ArcaMax

At the gym, my trainer told me he was going to a trainers' conference in Austin. He worried that he might be both the shortest and weakest person there. I told him, "That's the room you want to be in."

It's a trope in the motivation and hustle circles that you should be finding the rooms in which you are surrounded by those who are where you want to be. If you're comfortable in a room with your peers, or worse, you're the mythical one-eyed king in the land of the blind, it might be getting to your head, and worse, stifling the hustle.

As much as I've stepped out of the hustle stream the last few years, this is one of the things I've held onto. I enjoy being in rooms with those who know more, and especially those who are enthusiastic about what they know, do, and love.

That said, you can hustle too close to the sun, end up in elected office, start going to Super Important Meetings, and look around realizing that the adults aren't coming. It's you; you're the adult, and you have to make the decision. We don't have frank conversations about what it's like to be the one making decisions, or how being the one who makes the decisions could change you.

We spend plenty of time talking about how to get into those rooms, considerably less about what we owe the people in them once we're the ones sitting at the table.

As I sat in a room this week with around 100 students for a doctoral orientation, the dean of the graduate school said that it had been almost 30 years since he sat in our chairs. He then repeatedly stressed that he hoped we'd graduate quickly, at least three times in what was supposed to be a welcoming presentation.

Later, another presenter used the reflection of what she would have liked to have been told when she started her PhD. As I drove home, and after chatting my dismay over with my husband, we reached a consensus on what was missing in that speech: the heart behind our why.

Back when I got my master's degrees, I chafed against The Point. What exactly were we doing and why? A faculty member told me that we were shaping ourselves to be able to stand and continue the conversation in our field. And later, I got the sense that it's a PhD where knowledge creation happens.

But I think what stayed with me from that explanation was simpler: Someone had bothered to tell me why I was entering the room. There are rooms we spend years trying to get into, only to eventually discover that someone else is looking to us to explain why the room matters.

What could have been said at the orientation:

'I just want you all to take a moment to think about what it's taken to get you here. Not just physically, because I know that you've come from thousands of miles and kilometers away, but who has held you up in the moments you most needed it to reach the next rung of the ladder of your life. Think of them now. Feel their pride in you, because it's a pride that all of us here at the graduate school share.

All of you here will contribute something we don't have yet: a question, an answer, an idea, a piece of knowledge that wasn't here before you were. That's why you're in this room.

How honored we are that you've taken a seat at our table.'

Perhaps it's something I'll remember to say in 30 years.

Cassie McClure is a writer, millennial, and unapologetic fan of the Oxford comma. She can be contacted at cassie@mcclurepublications.com. To learn more about Cassie McClure and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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