Message of the Day: Going that extra step

Good Morning,

 

Back when I was in college for the first time in the late 80's I had moved my major from an Engineering major to Classical Civilization (a literary enriched history program). In other words, my engineering degree was becoming ancient history.  In the Classical Civilization program I had to take either ancient Greek or Latin as a language. I chose Latin.

 

A few friends and I were in the same Latin 1 and 2 classes with a teacher who, himself, was a Graduate Student working on his Ph.D. He was also a wonderful instructor and we wanted him to teach Latin 3 and 4. Unfortunately, he was not scheduled to teach those courses. So we asked him if he would if the opportunity opened up. He was agreeable but said that it could not be changed.

 

So we went to the chairman of the Classical Civilization department and asked him to change the teach schedule to allow our favorite Latin teacher to teach Latin 3 & 4. He told us that the schedule had to be approved by the Provost office of the University.

 

At that point, our merry band of about 4 students stopped and thought about what it meant to approach the Provost office. This was only a notch or two below the President of the University. None of us had ever spoken to the Provost, or even knew who they were. We thought it through and decided we wanted this teacher and marched to the Provosts office and asked to speak to the Provost about allowing the schedule change to occur.

 

The Provost's response was that chairman of the department could make that change.

 

The very person who sent us to the Provost office. So, our merry band turned around and marched back to chairman of the Classical Civilization department's office to ask for the change. This time, he was smiling knowing we had seen the Provost.

 

His diversion was not meant as a deception, rather it was to see how much we truly wanted to get this instructor to teach this class, as he would have to switch a bunch of schedules around.

 

When we went that extra step, one that was beyond our comfort zone, we found the barrier to our goal became paper thin.

 

Sometimes it is not how much you are willing to do in order to achieve your goal that gets the barriers to crumble.

 

Going that extra step can make all the difference.

 

Enjoy!

 

Sanford Berenberg
Sanford@berenberg.net
http://www.berenberg.net

http://sanfordberenberg.blogspot.com/
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