Last week, I had just finished swimming my laps at our town pool when two young beach attendants — Li and Caitlyn, both of whom are getting ready to start the 10th grade – called over to me and said “Hey, Mr. Jack, are you good at Math”? As I walked towards them, I said, “Why sure, how can I help”? After all I thought, how difficult could this really be, given all of the Math, Statistics and Econometrics courses I had taken in my college and graduate school days. Li and Caitlyn then shared their summer Math packet with me, which they had to complete for their Algebra 2 course that began this week. As I sat and talked with them, I was immediately flooded with my own memories of summer reading assignments as a kid and then later on as a parent to my three children.
There was one particularly vexing problem in the packet that Li and Caitlyn wanted me to look at so I quickly pored over the details:
Solve for x:
X2 + 4X = 12
Needless to say, but a brain cramp quickly set in as I tried to solve the equation. I knew it was a quadratic equation and I remembered some rule about trying to isolate the “x” term but I quickly started babbling and told the girls I would have to get back to them. Suddenly, I felt as if I were Matthew Broderick and his classmates trying to comprehend that Ben Stein lecture on the Laffer Curve and Supply Side Economics in that memorable scene from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
As I followed up with some client meetings later that afternoon, I could not get this quadratic equation out of my head. So on the ride home from NYC, I called my daughter on the West Coast who took less than a minute to figure out the answer while she was driving no less! When I arrived home, I shared the problem with my wife and my other daughter both of whom came up with the correct answer in about one minute although they had to use a piece of paper. So, despite all of the Math courses I had taken over the years, it was clear that I was in desperate need of a refresher course in basic algebra so I added that to my long To Do list. The following day I went back to the pool and explained to Li and Caitlyn how my wife and two daughters had arrived at the correct solution and we all had a good laugh about it and exchanged a couple of high 5s.
As the week progressed, I found myself smiling about this experience and how much fun I had in trying to solve Li and Caitlyn’s problem. The experience was a joyful reminder of how truly special the back to school season really is and the symbolism inherent in my own reflections of past summer vacations and Labor Day weekends. As a young boy growing up in suburban North Jersey, Labor Day was a reality check — a striking reminder that those lazy, hazy days of summer were coming to an abrupt end with a brand new school year just itching to begin. Throughout grammar school and most of high school, my behavioral pattern over the Labor Day weekend was essentially the same drill. There would be the final swim at Graydon Pool followed by one last game of pick-up basketball with my friends at the Graydon courts (BTW none of the rims on the baskets were the official height of 10’). We also had to squeeze in the last minute shopping spree to MacHugh’s Clothing Store for whatever clothes we were going to wear for that first day of school. The MacHugh’s experience became a lot more interesting for me after spending my K-8 years at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Grammar School where school uniforms were mandatory complete with dark grey slacks and that navy blue corduroy sports jacket with the ever-present OLMC insignia attached. My favorite experience though was the trip to Drapkin’s Stationers, a predecessor to today’s Staples and a store that seemed as wide as the Amazon. We did not have any backpacks in those days nor any cellphones, laptops or IPads. Nope — we just had the good old-fashioned book bag back then, one that would be filled with pens, pencils, crayons, an eraser, a ruler, binders, lots of black and white notebooks, and those oversized textbooks, especially that 7th grade World Geography book we had for Miss Pulling’s class.
Once I had checked off all of the items on my Back to School to do list, I would go to bed the night before that first day of school trying to answer all of the questions that at that moment did not have any answers. Questions like which of my good friends would be in my classes, especially homeroom? What teachers would I be assigned to? What would my schedule be like? What time would lunch break be? Did the cafeteria have any new offerings or would I be bringing the usual bologna sandwich on white bread? Would there be any new kids in any of my classes, especially any pretty girls? So many unanswered questions for sure, but ones that were always filled with a sense of excitement, anticipation, and mystery. You believed in infinite possibilities — that indeed, the next school year just might turn out to be the best year of your life!
The Labor Day ritual as a parent was similar in many ways to what I had experienced as a young boy but with far more complexity. Working in the financial services industry for the first 20 years of my professional career, you really had to carefully plan your family vacations. I would imagine that planning any vacation today is a much more difficult task than what I experienced, given globalization and the 24/7 nature of the workplace itself. For most of my career, our family would vacation during those final two weeks of the summer right on through the Labor Day weekend. It was arguably the slowest time of the year other than the week between Christmas and New Year’s holidays. When our children were younger, we would spend many summer vacations in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, which adorns one of the most beautiful lakes around – Lake Winnipesaukee. Boating, rafting, water skiing, hikes galore on Mt. Washington, ice cream every night – boy that was some great fun. My happy experience with Li and Caitlyn last week brought back so many wonderful memories of those epic car rides to and from Wolfeboro. I can vividly recall how much fun we had making up silly Math problems on the fly or quizzing my kids on the various state and world capitals. It could get really competitive at times but it was always great fun, especially the difficult ones none of us could remember like the capital of North Dakota or Maine.
However, summer vacation was not just about being with your family in one place for an extended period. It was also a time to reenergize, to reflect and reassess where you were at that particular moment in your personal and professional life and to think carefully about the specific things you might want to change when you went back to work after Labor Day. For me, the list of things I knew I needed to work on did not seem to change that much from one year to the next, rather each of my targeted behaviors were always at varying stages of a work in progress. On the personal front, seemingly simple things like trying to leave the office a little bit earlier so I could make it home in time for dinner with my wife and children; building time in my busy schedule for some exercise to relieve stress; or a promise to myself to call my parents, siblings and good friends on a more frequent basis. And there were always a host of performance-related issues that I knew I needed to work on to be successful in whatever specific position I held. For example, I knew I had to work harder at being more realistic in setting individual and group performance goals to senior management; in clarifying specific priorities for the short-term versus the long-term; in returning client phone calls and emails more promptly; or being more proactive in trying to resolve difficult working relationships.
As the summer vacation and Labor Day weekend would draw to a close, anxiety and reality would converge at once. There was this sudden realization that summer vacation was over and a pile of things were just awaiting my return to the office. For me specifically, there was the pressure of getting acclimated again to the morning research call with our salespeople and traders that began promptly every morning at 7:15am; there were the multiple company reports waiting to be written; those company conference calls to make to see how the quarter was going; a folder full of phone messages, voicemail messages, and emails to return; client meetings and presentations to prepare for; and a travel schedule that could often seem daunting. So the day after Labor Day, my alarm would once again go off at 4:40am for the long Amtrak train ride from Princeton to New York Penn Station. I would be extra groggy even with my usual two cups of coffee on the train. I would survive the morning call that first day back in the office but it wasn’t until mid-day that I would begin to feel as if I was back in the groove again. Unfortunately, as the day wore on, those great vacation memories and new insights I had worked so hard to develop on my vacation were already getting crowded out by the pressure and daily flow of the job.
So as many people return to the workplace today, I hope you do so with that same energy and passion you may have felt like I did on that first day of the new school year. May your post Labor Day season be filled with that same sense of wonder, excitement, and possibility. Believe in yourself and all of the things that you want to accomplish in your personal and professional life. That future you envision is right there just waiting for you to take that first baby step. Good luck and if you want to have some fun in the interim, how about trying to solve that quadratic equation above. It’s guaranteed to put a smile on your face as it did for me – I promise. Oh yeah, there’s more than one answer.
Good luck my friends and in the words of Coldplay, Viva la Vida!
Warm regards, Dr. K
