Real Leadership by John Addison

Author:John Addison
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education
Published: 2016-04-25T04:00:00+00:00

This was exactly what we had to do now.

Condition People for Success

Leaving home for college in the fall of 1975 was one of the toughest transitions of my life. Looking back it seems almost ludicrous to me now. The University of Georgia in Athens was barely fifty miles away from where my parents and I lived, less than an hour’s drive. Obviously I could come home at anytime to visit. But to me, I might as well have been heading off to the University of Alaska. I was leaving my home, my friends, my neighborhood, and going off to live in a strange environment with thousands of students and gigantic classes.

Arriving at the campus in Athens was an experience of total culture shock. I’d grown up in a tiny community on the outskirts of a town of maybe five thousand people. Now there were four times that many people just in my school.

One of my first classes, Political Science 101, took place in a huge amphitheater with several hundred students. I took a seat in the back row and looked around. A lot of these students had come from the wealthier sections of Atlanta and gone to prep schools. They were ready for this place and looked like they fit right in. I felt like I’d relocated to Mars.

That first day of class, the girl sitting in front of me raised her hand. When the professor called on her she said, “Are we going to receive a syllabus today?”

A syllabus? What on earth was that? I had not the slightest clue what the word meant. I thought, The class hasn’t even started yet, and I’m already behind! Had these people all taken a course in how to go to college? Because they all seemed like they knew what was going on, what to expect, what to do, and I was absolutely lost.

After that demoralizing political science class, I went back to my dorm room and called my dad from a pay phone at the end of the hall. “Dad,” I said. “I hate it here. I don’t like the people. I don’t like the place, and I don’t want to stay. I don’t know what I’m doing here. I want to quit school, come home, and get a job.”

He said, “Look, Son. We’ve already paid your tuition. You’re already there. Tell you what. Wait till Christmas, and then we’ll make a decision.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll give it a shot.” I hung up feeling heavy-hearted. Christmas seemed like an awful long way away.

That first semester at college was the first and only time in my life when I found myself saying, “Okay, so this is what being depressed is all about.”

A few weeks later, we had our first political science exam. When they handed around our graded papers, I was thrilled to see I’d made a 98. I peeked over at the girl who sat in front of me, the one who’d asked about the syllabus on day one. Because of

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