My Calling: Professional Landscaping?
I’ve just completed my fellowship at Trinity College and am headed to Boston Town USA for an Architectural Landscape program at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design.
I was lucky enough to be able to stop in at the One-Year-Out reunion of the class of 2007. Mr. Reilly clubed out Tansil Theater with classy lighting, great eats, a signature blue camel cocktail and Prez. Big Hig even came through. It was a swanky affair where I ran into peeps like HF Teammates Whitney Longworth and Yeslan Hernandez, my shoe shopping wizard Ally Glassman, studio ally (soon to be Boston ally) Amber Fitch and a few other faces. The next morning I was cheering on ’08 grads as they took the stage for the quick two minutes it took to grab the paper from His Higness.
It was much less stressful then my own graduation a year earlier. No cap and gown, family, or packing to worry about. It was nice to enjoy the beautiful day and relive the true triumph of graduation through my friends.
2008 Conn. grads had the pleasure and honor of listening to Tavis Smiley, talk show host, author and a professional Black man. A protégé of Cornel West and a great thinker in his own right Smiley reminded the class of ‘08 that they did not enter into a prestigious institution to graduate as followers, but as leaders. He also told the grads that in order to lead they most love, and if they want to save (the world and the people in it) they must serve. Smiley asked the grads to search for their calling, not a job, a calling. The speech was delivered in an organic oration that defined the reality of the responsibilities that the Connecticut College diploma charges to its graduates.
All this gave me pause. Have I been fulfilling the charges of my diploma? Have I been honoring my unique and selective education that is available to a minuet number of people in the world? The short, excuse free, answer is no. The next question is how can I honor the charges of my diploma and what would that look like…? I need to marinate on that one.
In preparation for the intensive landscape architecture program I rented The Lawnmower Man (on VHS, cause I roll like that). Staring Pierce Brosnan TLM tries to do for virtually reality what War Games did for global thermal nuclear war. TLM fails miserably and I learned nothing about landscape Architecture, major disappointment.
love and lead/serve and save