My Most Important Decision in Four Years at Yale was…
to leave Yale for a year!
My first three years at Yale were unexceptional: Directed Studies, sophomore slump, standard English major, frequent weekend visits to Northampton, engagement in the notorious snowball riot on Elm Street. Rebellious roommates and late adolescent critique of everything in my environment led me to miss an unknown opportunity by rejecting a bid from future Ohio Governor Dick Celeste to join one of the underground secret societies (which later turned out to be that of Yale ’60’s Dan Horowitz!). Prior to leaving for a summer job in Germany after my junior year, disaffection led me to a nervous meeting with the Dean to talk about the possibility of leaving Yale for a time. The shocking reply was to encourage a leave of absence and simply to advise me to send a postcard stating that I was taking a year off!
The postcard was duly sent with no knowledge of where the leave of absence would lead me. The summer sojourn as a surveyor’s assistant holding stanchions to control street traffic grew to more than a year away from Yale. Surprisingly, it became a time of personal growth: From daily jobs on construction and irresponsible escapades including expulsion from a summer work camp in Berlin, sheer luck led to ‘employment’ at a Protestant Church Conference Center. During my time as assistant-for-all-things at the Center, service as a guide at an associated local medieval monastery and church proved that I could even hold the attention of German visitors by amusing them with anecdotes about their own cultural heritage!
Contacts with political, social and business leaders, deep insights into post-war German society, beginning interest in international development and critiques of Northern Countries by the Global South, as well as a relaxed semester at street-side cafes at the University of Munich, highlighted a period when I began to dream in German.
When my extended Bildungsreise (freely translated as ‘Transformative Journey’) came to an end with my return to Yale, my Class of ‘60 classmates had left, I lived off campus, and I renewed and reinvented myself in a monastic existence as a potential Germanist scholar. No more weekends in Northampton! I switched from a standard English major to a hard-pressed honors major in German. After three years of late adolescence at Yale following the crowd, for one year I took personal initiatives to engage with all the riches of learning and culture that the great university that is Yale had to offer.
The wonderful experiences of personal development in Germany on leave from Yale and from my fourth capstone year at Yale College led me not only to reap the benefits of serious study and connections at Yale but also to pass exams for the foreign service and CIA. My international activities continued by teaching at a Ghanaian secondary school, under the Yale Men Abroad program, following the path of Yale ’60 Classmate Tom Miller. Thus began my career as a global citizen – fostered by a time away from Yale – stimulated by years at the United Nations and capped by thirty years facilitating the growth of poor countries and peoples at the World Bank.