The New Nimble

Reflecting on a year with Experience Institute

Originally published in Ei’s Experience Journal

After completing my fellowship year with Experience Institute, I was honored to be invited to speak at EXPO — aka “Ei graduation.” Each of us in the cohort had just finished a wild year of self-designed learning, building skills in design, strategic storytelling, and community building through internships and apprenticeships. This is the story I shared.

Nimble. I guess I feel more nimble.

That’s what I told our coach, Heather, on Wednesday when she asked us at dinner to say in a couple of words what we got out of our year with Ei.

Nimble.

It’s a nice word. Sounds good. Smooth. Flowing. Elegant.

I showed up to that dinner dragging my great big wheelie suitcase behind me — it kept tipping over in the crosswalks, making that thupthupthupthup noise wherever I went.

Super nimble, right? Maybe not so elegant.

Nimble isn’t always pretty, but it gets you where you need to go.

Way back in the beginning of the year, after a few promising conversations with a creative agency in Oakland, it looked like my first apprenticeship was coming together. I didn’t really know what a “creative agency in Oakland” was, but the people on the phone were nice enough, and California sounded fun, so why not?

I set up a meeting with Victor to help me write a formal proposal for the work I’d do for them.

I’ve spent nearly half my life in college — four years of undergrad. Six years of grad school. Another six years on the faculty at Columbia College Chicago. So going into this meeting I was thinking: office hours with the professor.

Which means: student has toiled away on a draft, professor responds with copious notes, student runs off to spend a week revising.

Victor said, “Nah, let’s just email it together right now. Doesn’t have to be perfect.”

Doesn’t have to be perfect

I’ve spent years giving students feedback on their writing, scribbling comments in the margin like “support this claim,” “show, don’t tell,” “this part is off topic,” or “let’s have a chat about plagiarism.”

In all my years of academic work, one comment I never gave, and never received, was: “Doesn’t have to be perfect.”

Of course I knew it didn’t have to be perfect. I knew, in fact, that it couldn’t be perfect. But I believed the learning came from trying for perfect.

And yeah, that mode of holding something tight, working it over and over and over until it’s as good as it can possibly get… it makes things better. But it can also make you a little too careful. Guarded. Stuck. The opposite of nimble.

Plot twist

Nimble means, “Quick and light in movement or action; agile.”

The dictionary on my computer gives the example phrase: “with a deft motion of her nimble fingers.”

So it was with a ‘deft motion of nimble fingers’ that Victor and I got that far-from-perfect proposal written and sent, and got a very quick, very positive, response, and pretty soon I was booking a flight to Oakland.

And then.

The job fell apart just before I bought the plane ticket. A more perfect proposal would not have changed a thing.

So I adapted. I spent another month meeting with people, exploring possibilities, working on cool side projects. Freaking out a little. And eventually I landed something bigger. And ended up in California after all.

This is nimble. This is what Ei is like. All year.

That’s what we all signed up for. That’s what we all made it through. That’s what we’re celebrating as this cohort of fellows finishes our year together.

And next Monday

This past Monday, Aaron gathered us all into a circle. I put down my coffee and braced for one of his “activities” — the icebreakers he uses to get us warmed up each morning during our intensive weeks of Ei meetups. These typically involve making loud noises. Or making quick movements. Or just generally looking foolish. Three things I typically go out of my way to avoid.

A few days ago, grinning, Aaron let me in on a little secret. He told me that when he’s planning these activities, he sometimes pictures me and thinks: “How much is Michael going to hate this one?”

A lot, Aaron. I hate them a lot.

But I’m glad we do them. They keep us present. They keep us connected to each other. They keep us moving.

It turns out that, for me, nimble has a lot to do with acknowledging that the cynical, snarky, this-could-be-way-more-perfect academic critic in me can absolutely hate a thing, and the rest of me can go ahead and do it anyway. Maybe even enjoy it.

Monday’s activity was not too painful. We got in pairs and shared reflections about the coming week — goals, hurdles, what’s on our mind.

Becca said something about being worried about the next Monday. About going to work after Ei. Would it be… boring?

Anything but normal

There’s something a little terrifying about a year with Ei. Moving across the country. Working at a few new jobs. New fields. New people. New skills. Knowing full well that there is no guarantee that any of it will work out, while also hearing Victor’s voice in your head insisting: “It’ll all work out.”

Our very first week together, our cohort worked with a storyteller and a photographer and an improv theater coach and a writer. And then… a therapist. The therapist pointed out that some of the toughest things a person can go through in life are: starting a new job, leaving a job, and moving to a new city. And Ei asks you to do all of these things. Three times each.

There’s something a little terrifying about a year with Ei. But there’s also something a little terrifying about what comes after it. Becca’s question about next Monday resonated.

How do we transition from this crazy year into something considerably less crazy. What do we take with us as we transition into something… normal?

Becca. I’m sorry, I told you I’d try to figure it out by graduation, but it was a busy week. We had to learn how to make videos, and then actually make videos, and visit a designer, and work on our websites, and makes some time for reflection, and time to take care of ourselves, and spend a day picking tomatoes and eggplants at a community farm on the South Side, and pose for photos in the middle of traffic with an old-timey school desk, and get ready for friends and family coming to town… and there were all of Aaron’s activities….

The best I could come up with is: if you’re worried about Monday feeling boring, feeling normal, just turn on the news. These are not normal times. Normal is nowhere to be found. A boring week sounds pretty nice right about now, but I don’t think we’ve got one coming.

But the good news? We’ve just spent a whole year practicing the art of being effective, being problem solvers, being extraordinarily nimble when things are anything but normal.

Traditional graduation ceremonies — I’ve been to a few — have this sense that some big change is about to happen. There was life before, and there will be life after, and the two look very different.

But work next Monday is going to look a whole lot like work two Mondays ago. Nothing normal about where we’ve been. Nothing normal about where we’re going. We’re all still going to be figuring out new industries, hustling for new jobs, writing proposals, landing gigs, watching gigs fall apart, crafting stories, designing solutions, leaning on each other…. That much is guaranteed.

And it’ll all work out.

And it doesn’t have to be perfect.

Thank you, all, for an amazing, terrifying, year. Together.

It all worked out.

And better yet: it wasn’t perfect.

—ML // More notes