 "My wife is a graduate student and she's really struggling," Larry said the first time I first met him. It was clear he was struggling to help her carry the burden as well. She can't find an advisor, she lost her assistantship this semester, she doesn't have a topic. All she does is work all the time or cry. Do you have any advice for a struggling PhD student?" That was two years ago. Tonight Larry and his wife are taking us out to celebrate her upcoming graduation and job offer. Two years ago I had shared four counter-intuitive insights that had personally helped me when I was in a similar situation in my late 20s. 1. “Choose your best friend as your advisor.”I heard this from a Med School professor friend who then said “And choose your older brother to be your second committee member, and choose your favorite uncle to be your third.” Some people tend to choose our dissertation committee based on who’s "most famous" or most connected in their department. Instead, consider which professors most want you to graduate. [Read more] 2. The ‘P’ in PhD stands for Perseverance.The smartest and most talented people in PhD programs aren’t always the ones who graduate. The two most outrageously smartest people in my PhD program both quit the program after passing their comprehensive exams but once they started struggling with their dissertation. (They also both went on to become outrageously successful without having graduated, so one might say they knew what they were doing when they left.) 3. “It’s an N-period game.”When I had to find a new advisor and defend a new dissertation proposal with four months notice, the game theory economist who gave me this advice was implying that there are a lot of second and third chances in academia as long as you keep swinging. Related to this . . . 4. Consider being a Visiting ProfessorSuppose don’t get a good offer when you graduate from your PhD program (or you get turned down for tenure). If you “settle” for a tenure-track at a school you’re not crazy about, you’ll be perceptually anchored to that type of school by both you and by others. Instead, by taking a one or two year post as a visiting professor keeps you from getting perceptually anchored to a school you're not crazy about, and it gives you more time to strengthen your vita, and it lets you take another swing at the job marketing in another year or two. There's lots of advice a person could give, but these were four "counter-intuitive" insights that were real breakthroughs for me. Maybe for Larry's wife too. We might learn about that tonight.
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   This past week was Chinese New Year. The buffet was cramped with dumplings, fish, and indescribable things -- each dish with a story going back to dinosaur days in China.
Last night, some non-Asian friends crowded into our dining room for the adventure. After blessings, a PowerPoint-style walkthrough of the food, impromptu musical interludes, and some light stretching, we finally ate. My daughter’s college friend leaned over and whispered, “I love all this ritual stuff.” I’ve been thinking about that for twenty-four hours. And I realized—I do too. Most dinners -- even Iron Chef-level spread-a-gonzas -- fade from memory pretty quickly. Ritual dinners don’t. It isn’t about the food; it’s about the framework, the repeated gestures that mark time, make meaning. I’ve been lucky to sit at many Jewish Passover tables. The rituals, the conversation, the engagement—it leaves you altered in small ways. A little wiser, a little more grounded. Anything can become ritual: birthdays, holidays, the weekly Friday night spaghetti, or Sunday lunch at Taco Bell. The trick is simple: declare it, repeat it, give it meaning. Over time, it sticks—sometimes quietly . . . under the radar, like a Soviet sleeper agent in a Netflix movie. After fifteen years of Chinese New Year dinners—after fifteen years of never cooking, never cleaning, never arriving on time -- there was a girl who missed her sixteenth Chinese year in the US. She was on a Rotary exchange in Argentina. Undeterred, she cooked a Chinese New Year dinner for her host family and four friends. It would have been less surprising if she’d built a spaceship out of Lego. Rituals carry an undertow we rarely see. They shape us. They anchor us. And it’s never too late to start.  When I was an anxious graduate student, the faculty all had their offices in a dedicated building. You didn't just drop by. You set up an appointment so you could be anxious about it the whole day. On my advisor's floor, there was an older gentleman at the end of the hall. I greeted him the 2-3 times I saw him. Always very well-dressed and dignified. One time I walked down to check the name on his door: "John W. Gardner." I didn't recognize it. At the time I had no idea the impact this man had had on the world. I wouldn't know it for six more years. Six years later it was April 1994 and I was an Assistant Professor who was feeling blue because I had just been unexpectedly turned down for tenure. Within a week of this happening, I picked up my mail and I found an alumni magazine. While flipping through it, an article with the title "The Road to Self-renewal" caught my attention. So did the name of the writer: "John W. Gardner." Having just gotten turned down for tenure, I was at a cross-roads. This article resonated with me so strongly, I must have reread it 12 times in the first week the magazine arrived. In the 30+ years since I must have read it 50 times more. While sorting some files last night, I ran across across an underlined and marked-up version of it from long ago. I thought some of you might find it as wise as I found it. 
  About a month ago we dropped off our middle daughter at college. Now we're back for Parents Weekend. Three days of awesome togetherness time, but not what you'd expect. On Friday, she had a 5:00 calculus assignment due and then a 11:59 PM humanities research paper due. Then she came to our hotel and slept in until 11:00 AM. On Saturday, it was club meetings. On Sunday, project meetings and study groups. She's coughing and exhausted, but she's elated every day. Across all schools in the US, only 60-65% of the students who start college will graduate from that college within 6 years. Of the 35-40% who don't graduate, some are asked to leave, and some decide to leave. Two of my first three college roommates were in that first group. For anxious helicopter, parents the question we irritatingly ask our Freshman children the most is "How are classes going?" followed by "So how are your classes? " followed by "How are the classes going that you are taking."  A friend said that when he went to an orientation week for one of his kids, the Dean of Students said that asking "How are your classes going?" was the wrong question to ask. Instead, he said, you should ask them "Have you made a best friend?" Interesting . . . It might be that having a best friend is a buffer against dropping out. You have someone to compare daily experiences with, someone who makes you feel you belong, and someone you want to stay in school to see. It might also just be that asking them about a best friend is less irritating, grating, and anxiety-producing for them than asking for an update on their calculus grade. (When I was in my PhD program I cringed whenever people asked me how my dissertation was going. My Mom and Dad even started calling it "the D-Word" to make it less PTSD-inducing.)  For anybody having a new freshman starting school, asking them about a best friend may be a lot more diagnostic than asking them "How are classes going?" Asking them about a best friend might be a more welcomed or productive conversation path than we might think. I think it would also make you a more welcomed and interesting person when talking to other Freshman college kids of your friends.  Last month I got a text from a friend who is 10 days older than I am that said: "I've got some other friends who also turn about 65 this year. Meet me at the general aviation terminal in Minneapolis at 1:00 on Thursday the 21st, and we'll be back by 1:00 on the 24th. See you then, Dan" I texted back, "100 percent." By the time we would arrive back on the 24th, one of us would have a broken arm, one would have shingles, and one would have pneumonia. If the eight of us would have known all of that ahead of time . . . we would still have gone. The older you get, it's easy to get less spontaneous and to go for the "sure bets." I have one friend from my PhD program who only eats at chain restaurants because, "You always know what you're getting, so there are no unpleasant surprises." We were going up to the Iron Mountain boundary waters of Minnesota where we wouldn't have running water, electricity, or heat and where we would live on floating cabins in the middle of a lake. Why? This is the home of 82-year-old Will Steger, the first person to make it to the North Pole unaided (except for 30 sled dogs), and also the first to cross Antartica. Other than frolic in the wilderness, we were going to hear about all of his "And that was the 107th time I about died" stories. There weren't a lot of superficial similarities among the eight of us. One writes six weekly investment newsletters (far left), one is a Zen Buddhist Priest (third from the left), one had been elected with Jesse "The Body" Ventura to the Minnesota Governor's Office (far right bottom) . . . crazy different paths. Before arriving, we all knew our host, but we didn't know anyone else. At some point, someone asked our host what we had in common (other than being about 65) to get us invited. He said, "You were all guys I thought would be up for an adventure, without asking questions. You'd all say "I'm all in." He then went on to say there were two others who kept asking him questions and kept wanting him to convince them that it was going to be worth their time. He pretty much said, "I didn't even try. I want to be around enthusiastic people." For the past 4 years, my family has hosted Rotary International Exchange students in our home. One year it was a host son from Brazil and then one from Poland. After that, it was a host daughter from Mexico and then from Finland. They live with us for 4 months or so. Tremendous experience. The first host son we had was from Brazil. Whenever we asked if he wanted to do something -- anything -- he would always say "100 percent." It wasn't like he had to think about it, or ask questions, or need to be convinced it would be worth his time. He always said "100%." It was like saying "I'm all in." As a result, we always wanted to do more and more with him and take him to more and more places, because he was always enthusiastically going to give it everything he had. ---- As foreshadowed, this weekend wasn't without mishaps. My canoe buddy got pnuemonia, our host broke his arm, and I got shingles. Still, being "All in" and "100 percent" will be forever more memorable than the weekends of the two guys who asked too many questions. In the meantime, 82-year-old Will Steger is doing great. He's probably just smiling and rolling his eyes at the rest of us.   Fifty years ago (August 25, 1975) Bruce Springsteen's breakthrough third album Born to Run was released. Last weekend, it seemed like half of New Jersey showed up for a three-day conference celebrating the album. Previews of upcoming movies, famous panels, a two-song concert by the E Street band, and . . . nerdy academic speeches. But I didn't know about any of this until 3 months ago. I was giving a speech in Memphis (on Rock and Roll saxophone), and was asked to make a noon-time speech here. Being a Springsteen/Clarence Clemons fanboy, I was on it. Here's a travelogue of some famous Springsteen sites. Here's Why it's called "The E Street Band"The Famous 10th Avenue and E Street (The STOP refers to my playing) Here's Where the Entire Born to Run album was writtenSpringsteen's High School home in Freehold, NJ (his family's third home) Here's Springsteen's Escape Vehicle so he can skip my speech Here's the poster that summarized my speech. Here's a Horrible Sound Quality Version . . .A Non-Born to Run Bonus Springsteen's first album was called Greetings from Asbury Park. The name "Asbury Park" means nothing to 90% of all Americans who aren't from that general area. It's like me saying "Greetings from Lake Okoboji, Iowa." When the album came out in 1973, I wondered what was so special about Asbury Park. Hmmmm . . . 
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