Overreaching

When my husband was in high school, he asked his parents if he could go to New York City during winter break. They had agreed, back in the days before cell phones and Giuliani’s clean up of Times Square, to let Jim experience NYC all by himself.

The jury is still out on whether or not this decision makes my in-laws amazing parents or outright negligent, but off their teenage boy went to the Big Apple solo.

While there he stayed in a cheap motel in Yonkers and got up early every morning to ride the bus into the city. He would spend 12 hours each day walking alone in the city, eating at restaurants, attending plays and riding in taxis, before catching the last train back to the suburb.

When Jim was a junior in college, he decided he wanted to attend film school. For a top film school, he needed to go to NYC or LA. Having never been to the west coast, he opted for Southern Cal. And so, despite having grown up in small-town Oklahoma, despite having lived at home all through college, and despite having never been to the west coast, Jim applied and was accepted to USC. And so, he set out to live and attend graduate school in the gang-ridden South Central area of Los Angeles.

There, living in the slums, Jim graduated top of his class with a Master of Fine Arts degree in film and television production. He then randomly found his way onto the ABC studios lot for a guided tour of the stages. There, right in the middle of the tour, he befriended a scriptwriter for General Hospital, and a few days later was offered an internship on the show. A few months following, the internship turned into a writing position and he spent years helping write the show and earn it—and himself—two Emmys.

Later, having decided to leave behind the fast-paced and outrageously expensive life in LA, Jim moved back to Oklahoma to buy a house, find a wife and have some babies. But before he did the latter two of those, he saw a job announcement seeking a television scriptwriter for the World Wrestling Federation (now the WWE). Or as Jim calls it, soap operas for sweaty men. Having long been a fan of professional wrestling (I know, I know), and with experience in long-form story telling, Jim applied for, and was given, the job.

So, despite having just bought a house in Oklahoma, he took off for Connecticut, at 6-feet-tall and 130 pounds, to sit in a room full of 7 foot-tall, 350 pound professional wrestlers and draft their stories from week to week. At the time Jim was writing for two of the most famous wrestlers—Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock—for the highest rated cable show on TV: Monday Night Raw. There sat my slender, smart, sophisticated and soft-spoken husband—between hulking, aggressive and powerful men—pitching ideas of how they could poetically bash each other over the head with metal folding chairs.

In general, I have a level of unfounded confidence that gets me through most of the bigger challenges in life. But there are also moments of intimidation and insecurity in which I feel perhaps I’ve overreached my potential. Out-stretched my abilities.

When I was high school, my parents insisted I enroll in advanced Calculus. They had forced this on my sister and brother several years earlier, so I knew I probably wouldn’t escape this absurdity. So, as a senior in high school, I was in class with 15 other students who I came to understand were not there because their parents demanded it, but because they had tested extremely well and earned their seat in the classroom.

Our calculus teacher, despite being among the greatest teachers I’ve ever had, did one truly traumatizing thing: she posted our grades on the wall. And while only our social security numbers identified these grades, there was only ever one grade lower than an A in the entire class. So not only did I feel like the idiot in the classroom, but now a large group of really smart people had my SSN.

It took years of self-love and therapy to see that, while I didn’t make an A in advanced Calculus, I also didn’t do horribly. In fact, I finished that course with a B and have gone on to have a fairly normal and productive life.

When I studied abroad in college, I felt instantly I had overreached. Every part of leaving my home country to live for half a year in a foreign land--even an English-speaking one--was difficult. When our plane touched down in London that first day, I was full of enthusiasm and energy. But when we arrived on campus, my roommate and I were told our dorm room was not yet ready and to come back in a few hours.

She wandered off to buy a cell phone and some other toiletries, leaving me to roam the city all alone in my first day in another country.

While I’d like to say that I went skipping through London drinking tea and looking for the Queen, I actually sat down on a park bench and cried. I was homesick and terrified. Lonely and afraid. And I was fairly certain that I could not survive six solid months in this strange land where cars drove on the other side of the road and it rained constantly.

While looking back on my time studying abroad is only thought of with warm feelings and pleasant memories, the first few weeks were brutal. I used my showers every morning to cry. The early days abroad had me truly believing I was pathetic. I had stretched out my arms for this amazing adventure and felt I couldn't quite grab hold of it.

But after I tackled the first month, I began to find my rhythm. I stopped crying in the shower and started drinking at the pub. I went with my roommates to plays on the West End, bars in SoHo and markets in Piccadilly. We started planning trips to France, Switzerland and Italy. Before the month was up, I dreaded returning to the U.S.

This past week I attended an academic conference focused around my field of study: nonprofit governance. There in Denver, Colorado, the top researchers in the field gathered together to share ideas, papers and teaching strategies. For three solid days I attended session after session in which highly accomplished scholars shared the newest and greatest research being conducted in the field.

Now, as junior faculty I don’t expect to know what these scholars know. I’m not expected to present such sophisticated research at this stage in my career. But I am expected to at some point. And so, with every session, I saw my future unfold and felt my skin break out in a sweat. Beyond that, I often feel a bit of a fraud when I’m teaching to students who are in their 60s or when a student asks if I’m old enough to have any experiences in the field. Despite graduating with the right degrees and securing a faculty position, I often feel my arms aren't long enough to envelop it all.

And don’t get me started on how much I overreached when I became a mother. Even three years in, I feel a bit under qualified to raise these strong and beautiful girls.

The other night, while out to dinner, I asked Jim about his time in New York and LA and Connecticut. Mostly, I wanted to know how he was able to continually put himself into situations in which he was clearly reaching beyond his potential. How did he manage to always extend his arms and grab the things that were just beyond his reach? And, more importantly, why did he never see himself as overreaching?

He shrugged.

“In high school, before I left for New York, I read something in a travel book about how to survive as a tourist in the city.” He responded. “Guess it just stuck with me.”

“Oh?” I asked. “What did it say?”

“When you reach your destination, you’ve earned the right to be there.”