The Grad School Diaries: A Face in the Crowd

O’Hare International Airport wasn’t as big or as grand as I remembered it, but it has been a few years, and I’ve undoubtedly gotten more jaded since the last time I was here. I had just arrived in town for the 2009 Academy of Management Conference, having flown from Detroit (a 29-minute flight) instead of driving five hours from East Lansing. It’s an unusual choice (most of our department either drove or took the train), but we only have the one car, and I can’t leave my wife without transportation for a week. And after our last adventure with passenger rail (what my long-suffering spouse calls “TrainCo”) in 2004, I’m reluctant to use the train for business trips…

Fighting my way through the crowds to Baggage Claim, recovering my bag, and booking a ride to my hotel on a shuttle van were all fairly routine, but felt lonely, somehow. I’m attending a conference of 10,000 people, but other than the folks from my own department, I know only three or four people in this entire field by sight – and it’s doubtful that any of them would recognize me after all of these years…

I had just reached that cheery conclusion when a man a few years older than me came out of the terminal building and climbed into the shuttle van. He seemed vaguely familiar to me, but I couldn’t place the face. “Are you here for the AOM conference?” the man asked.

I told him that I was. “Great!” he exclaimed. “What school are you from?”

I told him that I was from MSU. “I’m from Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles,” he said, naming the school where I had gotten my MBA 15 years earlier. He held out his hand. “My name’s David,” he told me.

I shook his hand, and the dime finally dropped. “You’re David Mathison, aren’t you?” I asked, emphasizing the surname just slightly.

Professor Mathison looked startled at being identified, but he acknowledged that I was correct. I grinned at him.

“You don’t remember me, Professor,” I said. “But I was one of your MBA students back in 1994!”

Readers of my blog (assuming there are any) will already be familiar with the Professor, from one of my early posts on ethics, but for those joining us late, Dr. Mathison was my instructor for the Organizational Behavior/Human Resources elective I took in the MBA program – the same subject I was teaching that summer, albeit at the undergraduate level. Since the last time I’d seen Dr. Mathison, not only had I taken up his profession, I was teaching his subject…

I told the Professor this, and we spent the ride into town catching up on the past 15 years. It has been an eventful time for me; my world has changed beyond recognition as I have gone from 29 to 44; from MBA student to corporate manager to consultant to administrator to grad student again; as I’ve found the love of my life and lost my mother, both grandmothers, my favorite uncle, and my undergraduate mentor. It hadn’t really come home to me until now, telling the story and seeing the words on the page, just how much HAS happened in only a decade and a half; how much loss and how much sorrow; hardship and grief; triumph and joy. It’s the story of a life, and who would have guessed that I’d ever have one, let alone that I already had?

David Mathison had guessed. I won’t tell you the Professor’s story, since it’s not mine to tell. But as tough as my life has been over the past 15 years, he’s had it worse. In fact, it’s no exaggeration to say that he had been through trial and tragedy that would drive me around the bend, just since the last time I’d seen him. And yet, he remained the same good man and the same calm and patient teacher I remembered from that earlier time. It struck me then that some people were born to be teachers, whether they follow that profession or not. They have the gift to show us that the world is larger than we believed, that there are always more things to see and learn and experience, that we have not arrived, but have only begun, the voyage that is life…

I don’t know if I will ever get to be that good at my professions, any of them. Granted, I have made it this far, but I’ve been lucky. I’ve had good teachers…