professional

This weekend, I was in Chicago for The Concordia Invitational Tournament (CIT), the second-oldest college basketball tournament in the country (older than March Madness!). After trailing throughout their entire first game, our women's team tied it up with two minutes left, took the lead with one minute remaining, and held on to win their first CIT game in recent memory! Unfortunately, the women lost a close, hard-fought championship game. Our men's team lost two close games, with the youngest team at the tournament. Often, we had four freshmen on the court. I had all the freshman guys in my First-Year Seminar class this fall, and it was exciting to see them learn to take leadership on the court and follow the example of the graduating seniors. Watching these guys play their hearts out and the women fight tooth and nail for a win, I have never felt so much pride for our students.

The teams' coaches were spectacular, wholly focused through all forty minutes of each game, pacing the bench, challenging bad calls (of which there were many!), and shouting instructions to their players. Seeing the coaches and players performing to their full potential was inspiring. On the drive home, I pondered how we humans might relate differently if we all had a chance to see each other functioning in our greatest strengths. Perhaps narcissistically, I also wondered, "When am I living to my full potential? What are my championship game coaching and playing moments? What is my court? Who are my teammates and how do we enable each other?"

This evening, I stumbled across the embedded YouTube video of a young prodigy performing "Carry On Wayward Son" by Kansas. If this doesn't inspire you to do what you're created to do, I don't know what will.

Tomorrow, before the sun rises, I'll be driving a 15-passenger van full of college students to Chicago for the weekend. I have so much work to do while I'm there, that I don't know how I'll get it all done, but I'm brining my laptop and we'll see what happens.

I got Apple's latest version of iWork when it went on sale on Tuesday. When I paid with a credit card, the guy at the Apple Store Briarwood apologized for having to check my ID, “Since you're in here like every day.” iWork is pretty freakin' sweet. The new Excel-killer, Numbers, is quite sophisticated for a first-gen product, but the lack of pivot-tables keep Excel alive for me.

The main reason I upgraded was for Keynote, Apple's best piece of software. I'm using it to prepare my presentations for Student Leader Training next week. It is pure joy to use. That said, it's Saturday evening, and I've been working on this presentation all day. I still have a bunch of things to get ready for Monday morning's Cabinet meeting, and I've worked from early in the morning to late at night almost every day for the past week. With the beginning of the semester ahead, life could not be busier -- which is why I haven't played with iLife yet.

I'm off to Vegas for the week to participate in the 2007 Sunguard Summit. It should be a good conference, as it combines my love of higher education with my love of technology. A couple of the less academic highlights will be a keynote by Dilbert creator Scott Adams and a private concert by everyone's favorite 90's acoustic alternative band with a non-white lead singer, Hootie and the Blowfish (yes, they're still around). I'll be staying in a nice suite at MGM's new hotel, The Signature at MGM Grand. I'm all packed and ready to go with episodes of Lost for the 4.5 hour flight.

Just taking a quick break from writing my qualifying exam to mention that last night I decided to pick up a copy of Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen. I've been familiar with the principles of Getting Things Done (GTD) for some time now, but have finally reached the point where my current way of organizing life just hasn't been working for me. With starting a demanding new job, planning a wedding, and writing a qualifying exam (twice!), it's been a busy six months. Donnell mentioned GTD to me over lunch on Monday, so it renewed my interest in it enough to pick up a copy of the book. I'll continue to update about my implementation of the system, especially as I figure out how to integrate it with my existing software/hardware tools (Entourage, iCal, PowerBook, Treo 650, etc.). <!-- technorati tags start -->

Technorati Tags: Donnell Wyche, GTD, David Allen

<!-- technorati tags end -->

Today is the last day of the Fiscal Year Ending 2005. Tomorrow we will be starting with a clean slate. Even though I am no longer Financial Analyst, I'll have plenty to do for this year's audit, I'm sure. However, for FYE 2006, the only money I'll be dealing with is the money I'm spending on student activities (still not sure exactly what that budget is...)! Speaking of which, I'll be launching a new Campus Life blog very soon--it's currently in intranet beta testing, but as soon as it goes public, I'll post a link here. We've used some of the ideas found in Enterprise Weblogging: Using weblogs for communication & information management a PowerPoint presentation by Michael Angeles.

Enterprise Weblogging: Using weblogs for communication & information management -- Powerpoint presentation from urlgreyhot.