The other day at class, everyone was assigned to read two chapters of a book that would talk about the Panamanian Laboral Economy and then to be ready to answer questions about it, the following week. Nothing really weird about it, if you are studying at college. But...the catch here, was that the reading was in English and the challenge was for many whose English level was little or null.

However, among the different disciplines represented in class, we have a young lady who is a lawyer and did raise her concern out loud in front of the class. Her argument was that although she handles the language, she decided NOT to read the document because she wanted to be solidary with those who could not read, let alone understand the assignment. Furthermore, she reminded us all, that our mother tongue is Spanish and that when she signed up for the MBA she was not notified about the use of a different language other than Spanish. The professor looked at her in disbelief and very politely, graciously but firmly and convinced, stated that in all her years of educating at a master degree level nationally and internationally, she had never heard such a complain. She explained to us all, that in order to be competitive in an ever growing globalized community, only those with a wide variety of competences and up to the task of overcoming challenges with wisdom and an attitude to learn will succeed. She explained that only those people, would be the leaders in any organization that will guide the boat to safe harbor.

This makes me remember a professor I had last period who recently attended a worldwide seminar about H.R. management in Brazil and gave us an assignment to read and write a paper, which was in Portuguese. We were all in shock, but we all took the challenge. Some googled it and found the document and used the Altavista tool to translate it to Spanish and in doing this,not only learned the lessons but learned to learn. I personally found it interesting that after spending a season in Italy and learning the language, it shared similarities to the Portuguese and Spanish which made it less difficult to do that one assignment.

Overcoming Monotony and Clearing up Some Stuffs

Albert Einstein's quote about monotony is definitely not applicative to me. It reads "The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind. " Personally, I find this completely untrue. Doing the same set of things over and over again, week after week and month after month and now recently year after year, becomes like a poison that kills my already undeveloped creative mind.

For this reason, I am thankful for having shared such a great weekend in the company of some old friends and a new bunch lovely people, young people with a bunch of imperfections, but young people with a common goal, namely, learn to serving God and leading others to Him.

We spent three days and three nights away from the job, studies, family, responsibilities and others important things semi-locked in a hotel in the always colorful and peaceful town of El Valle de Anton out in the countryside. It was a time to be quite and learn from someone who has been where most of us are and with a willing heart to teach and mentor us. It was a time of refreshing the same basic principles of character, attitude and a heart that pleases God, like the one modeled by King David a few thousands of years ago. Those same principles that for different reasons we keep forgetting and neglecting and yet we keep on preaching to those following our lead.

One particular experience stands above the other great lessons and experiences I now keep in my heart and memories. Part of the training we went thru, included serving the people in the community, by means of hosting children parties, working with the disabled kids, hanging out with the elders at the local nursing home, giving away cloth and food to the kids in the far away little towns deep into the mountains and even giving speeches to a group of junior, sophomore and senior school students about self-esteem and motivational speech.

I had to prepare a speech with all needed material, prior to travelling, and was told I would have to talk to a group of teenagers, children of the local town people, who barely finish school and who most never go to college to achieve a higher education. I took the challenge, prepared the needed material, I used every single trick and tool learned recently on my ongoing studies of human resources administration and though I was so nervous at the beginning, the flow of the one hour speech went smooth and I felt I had the undivided attention of the whole seventy-something students listening to this perfect stranger talking to them in the room. I have this great satisfaction in my heart that a seed was seeded and someone else will water it and eventually someone else will harvest it. I knew it, almost instantly, that this is something I want to do either for a living or as a volunteer, whichever the case may be, but I feel this is something I can be good at, and can make a difference in our society by teaching christian values to young people who will be our society's future for good or for bad.

Today, back into my real life and all it includes, I went to class and got to speak with my mentor, professor Hania E., expert psychologist who has spent over two decades teaching and working with people in big and small companies, and involved in changing organizations mindset in order to convert them into successful and profitable companies and businesses and who runs her own Human Resources Consultant Office. I felt so satisfied and joyful in telling her, how meaningful her advises were and how all those hours of sleep and party times sacrificed were so much worth-ed. I remember vividly, for it is still fresh, how I many times got to think how hard her classes were and how demanding but at the same time loving and comprehensive she was and still is, for I am taking yet another course with her this my last period at college. She was a happy mother and mentor hearing to her former and current student behave like a child while telling her the details of the whole experience.

God is clearly, little by little clearing up my panorama and putting all the pieces of the puzzle together into a big picture. My cosmovision is getting clear even more and more and I have come to a few conclusions that are leading me to taking yet some other decisions for the rest of the days I may have left on earth.