Oh the Places You'll Go

I hope I'm not infringing on copyright by appropriating for this essay's title the name of one of my favorite Dr. Seuss books. If my recent comments on The Why of Work and immediate thank-you from the Ulrichs are any indication, I can soon expect an instant message from a Geisel Foundation attorney. The places you'll go, she'll tell me, may include the slammer.  

But it's true. None of us ever really knows where we'll wind up. A conversation with my friend Paula Egelson yesterday vividly reminds me how valid the old saw is. We are all on a journey, especially leaders who follow their heart, and arguably leaders must follow their heart. It has been true for me and so it has been for Paula.

I met Paula in 1990 when we were both first-year students in the doctoral program at UNCG. Our first course in the Educational Leadership program was called "Problem-Finding Seminar." What a propitious name for a class! We're still finding problems, Paula and I. And as it turned out, one of the two professors teaching us, Dr. Roy Forbes, was later to become our SERVE boss. 

Our friendship continued beyond graduation. In fact, Paula was instrumental in my return to the lab in 1997 from a principal job with Asheboro City Schools. We eventually rose to the level of program directors, and although rarely together, we traveled the nation from one end to the other, trying to do some good, and always sharing with each other what we were learning.

With direction changing at the US Department of Education in 2005, and maybe a feeling that we had done at SERVE all the good we could do, we altered course. I came to the North Carolina Triangle to help in founding the regional leadership academy. Paula went to South Carolina College of Charleston where she directed a school-community partnership with the School of Education.

Paula called me yesterday as part of a new job she had taken with SREB, an internationally-renown education research and policy organization based in Atlanta. She wanted to pick my brain about the state of leaders and leadership preparation and development in North Carolina. We had a great conversation about that, and of course, about our friends now far and wide. Paula told me she never imagined living and working in Atlanta. I said the same about Raleigh.

I am happy for Paula. It's a new beginning for her. And I could tell from the sound of her voice, her heart is in it. She will do a lot of good. Whatever bloomed for the partnership at the College of Charleston in the summer of 2005 is five years later all but gone. I am as saddened by that as I am heartened to learn that my friend is well.

Wherever you, dear reader, wind up years from now, I will also declare my happiness for you. Someone once wrote that with a birth begins a death. It's the circle of life. And in between, oh, the places you'll go!