From Novice to Expert to Mentor: Shaping the Future

Many of us can relate to the story that Jon Carroll, a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, tells about his first public singing recital. He had taken a series of singing lessons and then found himself standing on a stage about to sing his first solo in front of a large audience. It took him 4 attempts to find the opening note while he also battled an uncontrollable head bob. Scanning the audience’s faces while he was singing, Carroll said he had the “unshakable perception that cyanide gas had been released in the room and that the face of every person . . . was set in the final rictus of death.” The conclusion of the song was followed by polite applause (the same sort of applause, he wrote, that might occur at the end of a particularly painful 2-hour kettledrum solo). But, to his surprise, his singing teacher walked over to him with tears running down her face and put her arm around him, saying proudly to the audience, “I just want to say that when this man came to me. . .he couldn’t even sing ‘Happy Birthday.’” The audience applauded wildly. Carroll was stunned at the teacher’s remarks and the audience’s reaction. Clearly, this was more than a teacher. She was a mentor. She inspired.