One Story • One Step • One Question. Three minutes.
One Story
One of the first programs I built sent volunteers abroad to practice English with anyone who wanted it. Students, mostly. We called it Conversation Partner.
One of ours landed at a well-known university, and the administration rushed her into a dorm wing already closed for repairs and gave her meals in a different corner of the dining hall than everyone else. A few days in, I made the check-in call we always made, and when she told me what was happening, I told her I was canceling the program and bringing her home.
She said no.
She’d dealt with this her whole life because of the color of her skin, and she knew exactly what the university had done. She wasn’t there to be the story. She was there to teach English, and a closed dorm wing wasn’t going to be the reason she left before she was ready. So she kept showing up to that cafeteria table, kept explaining verb tenses over lunch, kept saying yes to the weekend nobody expected her to say yes to.
She came home smiling. None of what she carried should have been hers to carry.
One Step
When a placement goes wrong, like a bad landlord, a hostile office, or a housing assignment that never should have happened, the question isn't whether you can tough it out. It's whether staying still gets you what you came for. If it does, stay on your own terms. If it doesn't, leave. Let that be the end of it, not a referendum on your character.
One Question
When something happens to you that shouldn't have, who gets to decide what happens next? The person who caused it, or you?
— Randy
I’ve spent fifty years in international education and cultural exchange — a front-row seat to people changing careers, countries, and lives. If you’re putting together a panel, a podcast, or a story and want a voice from the field, just reply. Replies come straight to me, and I read every one.