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.