52 Cups of Coffee: Inspiring and insightful stories for navigating life’s uncertainties

by Megan Gebhart

  My favorite was how he had gotten involved with the Internet back when only serious techies understood it. Although he was only 12, Jonathan had been intrigued with the Internet and had found a way to get online and join different communities where other technology geeks met (an activity his parents didn’t know about until they received the hefty phone bill). Not wanting to reveal his age out of fear people wouldn’t take him seriously, Jonathan made sure to be as articulate as possible to appear older. The strategy paid off. He was selected to be a moderator for an online forum, where he built a great reputation—he wasn’t even 15.

  The best part was when he explained how Texas Instruments (the forum to which he contributed) was going to be hosting a large convention and had asked him to be the keynote speaker. They had no idea how old he was, and he had decided not to tell them. Instead, he packed his bags, boarded a plane, and landed at the airport where a half dozen very surprised men welcomed him. Once they had gotten over the fact he was so young, the businessmen let him give the keynote. It was a big hit with conference attendees.

  The mix of delight and nostalgia Jonathan showed as he continued telling stories from his life made our conversation delightful. Stories like the time he had met Stephen Colbert, or how he had gone to Yale to study Artificial Intelligence and ended up with a Law degree from Harvard.

  He told me that he had stayed at his first job after law school for two and a half weeks before quitting. He had accepted a job in Washington, D.C., quickly realized he hated the job, and promptly quit. He didn’t see any value in “sticking it out” for a year. In his mind, every day spent at the law firm was a missed opportunity to be working on a career he wanted.

  As he later said, “Why settle for anything less than the life you truly want?”

  He decided to head back to Harvard where he co-founded the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, which would later spin off Creative Commons, which encourages the free exchange of knowledge online. He was the first Executive Director of the center while also teaching first-year law classes at Harvard.

  Although highly distinguished, Jonathan is down-to-earth. I thoroughly enjoyed his fresh perspective, wit, and insight on life. During the conversation, Jonathan brought up this idea of affordance. It is a term social scientists use to illustrate that at any one time, there is a set of actions we can perform—choices we can make. We all have them, but the number and degree of the choices vary with each person and change constantly.

  For example, having five dollars in your pocket leads to a set of options. Having 50 dollars leads to a different set. How you choose to utilize your affordances determines how many more you will create. Accepting a job offer in New York will lead to a much-different outcome than accepting a position in Toledo. Deciding to go for a run after work will create a different outcome than meeting a friend for dinner, etc.

  Past experiences, education, financial situation, and natural aptitude are just a few factors affecting affordances. However, some affordances are available to everyone. As Jonathan pointed out, Twitter, Facebook, and other online technologies have created new opportunities across the board.

  It is a somewhat simple concept, but one that provoked my thinking. If each opportunity we take branches into a new set of opportunities, there are an exponential number of outcomes for the future. The potential is exciting, but you have to be willing to act on the opportunity.

  Jonathan said that during his years of teaching, he found that many people, especially students, didn’t realize the number of affordances—or opportunities—they had, or could create for themselves.

  The opportunity to keynote a major conference hadn’t come out of thin air; Jonathan had made that happen by making a name for himself doing something he loved. He had turned an affordance into an opportunity that fit his skill set—and that opportunity spiraled into many more.

  That’s what I took away from our conversation: everyone can create incredible opportunities for themselves. The lesson was not just a result of Jonathan’s advice, but also of how the meeting came about in the first place.

  I capitalized on three different affordances. I had made friends during an internship in San Francisco two summers earlier, which gave me a reason to visit San Francisco; I had started a blog, and I joined the student group going to SXSW—three very separate activities I never expected would bump into each other. But they did, and the result was a chance to meet Jonathan.

  * * *

  Discover what sparks your interest and dive into it headfirst; you never know where the path will lead, because the world works in strange ways.

  Mike Wardian

  Mike’s office in Washington, D.C.

  Small brewed coffee

  Figure out what your goals are so you know where to find the finish line.

  Mike Wardian is an ultra-marathon running junkie. He gets up at dawn to run 12 miles before leaving for work. Then he does another 12 miles during lunch. He completed 17 marathons in 2010, qualified for the Olympic trials twice, and is preparing for a trip to South Africa for the Two Oceans Marathon (about 34 miles) and the Comrades Marathon (56 miles), before running the Badwater 135 Mile race in Death Valley a few months later. He is a fierce competitor on the road and both respected and feared by other ultra-marathoners.

  However, that is not the Mike I met for coffee.

  A basic Google search had led me to Mike. The Michigan State Alumni Association highlighted his running accomplishments in an article, which led me to his personal website where I discovered he was running the D.C. Marathon, which was perfect as my friend Jess, and I were running the D.C. Half-Marathon. When I reached out to him, I discovered he lived in D.C., and we scheduled a coffee meeting on the day before the race.

  When I walked into his unassuming office, tucked away in a building off Wisconsin Ave. just outside of Washington, D.C., Mike greeted me before we sat down at a conference table adorned with a model cargo ship sitting in the middle. Aside from being sinewy like a seasoned runner and having long hair tied in a knot at the base of his neck, he was like any businessman I’d met. He was wearing a tie, and our conversation started off in a formal tone with direct answers.

  This made sense considering his experience with post-race interviews. I asked him questions about his running and training, and told him stories about my own running experiences. I also explained how I had found him. My attempts to get back into running had gotten me thinking back to my serious days of cross-country, when discipline was a crucial piece of my running success. Finding that discipline after a long running hiatus had been a challenge, I decided to find an ultra-marathoner for coffee because I could think of few things requiring more discipline than running for 30 hours straight.

  * * *

  Mike was born in Morgantown, West Virginia and moved to Washington, D.C. in fourth grade. He left the area to go to college at Michigan State, which at the time had a Division I Lacrosse team. He competed for a few years but ended up leaving the team to pursue other interests. He had never been interested in running but joined a friend for a race and realized he had a talent for the sport and the competitive drive to become good at it.

  While continuing to pursue marathons, he took a job back in D.C., where he had been for the past ten years working as a freight broker. It was a job he enjoyed, but, more importantly, one that afforded him the flexibility that his training demanded (while also allowing him to spend time with his wife and two young sons).

  Running itself isn’t hard; it’s just putting one foot in front of the other. The hard part is continuing to put one foot in front of the other when it starts to hurt. I asked Mike how he did it, and his response made it obvious that running was in his DNA. He said he was always the first person ready to start running and the last one who wanted to stop. In fact, he would have ideally been running 150-200 miles a week, but time constraints wouldn’t allow it.

  I asked him how he could keep running when he was 60 miles into a 100-mile race. He said he would hit p
atches that were tough, but he would push through those moments by focusing on his race goals, while making sure to get enough food and water. Before long, he would cycle out of the rough spot and start to feel good again.

  At the start of his career, people told Mike he could neither run a 100-mile race nor run three marathons in one month, nor be a competitive runner while holding down a job. But he had tried anyway because he figured that even if the skeptics were right, he would rather find out for himself instead of taking their word for it. So far, he had proven them wrong on all fronts and also had some incredible times in the process—literally and figuratively.

  As he said, there will always be 50 people telling you why you can’t do something (and they may tell you with the best of intentions) but if you listen to those people, you will never get anything done. You have to decide what’s best for you, and then do it.

  * * *

  When we parted ways after our meeting, I couldn’t help but think about how I hadn’t seen the real Mike. He is a runner, but I had only seen him as a businessman. Moreover, I felt like we had only scratched the surface of his running and travel adventures. But when you are juggling family, a running career, and a job, time is of the essence. I didn’t want to take any more of his time than I already had.

  Luckily, I had my chance the following morning. Less than 30 minutes after I had finished running my 13.1 miles through the streets of D.C., Mike finished his 26.2 mile race, claiming his fifth D.C. Marathon victory in the last six years.

  Jess and I waded through the frenetic crowd to the VIP Hospitality tent where we found Mike recovering with his wife and two sons. I called out his name, and he walked over, smiling. We didn’t talk long; just long enough to share race-stories, meet his oldest son, and snap a picture, before parting ways. I headed for the Metro station, and he went for post-race interviews.

  Leaving the race felt much better than leaving his office. This time, I felt like I’d gotten to see the real Mike in his element—celebrating another marathon victory with wife and kids. This image is how I would remember Cup 34.

  As an athlete with a full-time job and family, Mike understands time. Whether he is running a race or living his life, the clock is always adding pressure. To be a successful runner requires efficiency of resources—making the best use of time and energy. Being a successful husband, father, and businessman on top of that required even more.

  We all have limited time and energy. Mike doesn’t waste any of it. He is a great example of someone with clearly defined goals and priorities, which led me to examine my goals and priorities. I realized there are plenty of people who will say you can’t accomplish something, and countless distractions that will try to get in the way—but if you have a clear finish line in mind, you can overcome those barriers.

  And have a great time celebrating your victory at the end.

  Stacy Bohrer

  Skype call from East Lansing, Michigan to Chicago, Illinois

  Regular brewed coffee

  Your past does not have to define your future.

  Stacy Bohrer cuts straight to the chase.

  The advice I had received multiple times during my senior year was to decide what I was passionate about and turn that into a job. Stacy told me she knew what she was passionate about—but consciously decided she wasn’t going to make it her job.

  She told me this as I sat in front of my computer; headphones plugged in, coffee at my side. On two different occasions we had tried to coordinate a coffee meeting in Chicago, but our schedules never aligned. So we decided to video chat instead. After sorting out technical difficulties, our conversation got started when Stacy asked, “So, how does this meeting work?” I explained that we talked and then I wrote, pretty straightforward.

  * * *

  I found Stacy through my friend Christine. The two of them had met a year earlier while working at a small start-up in Chicago. Stacy had given Christine good advice over the past year, and Christine thought she would likely have good insights to pass along to me.

  She was right. Stacy subscribed to the notion that if you don’t wake up excited to go to work, you should find a new job.

  I also subscribed to that notion, so I asked her about that right away. She was straightforward as she explained that she knows herself well enough to know when a job is making her unhappy, or doesn’t fit well, and she isn’t going to waste her time working there. Life is too short.

  Stacy works as an Account Executive for an online media network, and clearly enjoys her job. This fact led me to the assumption that the job was directly in line with her passions. It surprised me when she said this was not the case—the first of many surprises in our conversation.

  She said her true passion was helping victims of rape, raising awareness of the issue, and bringing justice to perpetrators. However, after becoming very involved in a volunteer organization associated with Chicago hospitals, she realized she couldn’t emotionally separate her work from real life. In order to maintain balance, the best career fit would be a job she enjoyed in another industry, with a separate volunteer position with less emotional charge.

  Then she explained why.

  Stacy was raped during her freshman year at Ohio State University. Like most rape victims, she never expected it would happen to her, especially because the perpetrator was a student she’d known from high school. Afraid to speak out about the event, Stacy had kept it a secret—a secret that would slowly spiral her into a deep depression. Her 3.9 grade point average slipped to a measly 1.4. She stopped wearing makeup, and rarely left the house in anything but sweatpants. She came to resent her college and essentially everyone connected to it.

  It was obvious Stacy was drowning in negative emotions. Fortunately, once she realized this, she found the courage to come out about the attack. She told the authorities, and within a few weeks, a half dozen other women had also spoken up—Stacy hadn’t been the man’s first or only victim.

  After the attack, Stacy had spent sleepless nights studying the Constitution and other legal documents, researching how to bring justice to the situation—both to her assailant and to OSU for their poor response to her initial rape complaint. Her efforts were successful. In 2005, she received the Jeanne Clery Campus Safety Award for demonstrating incredible courage in seeking justice and in working to improve how OSU and other colleges responded to student-rape complaints.

  When Stacy decided to tell people, her intention was to spread the word to help prevent it from happening to others. While she didn’t tell me the details of the incident, she said I could find them online.

  A press release from the Jeanne Clery Campus award explained it all. Her assailant pleaded guilty to “sexual imposition” in the fall of 2004, and a federal civil-rights lawsuit against OSU was pending over their failure to remove the assailant from campus until a year and a half after the assault was reported. Stacy had also gone public, writing an editorial that appeared in the Campus Watch newsletter along with being interviewed for a segment of Dateline NBC that shed light on the problems with how campuses deal with sexual assault.

  Speaking out helped Stacy move on. She transferred to Kent State and moved to Chicago after graduation for a fresh start. She found a job she enjoyed, married an incredible man (to whom she refers to as “the luckiest man in the world”), and found a great passion for life. When I asked her if she still held resentment for the event, she told me that while the incident was a part of her past, it was not a part of her identity.

  She had originally let the rape consume her, but she decided that she was not going to let it control her life anymore.

  Bad memories do sneak up on her occasionally—especially on the anniversary of the incident—but she said when she looked back, she feels like she is seeing a completely different person. Today, she is so much stronger than the person she was when the rape happened.

  Instead of letting the event destroy her life, Stacy chose to fight and overcome it.

  During our co
nversation, Stacy paused before explaining that the experience had made her a better person. She paused because she didn’t want the statement to sound like she was giving credit to the man who raped her. Finding the strength to speak up and move forward was what had made her a better person, along with the support of her therapist, husband, and family.

  * * *

  Our conversation continued and eventually drifted to other topics—mainly to how I was dealing with my impending graduation and the stress that came with it. Christine was right about Stacy; she left me feeling better about what the future held.

  Stacy’s story and insight put things into perspective. With the stress of life, it is easy to become consumed with how the future might unfold, but as Stacy told me repeatedly, I have to relax and trust that life will work out as it should.

  And I believed her because her story shows that with the strength, power, and resilience of the human spirit, it is possible to make the future brighter than the past.

  Tom Izzo

  Michigan State University Basketball Offices in East Lansing, Michigan

  No coffee, just conversation

  Decide what you value, so you know what you’re willing to pay to get it.

  For fans of college basketball, and especially of Michigan State, Tom Izzo is a hero. As of 2011, he had led MSU’s basketball team to the 2000 National Championship, six Final Fours and six Big Ten Championships. In 2011, he earned the prestigious Legends of Coaching Award. And, a year before, when the Cleveland Cavaliers made him an offer to coach in the NBA, the East Lansing community responded with a “We Love Izzo” ad campaign to show the coach how much they wanted him to stay, which he did.