Tuesday night cooking dinner and I hear the light ring of my phone telling me I have an email waiting. It’s late and we’re watching the news reports roll in about COVID spreading across the US, however it doesn’t cross my mind that when I left law school today that would be the last time I would enter that building or see my classmates for the year. It seemed like it was happening everywhere else but here, I was focused on law school and chose to ignore the possibility. When the phone went off I felt my stomach drop, I just knew it was not good news. The email was from the Chancellor of Vanderbilt telling us that the university was closing and was quickly followed up by one from the Dean of the Law School letting us know that we would not be coming back to school this year and to hang on for the rest of the week as the school and teachers rushed to take law school online.
I felt angry that school was being taken away, along with interactions with my friends and teachers. That anger quickly melted away into concern as I had never taken a class online and knew I thrived with in person teaching. Law school was so competitive, what were they going to do with grades? How would we take finals? A cascade of questions poured into my mind and with it anxiety. I felt something I had not felt in a long time, lost and unsure what direction to advance my energy and focus. I suddenly remembered the last time I had that feeling, walking into my first squadron out of flight school looking at these huge helicopters and being handed the largest manuals I had ever seen. I was told to memorize them and that there were more to come. I was now facing what I had been staring down back then, a seemingly insurmountable problem where I had no idea where to begin.
There’s an old joke that asks, how do you eat an elephant? The answer, one bite at a time. I was told this after a senior instructor saw my face drop as I was handed my new flight and tactics manuals in the hanger at the squadron. I laughed quietly to myself this time at home in Nashville as what I was facing seemed to be totally unique and unprecedented, but realized it really wasn’t. I usually approach life with a what is the end goal mindset and plan a course to get there. However, sometimes stepping back to assess the path it seems to be so long and insurmountable that you’ll never reach your goal. I still had the same end goal while in quarantine, graduate from law school, however, the path, at least for the time being, would have to change. As online classes began I was lost, my days were a scramble of what should I be doing right now, when can I get reading done, I was out of my usual groove and falling far behind while not grasping the lectures from professors I used to get excited for. It was time for a major overhaul of the path.
Each issue when added up was my elephant but if I broke reading, notes, workouts, and lectures into manageable bites then I could eat my elephant of quarantine law school education. In planning out my new quarantine path I also took myself back to another leadership lesson I learned in the Navy, be brilliant at the basics and the rest will come. I needed to stop trying to mentally jump ahead to Step 4 but start back at Step 1. Being brilliant at the basics in flying means keeping heading and altitude, it seems easy enough but when you pile on another pilot talking to you, three crewmen, two radios along with navigation and possibly tactics you can find yourself turning off course or dropping hundreds of feet without even noticing. The same thing was happening to me now in quarantine, I wasn’t on a good schedule I was sleeping in, not eating right, missing workouts and taking short cuts on my readings and notes while being on my phone during an online lecture. All of that added up to me not knowing anything that was going on in class and instead of being ahead in my readings I was days behind. I knew it was time to get back to the basics for me, set a schedule and stick to it, even if I could sleep in a bit more.
So, I set a schedule, as I had during in person classes, and decided to stick to it. I had to approach school now with the same focus and intensity I did before, even if I was stuck at home. I needed to get up even when I could sleep in, read ahead even though I knew I was not going to be leaving the house, and have the self-motivation to reach these goals now that I was separated from friends and family who would normally be there. I could do remote learning and I would do it successfully thanks to the leadership lessons I had learned in the military now being applied to my civilian life even in quarantine. I’m still currently taking it one bite at a time.