matters.  I have been fortunate enough to find a partner with an adventurous spirit, inquisitive mind and warm heart. And like most academics, I am far away from my hometown and family, but I feel especially fortunate to have created a community of friends here who have become my family.

In conclusion, as I was preparing for this talk and going over it with my husband Paul, who unfortunately is not able to be here tonight because he is back in Botswana, he pointed out that the talk was “so like me” – internally contradictory and challenging. On the one hand, I started by suggesting one must, “find your path” and in the next breath say, “don’t be afraid to make a mid-course correction.”  He reminded me of the two very strong and, at times, contradictory sides of my personality which perhaps helps explain how living this life on two continents seems to suit me so well. On the one hand, I embrace order in my life at Furman (some may say too much with spread sheets, to do lists and five year plans). On the other, I love the chaos and spontaneity of living in Africa. On trips in the bush, as you can tell from some of these stories, you literally never know what you’ll encounter next.

So perhaps some of what brings me a sense of peace with the structure of my current life is that it honors both of the sides of my personality. It does not attempt to conform to societal standards that say, “You should do this or that” but rather allows me the freedom to find a different way that best suites me. In the end, allowing one self the freedom to find one’s own way to contribute to a meaningful life (even if that choice may raise some eyebrows) may be what really matters.

In sum, I believe it is important to find your way (like the Southern Cross guides its viewers to true South), but not be afraid to make a mid-course correction (like we did when retreating away from a charging elephant in the bush). From my perspective, having integrity and doing what’s right even in the face of adversity (like positioning myself between the oncoming lions in camp and the clients around the campfire), enjoying what comes (like we do when traveling and enjoying mangos, tomatoes and giant mushrooms), and doing something meaningful (like rescuing some ducklings from the Reedy River Falls) is what really what matters to me.