400M Hurdle Theory

Easily since the mid point of my second to last semester, I’ve felt pretty overwhelmed. The sheer volume of “Important Things To Do” that take up my day to day existence in order to get through everything that comes with being in grad school is just ridiculous. It got rough enough that at the end of December, when I should have been in a kind of ‘full throttle’ mode, that one day, I just sat. Literally. I was on a couch for a few hours just staring at the wall when I made the only semi-conscious choice to just stop. Everything. No studio, no thesis, no working, no job hunting. Obviously, this was a bad choice. I’m still hurting for it now. It took many more weeks to pick up the pieces when I did get rolling again than it would have been to keep some wheels spinning all along.

It seems like every couple of days I’ve got another big ‘can’t miss it!’, ‘don’t stop!’, ‘full speed ahead!’, ‘keep going!’, ‘watch out!’, ‘you’re gonna crash and the world is going to end!’ kind of deadline. Frequently, they seem to fall on the same days. And granted, some of this is just nested in my personality to always be scanning the horizon and trying to predict the future. But on the other hand, I’m coming to the end of a long process that has a lot of loose ends to tie up (grad school) at the same time that others are beginning to unravel for the first time (job hunting). My approach to this transition can be best summed up in the 400-Meter Hurdle theory.

The 400m hurdle race is arguably the most demanding of all events in the sprint-hurdle group. It requires a combination of speed + endurance (fixed semester length, way too many things to fit in) and hurdling skill (project deadlines) along with a unique awareness of stride pattern between hurdles (dedication in the face of exhaustion / tying to make the unsustainable, sustainable) which requires special concentration throughout the race. This is definitely the definition of grad school.

So, several tips for the big race:

Without question, the ideal stride pattern is a consistent pattern of steps between all hurdles.

What does this mean? Know yourself. Know your most productive times and try to arrange that you are available to work during those hours, whether they be late or early. Keep it even throughout the week. Even if you work/school schedule varies try to get up at the same time each day. Waking up at 7am, I workout on the days I don’t have to be somewhere immediately. Perfect fit.

The hurdler should strive to accelerate the last few strides into the hurdle.

At the same time, relax a little between hurdles. Try to exercise, cook decently balanced meals, and see your friends. Catch up on co-worker gossip, network and revamp portfolios. Because yes, you will exhaust yourself immediately preceding deadlines and have no time to do any of this. It is unavoidable. So try to remain as healthy and balanced for as long as possible before the bottom drops out.

Leading with the knee is the single most important fundamental of efficient hurdle technique.

For me, this means that in order to get somewhere, you’ve got to know where you’re going, which takes lots and lots of planning. I’m constantly thinking of the next day and how I can make it go smoother; packing lunches, gym bags, organizing pick up and drop offs, scheduling for larger time chunks to better focus on assignments. And big picture too of course, set clear goals and come up with simple, daily tasks that will help you achieve them.

It is very important to be able to make any of these adjustments well in advance of the hurdle, instead of trying to rush an adjustment in the last few strides before the hurdle.

However, there are always last minute kinks. Sometimes, I’ve tended to ignore these and plow ahead with my schedule anyways. This is bad. I never get where I intended on going this way. And sometimes, I fall spectacularly. While this would have to be funny to watch from the side lines, in order to prevent actually living through the fall (more than I already have anyways) re-evaluation is almost as important as initial planning.

 

Interviewing Prep

I went on a sort of “informational interview” today and I definitely recommend the experience. Other than transferring my portfolio layout from a 8.5” x 11” landscape to a 8” x 8” square (which takes way longer than it sounds), I hadn’t done much interview prep. I looked over the company website of course, and had a rough idea of what I thought I could contribute to their process. And I quickly scanned notes from interviews past, right before my meeting, to come up with memorable work stories and questions for the end. However, even this little bit was more than my interviewer had done. She readily admitted to not even having gone to bed the night before, being slightly hung over, with a cold, and more than a little cranky. Nice.

I kind of let all my prep work go out the window at that point, but the experience was still worth it just to hear myself speak, in order to understand that the way I lay things out in my head isn’t necessarily the sequence that they come out while speaking. This was important for two reasons:

• One, I now know to talk my way through my series of question and answers, out loud, several days before an expected interview. This is just knowing yourself. Knowing your one year and five year goals so you’ll understand what you’re aiming at. If you don’t know where you’re going, you can’t tell someone how you’ll get there with their company.
• Two, now that I’ve heard all my flubs, I can come back, regroup, and plan more narrative responses that take the interview where I want it to be, rather than where it just ends up. This is simply selling yourself more precisely along the lines that you’ve established.

Now with this hurdle jumped, I think I’ll drop the portfolio rehash / job search / interview prep for a few more weeks to gear up for other deadlines. I liken this semester to a 400m Olympic hurdling race. But more on that later.

 

How to keep plans moving after the consultants leave.

Make no little plans. They have not the magic to stir mens blood.

-Daniel Burnham

I’m pretty sure this is on the syllabus, day one of planning school; if its not already taped to the classroom door, typed into the Powerpoint presentation and posted on the course’s website.  Another thing Burnham could have added though, is to have a contingency plan in place for when the initial plan’s consultant stops getting paid to promote the project and the community / council / or committee takes over. At a public meeting, the speaker was asked exactly this question. What was in store for his plan after he stopped taking it on a speaking tour? I thought his answer was genius.

The speaker noted that part of the initial planning process was to create an open enrollment for the advisory committee. This is a change from the norm. Advisory committees are typically 20 person boards full of figure heads and individuals of stature within the political and economic hierarchy of the community. These individuals are typically asked to participate by either the consultants or other advisory committee members based on connections. As a refreshing counter to this, the consultants created a website that hosted an open enrollment policy, allowing passionate members of the community to sign up, advise the process, and then (the genius part) continue stumping for the proposal within their communities and local government structure long after the consultant and figure heads had left the project.

While I’m sure this created headaches of its own, the hassle of consensus making among the 150+ individuals who signed up comes to mind, its benefits are clear. Having 150, hard core, very knowledgeable community supporters (aka, the foundations of a mob) who are willing to devote their scarce time and energy into promoting a project never hurt.

 

How to be a better meeting participant.

This morning, I attended my first public meeting in months. Its been a while for two reasons:

• One, I was out of town for four months for two summer internships in various cities.
• And two, the fall semester I returned to near about squelched my desire to do any type of extra curricular activity, much less my own degree requirements.

I was taking four hours over the institute allowed 21 semester hours in order to finish my degree on time; working extra hours at my architecture co-op in response to the state wide increases in tuition; and struggling to wrap up thesis research at the same time that I was in a typical, required architectural studio – a College of Architecture scheduling failure if you ask me

So, it was quite entertaining to get out of my own little world and plop my big toe back into the going-ons of the city. I attended a monthly meeting held by the Center for Quality Growth and Regional Development on the topic of Healthy Places.  January’s speaker was John Moore from Gladding Jackson, introducing the Connect Atlanta Plan, the city’s new comprehensive transportation planning document.

Ask a question!

The presentation was highly informative, if only because I’m probably the only person left in my degree program who has yet to attend a presentation somewhere: at work, through a class, an evening lecture, etc. on the information contained in the document. I’ll be blogging on other tangential notes I took during presentation, but I’ll start with the question I asked during the comments section at the end. Not the actual question, but just the idea of asking one. And yes, I have to consciously force myself to do this. I’m not very good at putting myself out there, but its beneficial for several reasons:

• It forces you to pay more attention to the presentation when you know you’ll be required to ask a somewhat put together and comprehensible question at the end.

• It gives you something to start with if you approach the speaker afterwards. Better to introduce yourself and say, “I asked the (very insightful) question about blah, blah, blah, earlier and I really enjoyed what you had to say on such and such“ rather than “Hi, I sat in the back, uninterested / unmotivated enough to pay attention”.

• Speaking about what you’ve learned, rather than purely listening to it, helps cement the information in your mind for future reference.

• Asking questions also raises your interaction with the other attendees, both during the comments time and afterwards. It gives you a chance to respond to the speaker, and the audience a chance to respond to you, or to the speakers’ response, to further the conversation.

Now, for obvious reasons, this isn’t always possible and it is largely correlated to the size of the audience. There isn’t the time for everyone to ask a question. However, most people usually don’t, so that leaves plenty of room if you’re interested enough in the topic.