Tuesday, January 16, 2018

Long View or Short

A young(ish) man in our congregation was appointed principal of a college. The college had 73 students. It  had all but disintegrated before his arrival. He found there was no secretary, only one staff member apart from him, a broad curriculum, many rural students, and so on. He had conducted an experiment, he said, selling an African food speciality. Every day, it had sold out. He would earn more money as a vendor than he was earning as a principal. What should he do? I said how much are you driven by the desire to escape? What is the long view? What would it look like in three years' time? How much experience would you have then? I also suggested that he might look into adult education techniques (in which I was trained) to spread the load. OBSERVATION: He came back to me and said he had decided on "the long view". He would stay. I visited him at the college, and was impressed by his attentiveness and affection towards the students, in spite of the task being too much. Tragically, he died. His name was Ranga.

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