Speaker friend, Jon Vroman, asked me this question on Facebook, and since it’s something I’ve actually thought about a lot, I knew it needed more than just a Facebook response.

Going back to the beginning of my college career, I had this idea planted in me that I’d find “the one.” Not in terms of love, but in terms of mentors. I’d have “the one” teacher that, almost like an awe inspiring alarm clock, this person would show me a whole new world I’d never seen before. I waited, and waited, and waited, but “the one” never happened. Well it almost did.

He was an older adjunct teacher for my intro to entrepreneurship class at Aurora University. He’d created and sold multiple companies. He truly seemed like my “something from nothing” hero.

On the first day of class, he filled us with motivational war stories from the front lines of entrepreneurship. I couldn’t get enough, I was in awe and knew there was no where else I was interested in being. Then it happened…

We were in a discussion about who should sit on a board of directors and my newly minted hero said, “for me it was always filled with men because there just wasn’t a need to have women in the boardroom.” My head sank. The whole class went up in arms.

Turns out his views on women were from an era gone by and no one told him. To his credit, he did actively listen to the criticisms of the class and by the end of the term he had changed…a bit. But the damage was done. My hero was no more.

Beyond him, no one else came close to being “the one” for me.

I continuously hear people talk about how a specific person changes their life forever. As if it were some magical moment where this perfect image of a person came down from above and it was meant to happen. Maybe I need to keep waiting because it makes me feel like I missed out on something in my life.

In the mean time, I’ve built up an amazing support group of people, and networks, around me. Theses are people who individually each have something that is awe inspiring to me. But as well have flaws and things that I know I don’t want to emulate. Put each individual piece together and then I’d have “the one.” It’s piecemeal on my part and maybe that’s ok, because no one is perfect by themselves. We all have our flaws.

Which brings me to my final note on this topic. I know some people I’ve connected with look up to me in awe and use my life as inspiration (or maybe I just think they do). And I’ll do my best to be their “the one,” but they should know that I come with my flaws too. I hope that what you like about me doesn’t blind you from my flaws and you piecemeal the best parts for your life instead of an all or nothing approach.

I lied, one more thought. This is also why I don’t find myself gravitating to any one religion or way of life because in each I find the pieces I like and pieces I don’t.

Like Joseph Campbell’s famous Hero’s Journey philosophy, we like to divide college students into 5 different stages of engagement based on the Engagement Pyramid below…

Each stage is defined by a different set of characteristics of an individual. Fully engaged individuals display a different set of characteristics than apathetic/uninvolved individuals. Thus, the way we interact with individuals in each stage should be different. A “5″ doesn’t want to be treated like a “Neutral.” And treating a “Neutral” like a “5″ might be too much too soon and thus demotivating.

Once we’ve recognized an individual’s stage, then the next step is to move them gradually up the Engagement Pyramid step-by-step. In our Dance Floor Theory program, we call this X+1. “X” being the stage an individual currently is in and “+1″ being the next step that is challenging enough for that indivdual, but not too challenging (e.g. +3) which might be demotivating. If you think of it like a video game, video games do an amazing job of knowing your current level and knowing what the next motivating challenge is for you. That’s the same thing as X+1.

The hardest step on the Engagement Pyramid is moving someone from a “Neutral” to a “1.” Where a “Neutral” is someone who doesn’t care and is indifferent to anything you do and a “1″ is someone who actually pays attention and is curious. Once someone is a “1,” it’s much easier to continue to move them towards a “5.”

Ask most educators and they will tell you student apathy is huge on college campuses. Campuses are filled with “Neutrals,” however most of the activities we do on campuses are geared towards “1″ through “5″ people because they are the ones who will pay attention to our flyers, emails, and Facebook invites and take the extra effort to actually show up to an event. But what about the larger percentage of our campus that are “Neutrals?” What can we do to engagement them, to give them their X+1 moment, and to move them from a “Neutral” to a “1?”

Enter Free Hugs…

Well actually, Free Hugs is just one example of thousands of examples of events we call Blender Events. Blender Events serve two purposes…

1. Cause people to have a pattern interrupt throughout their day. Or as we say in Dance Floor Theory, get people to go from “Meh” to “Hmmm.”
2. Build peer-to-peer relationships by mixing people together with near-peers. Near-peers are people who are models of success that are just a stage or two ahead. In the Engagement Pyramid, a near-peer to an “X” would be a “1.”

Every time we host a Blender Event on campus and cause a “Neutral” to have a pattern interrupt in their day, or get them to go  from “Meh” to “Hmmm,” or connect them with a “1,” then we are supplying them with an X+1 Moment. The more X+1 Moments they have, the harder it will be for them to stay a “Neutral” as they will start to display characteristics of a “1″ whether they want to or not. And once they are a “1,” then we can work on getting them to become a “2.”

So there you have it, That’s the ‘why’ behind Free Hugs. As you may have noticed, it has very little to do with the actual Free Hugs event and more to do with the introductions/connections/relationships that happen from the Free Hugs event.

In Southeast Asia, trains are notorious for rolling though stations without stopping and passengers are expected to jump on and off with the train sill in motion. Here’s a video of what I mean…

Jumping on and off a train is kinda easy when it’s just you…

But add a family, kids, and luggage and the task becomes a lot harder.

Over the past couple months I’ve met with several budding Entrepreneur’s who are debating whether to take the Entrepreneurial leap or not. In the conversations I brought up the Moving Train analogy and said that starting a new business is an option for everyone, but depending on your life situation it’s easier or harder to ‘jump on’ the entrepreneurship train.

A married adult with kids, a house, and bills has a harder time jumping on. It’s doable, just hard.

A college student, on the other hand, has a much easier time investing his/her resources (time) trying out new ideas with a high risk of failure.

The Moving Train concept is why I love supporting college students so much because they have the perfect mix of freedom, time, skills, and optimism to explore a TON of different ideas without needing to worry too much about failures. I wish more colleges would reflect this reality in their offering to students.

For most, today is Tuesday, May 10th. For 1.5 million Americans plus their family and friends, today is World Lupus Day. Lupus is often known as the silent killer because it is vastly under funded, reported, and treated. Lupus is a complicated autoimmune disease in which the immune system attacks a person’s own cells and tissues along with a plethora of additional side effects. There is no conclusion on how one gets Lupus and there is no single test for diagnosis. For those living with Lupus, which is 90% women, it’s something they’ve learned to live and deal with on their own terms.

My wife Annie has Lupus and has lived bravely with it since 2000. Today, while searching for a work related computer file, I randomly stumbled on a paper she wrote in college about her life with Lupus. In honor of World Lupus Day, please educate yourself about the disease and read Annie’s full essay below…

My Life with Lupie – @AnnieColbert

I felt like a dork, standing nearly naked, only wearing mismatched socks and a paper gown, battling unsuccessfully with the plastic “belt“ to cover as much of my winter-white pale skin as possible. I hate paper gowns. If sitting in a doctor’s office does not make you feel uncomfortable enough, the gown will surely increase your anxiety. In all of my vulnerability and uneasiness of the moment, the doctor unexpectedly introduced me to my new friend Lupie. The beginning of our tumultuous relationship lacked an instantaneous bond. At seventeen, years of chronic illness already weakened my physical strength and my mental strength drained when Lupie arrived. Lupie possessed an amazing presence and intimidating strength, yet was quiet and mischievous.

Our constant companionship and Lupie’s desire for social isolation led to inevitable personality clashes, as I prefer social interactions. Early mornings sparked our most hostile confrontations. Lupie drowsily laid in bed, eager to sleep the day away despite my stubborn insistence to be active. Our confrontations tested my physical prowess, and often brought me to a state filled with shooting pains stabbing at my joints. I would lay in such pain that my only motion was to wipe the tears streaming down my feverish face. I triumphed occasionally, dragging Lupie around with me to school, but Lupie and I soon realized the lacking compassion expressed by students and administrators made our attendance unwelcome. Lupie’s introduction to my other friends garnered disparaging reactions ranging from complete disregard to harsh criticisms. Ridiculing comments concerning my dependence on Lupie faltered my attempts for a ‘normal’ high school experience. Lupie and I were alone.

Continue reading on her blog…

 

Every Red Rover institution has a student ground team that helps us with the launch, student adoption, and ongoing engagement. Forrest Battle (yes that’s his real name) is our ground team member at College of Coastal Georgia. He and I chat via email on a regular basis, but unlike most schools who give you your name as your email, at CCGA, they assign you a number like 920037023@ccga.edu. My alma mater did the same thing and it felt shitty.

Every time I email Forrest, I’m reminded of what CCGA thinks of him, and all their students, as just another number in their database. I know many of our readers don’t have control over every institutional system, but take a moment to step back and see what internal systems you are using within your walled garden that either hurt or support the vision of individualized learning.

After every training I give, a handful of students always come up to ask  a variety of questions around entrepreneurship, education, and technology. I genuinely get excited when students get excited about doing more than just their school work, so I give each person my contact info and tell them to keep me posted on their progress and email me if they have any more questions. Here’s the ugly truth though, 99.99% of the students I give my card to never follow up or ask me any more questions. I’m not complaining about this because honestly if everyone did follow up with me, I wouldn’t actually be able to respond. The 99.99% rule is kinda a natural self filtering system in which the .01% that actually do contact me with questions are the ones who are most likely to act on my response thus I’m not wasting their time and they aren’t wasting my time.

Meeting With Students After a Tech Talk at Mitchell College

I created this deck to frame the conversation as to how Red Rover can support alumni departments with their goals. It's cross posted over at the Swift Kick/Red Rover blog. The slide show can also be viewed and downloaded here.

For the past two weeks, I've been experimenting with publicly writing a daily "journal" entry on my blog. For four years in college, I kept a basic Word Doc journal because I felt like so much was happening every day and I wanted a record of the events and my emotions around the events. I've tried daily journaling on and off since then without much commitment, but so much is still happening every day. I want a record for me but I'm also sharing publicly this time as a record for others to see my ups and downs as a way to demystify what I'm doing and what I've done. An unexpected side effect of daily journaling, that I didn't notice in college, is I'm more consciously aware throughout the day. I don't want any moment to go by without processing it as it might lead to my daily journal of the day.

Side note – I do plan to crack open my college journal and start reposting the entries here, though I'm scared to know what my grammar was like back then :-/.

I took this photo at a small town gas station in Northern Wisconsin. Through a quick Google search, I see the “3 student rule” isn’t an isolated policy. But why 3 verses 2 or 4?

College of Coastal Georgia recently transitioned to a four-year residential institution. Among the many changes, the campus will soon include residence halls and a director of residence life. Dave Leenhouts, director of CCGA’s student life, heads the committee to hire their director of residence life.

In a conversation with Dave over the weekend, he talked about how the big buzz word on the committee is affinity housing. In other words, pre-matching roommates ahead of time based on similar traits to ensure higher retention rates.

The impact of first year roommates on an individual is huge and can have lasting life time effects from grades, to weight, to drinking habits. The NY Times recently posted an article on the science of roommates.

First-year roommates matter. Though they may go their separate ways sophomore year, their reach can ripple throughout the college years and after.

The researchers aren’t entirely clear on why one student has such an impact over another in their first year, but it sounds like a hybrid of the proximity effect of the Framingham Heart Study and the emotional gap felt by first year students.

CCGA is currently using Red Rover as their campus directory to socially connect first year students to similar students and campus clubs. Dave wants to go further and use the directory to roommate students based on similar interests, activities, and background.

An affinity housing dashboard is already within the scope of Red Rover. And because so much of Red Rover is data driven it will be interesting to study the results of matching roommates who are 100% identical verses those who are intellectually, socially, spiritually, etc opposites as a way to promote diversity.