Perhaps "role model" is not really the right term. I would see a role model
as being someone who you can follow at a certain stage of your life if you
so choose - at that particular time. I studied economics at university not
because I knew what I was getting myself into but because someone who lived
in my dorm was so enthusiastic about it that it rubbed off. I look back on
those days with some mystification now, wondering why I ever did that. I
have been extremely wary of role models ever since.
In addition to role models and heroes, there is yet another type of person
who is important to one's life and career. This is the "mentor". I've had
several. I think of them as people who, for a time, play such a powerful
role in your life that some kind of transcendence takes place. You come out
of it changed for the better. (Of course there is also the anti-mentor, who
can change you for the worse. I'd watch out for him!)
Ed
Ed Weick
(613) 728-4630
Visit my website: http://members.eisa.com/~ec086636
> Edward R Weick wrote:
> [snip]
> > When we are young we have role-models. As we move on through life and
> > succumb to the burdens and afflictions Rand describes, we discard roles
> > models one by one or convert them to heroes. I'm at that stage in life
> > where I have only heroes left.
>
> Not all children have role models. I had none. I mean that
> entirely seriously. I had no childhood heroes, either.
> When John F. Kennedy was assassinated, all the other kids and
> teachers rushed to the chapel (where there was a television set,
> as well as prayer space) but I just stayed in the
> classroom and didn't have much interest in it.
>
> This was the response to a very sensitive child to
> a social surround which almost never engaged with him in any
> appealing way, but *did* try to extract things from
> him like him being supposed to tell his mother he loved her and
> to mean it, and being continually tested on memorized useless
> facts and having to do other meaningless-to-him school assignments,
> "or else!"
>
> One of the first "role-models" in my life was, when at about
> age 26, I read Hermann Broch's _The Sleepwalkers_, and one
> character in the book goes out into the street hoping to
> encounter by chance another character: "but, of course
> he doesn't meet him". That was a sign that things could be better!
>
> When, at about age 34, a coworker lent me Thomas Kuhn's _Structures_,
> and I read that new scientific theories gain hegemony not by the
> persons who believed in the previous theory being *converted*, but
> because they all eventually *die off without being able to
> recruit members of the next generation to carry on their work* -->
> Then I saw that, eventually, all my tor-mentors and their
> whole so-called "world" with them, might one day all de
> dead and be gone.
>
> I went to a "prep school" and graduated from "Yale" in the
> same class as George W....
>
> In adult life, I have encountered a few persons who I have
> been able to respect and/or to have some constructive and
> even pleasing interaction
> with. The most admirable of them all is a manager I worked for
> about 28 years ago -- the only reason he cannot be called a martyr is
> that he is still converting oxygen into carbon dioxide.
>
> Therefore, my take on role models and heroes is
> largely (albeit not exhaustively...) summed up in
> Bertold Brecht's lines:
>
> Student: Happy the land that breeds a hero.
> Galileo: No. Unhappy the land that needs a hero.
>
> Just one person's life experience in this area....
>
> "Never again."
>
> +\brad mccormick
>
> --
> Let your light so shine before men,
> that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
>
> Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
>
> <![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua NY 10514-3403 USA
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> Visit my website ==> http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/
