The Best Job in the World Part 2: Enzyme

I was asked to answer the following question on the website quora.com. Yesterday I posted my answer to another Quora question in which I stated I used to have the best job in the world. Today, I get to say why, even though I am doing something different, I still have the best job in the world. If this comes across as a contradiction as well as shameless self-promotion I apologize, but I get asked this question a lot in person and via media, so I will risk being critiqued for trying to outline what it is I do.

College and University Admissions: What was Parke Muth's inspiration for creating Parke Muth Consulting?

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I am an enzyme. That’s what I often tell people. I get odd looks after saying this, but it often means they at least want to hear why.

The dictionary might help: “a substance produced by a living organism that acts as a catalyst to bring about a specific biochemical reaction.”

A catalyst creates change and that’s what I try to do. I hope that the majority of the reactions end up helping improve the way the people I interact with might look at themselves, education, and yes, let’s be really grand, the world.

What do I do? I chat mostly. Really. I am old, or at least older than most. In my time on earth I’ve been incredibly blessed to be able to travel extensively and meet thousands of people from all over the world. The vast majority of them are also blessed. Because I have worked in education as a teacher, a dean, an advisor etc. at a highly selective university I've been given access to some of the best-educated people on the planet.

When I meet anyone I try to have a substantive conversation. By the time our time is up I’ve increased my knowledge base and I also hope I have increased theirs. Years of doing this add up to thousands and thousands of what I at least think have been useful conversations. Maybe this is what business folks call making contacts, but that is not my approach.

My byline, "only connect", I borrowed from E.M. Forster’s great novel A Passage to India. What I try to do is each day is talk with people and to connect them to someone or something that might prove useful. In some cases, this means getting business people to talk with politicians and others to work on things that will bring jobs and (investment in a new technology.  Just this week some people I have met with a a lot  were highlighted in the press for bringing the largest Chinese economic development project in the history of the Commonwealth of Virginia: 

Jerry Peng

But this kind of things doesn’t happen that often. Mostly, I am drinking coffee and talking with smart people face to face or Skyping to people around the globe or talking on the phone at all hours.  Most I talk to are young. I have focused mostly in education, finance and consulting, start-ups, and film/social media. I work with people who have a vision and the more they can convince me they have a passion and the willingness to work hard to achieve their dream, the more I will try to find resources of some sort. Sometimes I work with businesses and sometimes (more often) individuals. I am being vague here as I have the choice of giving a rather lengthy list of examples or keeping things low on the radar (which, for a number of reasons, I think is best). I tend to keep some of what I do pretty quiet when it comes to projects until they reach completion.  On the other hand, I will mention one thing I am working on right now.

I have helped advise what I think is a great business called mdoernguild.com. Adrien Fraise and his team have created a way for students to learn the skills they will need to stand out when it comes time to pursue internships and jobs. They already help students who are recipients of two of the most prestigious scholarship programs in the US. Now they are going to beta test a group on international students, for free, in order to give them a better chance at job. For those who do not know, international students face much tougher odds obtaining jobs in The US after graduation. Many companies will not even look at them for jobs. Those that do tend to be incredibly competitive. Recent stories in the press show that colleges and universities do not provide much in the way of career services geared toward international students despite the fact that this is the biggest concern international students voice in surveys.

The truth about me is that I don’t really have a job description. My days vary greatly although it’s pretty true that I meet with people over coffee almost daily to talk. In some cases it’s to help with problems; in others, it’s to give advice, and in others, I am trying to find out more about what they do and think.

I am committed to raise issues I think are important to improving education both in the US and globally. I spend a great amount of time addressing a number of issues on my blog, LinkedIn groups, Quora.com and on some counselor and education groups on Facebook.  When I was attached to a specific university I had to represent it and also had to be much more circumspect about what I could say. Now I can address issues without worrying about fitting my views to meet the institutional needs of one particular institution. I have, in many ways, expanded my goals and my reach. And I say what I think and also post things that will, I hope, be useful to others around the globe. 

For example, I post, if I can find the time, at least one interview per week. These interviews have been mostly with international students or other students who have an inspiring story to tell. Some of the interviewees I have known for years; others, I have never actually met in person, but each one gives a personal account about the ways they have pursued education and internships and jobs. I have learned a great deal from them and from the comments I have received about these posts I know a lot of others have too.In the not too distant future,  I will be expanding my interview base to include more people who are in education whether as professors, administrators, counselors etc.

I also post, nearly weekly, an essay test. I post an essay a student has submitted to selective schools and ask questions about it and about the value of essays in the admission process. I have learned a great deal from this too. While I have written for publications like the US News on essays, and have lectured on the topic many times, I find I have had to update what I think and say. The changes in the Common Ap prompts and what schools seem to want to hear mean that students need to think strategically and creatively about the process. I hope these examples and questions help.

My comments on certain issues in education and admission have made it unlikely that I can return to a traditional role in education. I have strong views on issues but try to back them up with current data and reports and comments that people share. I am trying, to the best of my ability, to give whatever I know away for free

Finally, I send a lot of time reading and writing. This is just plain fun, but I also try to create connections between ways of thinking that I can bring to my conversations. The way the cognitive scientists, philosophers, novelists, engineers, educators, business people, journalists etc. etc. investigate people and issues often have threads that could be usefully tied together in some way. I often give books to people either literally or just by recommending them, as I want to share the words of others who have changed me. I also want to write about trends, ideas and people who have changed me.  In this sense I am not an enzyme. I am changed by these interactions, but from the outside I still live in a place I have lived in for many years, and still talk to students at a school I have spent most of my life trying to support. But I’ve expanded quite a bit too and this has helped me grow and I hope others too.

It would be misleading if I did not also add that I am not always warm and fuzzy. I fight for people and issues and I have found that sometimes my competitive nature and my belief in issues hurts my ability to help most effectively, at least in some cases. But I’d like to believe that when my time is over in this life the balance would weigh in my favor of having helped more than hurt. I’ve tried to learn from mistakes and failures (of which I have many). I wish we now lived in a world that would allow students to learn from failure early on. Life is far different than the educational path many now feel they must follow to succeed. The most competitive and brightest students have rarely had a significant failure from which they have learned and grown. If they did have such a failure it would likely be used against them in terms of opportunities to go to elite schools-- both graduate and undergraduate. The talk about taking risks is easy, but taking them and failing does often result in positive growth. I know this well. So do lots of others. But we have not quite figured out a way to incorporate the knowledge and data about learning from failure into our evaluations of students.

I always tell people I have the best job in the world. Being an enzyme is good.