What's in your backpack?

I thought as I began my journeys, I would reflect a little bit on how one packs as a professional traveler and what it says about said person. To do so, I hope you'll forgive my homage to a recent traveling comedy/tradgedy about a similary handsome professional traveler called "Up in the Air."

The movie follows the life of professional bad news bearer Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) who travels the country firing people for companies that don't have the taste to do it themselves (even though they signed the paperwork.) Along the way, he promotes his own life lessons workshop called "What's in your backpack." As a man who travels essentially alone for most of the year, he is a major advocate of keeping relatively loose ties with everyone around him. "Long distance friends," he callously cautions, "only adds to your backpack and weighs you down. Move to your own rythym, your own goals."

His attitudes reflect those of another famous hollywood traveler, The Narrator (played by Edward Norton) from the Fight Club, who claims that he has many friends, but like the portion sizes of the items on the airplanes he travels in, they are "one shot" friends.

[For more information on both movies, please watch them or, barring that, IMDB them.]

In many ways, both of these characters hew closely to the lifestyle of a professional Fraternity / Sorority consultant. Especially for the Sorority (and some Fraternity) consultants who travel by air.

But in many ways too, this solitary existance runs counter to our very nature to be social and to bond. Phired Up Productions calls our desires to excel, to network, to make friends, "Social Excellence." They talk about working conferences, developing networks, and mutually supporting each other by having deep and meaningful conversations that rebuild, re-energize, and repopulate our will to make a difference. The philosophy is so prevelant that Google search auto-populates "Phired Up Social Excellence" as a third option when you begin typing it. Other books, including wildly sucessful networking guides such as Keith Ferrazzi's "Never Eat Alone" and Dale Carnegie's "How to Influence People and Make Friends" are also huge advocates of embracing, rather than rejecting, human connections.

For those of you who are in the field of working with undergraduates, I cannot over-state the importance of this lesson. If you want to make a difference with the people you work with, help them care with you. There is no greater joy, in my mind, then sitting with an officer or regular member, and watching them as they come to their own conclusions. I may, as "the expert" have a million ideas, but unless they take ownerhsip over them, then I'm just blowing hot air.

Remember folks, in this world, it isn't what you know anymore, it's who you know. This will be especially important as the economy continues to struggle with unemployment hovering at 10%. There are many qualified people out and about. People with experience in your field. Most likely more experience than you. As Jerry Nelson, co-founder of Ticketmaster, tells the participants of the American Leadership Academy "I need people for my company. I don't need you."

Sounds callous, doesn't it?

So, what does all of this mean? In this lonely world of ours, make sure you hold on to the connections you have. Do more to develop new contacts. Network, network, network! Even if you are the smartest man (or woman) in the room, in the company, in the world; unless you have personal relationships built, your advice is going to fall into the spam folder of the minds of the people you meet unless you give them a reason to care. That said, one of the biggest reasons to care, is you.

So, I promised you that I would tell you how I pack and how it reflects a little of the lonesome nature of this job? Well, here it is.
1 Suitcase:
*7 polo shirts (one for each day of the week), remember these will be repeated over and over again. I can go a month with 7, but you generally don't want to be caught wearing the same shirt twice during a 3 day chapter visit
*2 pairs of slacks
*1 pair of jeans
*1 pair of shorts
*Underwear and socks to fit [Never skimp here, there's nothing worse then dirty undergarments, just ask Forrest Gump about wet socks]

1 Laptop Bag:
*Essential electronic items [charger for laptop, ipod cord, cell phone charger, etc.]
*Note Pad [preferably spiral, so I don't lose pages when I pack it tight]
*Fraternal Documentation [Risk Management Forms, Accredidation forms, contact info sheets
*1 Book [Currently the Everything Guide to Leadership]

Sleeping Bag
*For those chapter houses that just aren't really habitable...

Pillow

Backpack
*For when I may want to take a day trip somewhere.

That's the sum of my total posessions for three months out of each semester. That, and the friends I meet at each chapter and those in my phone book, and on facebook. Those friends are perhaps my greatest asset, be they from my undergraduate days or as a professional contact. They are the ones who help me out while I'm on the road, helping me stay sane. These friends are certainly my most precious resource. More than all the rest of my meager supplies that carry me from one truck stop to the next.

It's very easy to lose sight of all of that, however, when your next destination is some 300 miles from nowhere.

So, the question I want to pose you is...

What's in your backpack?

By Way of Introduction

I suppose I should introduce myself.

For the past 23 some odd years, I have always believed that I was the smartest guy in the room.

Boy, was I wrong.

This is my second year as a traveling consultant for a national mid size fraternity. Over the course of the year, I put in almost 30,000 miles traveling and have been in 30 out of 50 states. I have visited chaptes varying size from 10 to 120 on campuses that top division 1 NCAA athletics down to the smallest of liberal arts schools. As I have struggled through a wide array of situations and experiences that perhaps it was time to jot down some (I would hope) nuggets of wisdom.

The first of which is - There is a lot that you don't know that you don't know.

It was my junior year of college when I first heard of this concept told to me explicitly. It was in a diversity seminar when talking about cultural assuptions that the facilitators drew a big circle on the board and carved out a tiny sliver.

"This 10%," they told the group "is the sum total of knowledge that you know." Such information includes 2 + 2 equals 4, the sky is blue (in most parts of the country, although during the wildfire seasons in California, sometimes I doubt it...), and my bank account is really, REALLY, empty at the moment. This is the section I always thought I was in. I felt like I knew a heck of a lot of things.

"This 20%," they said afterward, carving a slightly bigger portion out of the circle, "are things you know that you don't know." Such as the chemical reactions that occur during a shuttle launch, non-euclydian geometry, particle physics, and for the most part, statistics. This is where I am now, I know there are things I will need to ask others for help to explain. This is why I love wikipedia.

"The remainder," they said, pointing to the vast blank section of the circle, "is all of the information you don't know that you don't know." Like why car tires insist on going flat ONLY in the most rural roads of Pennsylvania and that a keg stand is the only true way of testing a man's character (for you attorney folk and otherwise litigiously inclined, please relax, I'm only being facetious.)

So what do I do? I try to fill in the remainder of that 70% of knowledge. I am a professional student. I question the status quo. I am an adventurer.

While I may be a truly narcissistic individual, I hope that this blog will not be. I invite you to comment, critique, and challenge my thought processes and theories. I will occassionaly talk about Fraternity and Sorority problems in specific, but I will try to link it to the greater mission of learning about things we don't know that we don't know, through the adventure that is life through a lense of educational theory, entrepenuerial spirit, and the tool set provided by Fraternity and Sorority Life.