In this program we will ask you to think out, chart out, or actually write a number of one-page reflection papers, used to start a conversation between you and your guides, or you with others.  While any of the topics could be blown off by you—dashed off without much deeper reflection—we appeal to the best in you to take each topic seriously and think/write as thoughtfully and sensitively as possible; all of us will be able to tell what that means, and how seriously you approached the prompt.  

And since these are one page jobbies—a short assignment for an hour—you should think/write in a direct essay style, not your typical over-written English paper narrative where “it was a dark and slippery night out by the stadium, and the slivers of the silvery moon….”  Instead, simple, direct prose is in order.

For this exercise we will draw down some of the “methodology of design theory” which will be used extensively throughout this program; more on that theory later.  Design theory always starts with a look at where you are, what’s up, before it goes on to look at what lies ahead and how we can get there.  So the prompt for this exercise is a simple question, one I imagine you are asked all the time: “How’s it going?”  Where are you, what’s up, what’s happening in your life right now, what are you doing/facing?   What’s up?  On a scale of one to ten, right now my life is a…?

So that’s the prompt, and for your information, that question was drawn from several college courses on this same topic.  It’s a pretty common question, and while you could dash off a sentence or two, what you might say to someone who asks you casually how you are, there is also a very profound level to the prompt, “how’s it really going?” and it is the latter I want you to think/write about.

To suggest how you can go deep quickly, there is a plaque under the portrait of former Dean of the Faculty Ernie Gillespie in the back of the very center of the Assembly Hall, where Peter teaches and where Steve went to high school, who said in his graduation speech to the departing senior class: 

“...I hope, and I expect, that when you find yourselves involved in skirmishes on the frontiers of barbarism, which are not very far away, you’ll strike some shrewd blows in favor of civilization.   Someday, you’ll come back to show us your trophies and your scars, and we’ll be glad to see you.”  

How’s it going involves, in part, talking about some of your current “scars and trophies,” probably mostly scars—but that hardly exhausts this prompt, and there are so many other directions in which to take it.  Dare to try…..