TKC Letters Project - All of Life is "Plan B"

All of Life is “Plan B”

This is dedicated to world-class faculty assistants and business strategy students who have co-labored with me in my tenure at King’s. (In no particular order…)

Megan Ristine, Hannah Rawls, Hannah Hagadorn, David Linamen, Chailynn Chase, Jessica Burchman Cochran, Zachary Cochran, Carter Fletcher, Aisha Seay, Gabriella Kressley, Julia Guagliardi, Sophia Erskine, Caroline Swenson, Kara Karlson, Anya Hausknecht, Cambrie Luce, Leah Arrasmith, Rachel Henn, Brooke Crouthamel, Enoma Osakue, Jensen Frey, Callie Donaghue, Kaitlyn Simon, Geeta Lalvani, Meric Pope, Jessica Mathews, Jonathan Batman. Business Strategy CapSim Teams from Spring 2018 and Spring 2019 who placed #1 in the CapSim World Challenge. You know who you are…

When I was working for Citibank, I needed to decompress from the New York rush and decided to rent a car and spend a quiet weekend in Connecticut. It was a frigid day and I hit a patch of black ice. The car spun out control. Had it travelled another ten feet, the accident would have created a fatal head on collision. The car was so mangled when the ambulance arrived that it was hard to imagine anyone survived it.

That was the inflection point. I suffered spinal injury requiring me to find work that was less physically taxing and would enable me to get the medical help to heal. Teaching at King’s was going to be a short-term solution until I could get back to banking. But God had other plans. How thankful I am that He did.

I laugh when students tell me “I never planned on coming to the King’s College….” because teaching at King’s was not on my radar either. My first role here was as an adjunct teaching in the evening school which no longer exists.

The only reason I was hired was because the management professor never showed up and I was the last-minute substitute. I taught in the graduate program at NYU but never undergraduates. It was all new. God has a sense of humor.

These were four-hour lectures from six to ten PM for five students, four of whom never did their assignments or showed up for class. It was easy to think I was wasting my time. Yet there was one who was brilliant and showed up faithfully. He was the electrician at the Brooklyn Tabernacle Church. Rumor has it that he eventually graduated law school.

The Holy Spirit asked me “if I bring you one of my sheep would you give than one the best you have to offer? I said “yes”. That’s when the multiplication happened. Five became thirty became hundreds and now so many years later, thousands. Meeting and getting to know the students of The King’s College has been one of the greatest blessings I have ever known. I love them. I also feel privileged to advocate for their best future as they transition from teenagers to adulthood and beyond. They are amazing people from every walk of life and country in the world. It’s not just what our students learn but who they become as professionals, partners and parents that continues to inspire me.

Their faith has built mine. Going to China with twenty-five King’s students and singing “How Great is Our God” on the top stairs of the Temple of Heaven in the Forbidden City in Beijing still brings tears to my eyes. And every time we graduate another cohort of those who finish their undergraduate race strong, we send light and life into a world that desperately needs them. And when I remember their faces, my heart is strengthened. The future is in good hands.