Boat # 2

Posted on April 24, 2018 by John Hannah

At our very first SERT meeting, we asked the team to introduce themselves by considering the following scenario:

Imagine you have been granted a four-month, all-hassles-taken-care-of opportunity to travel. You arrive at the harbor, where the trip, an ocean-going trip, will begin, and where you will choose between two boats. Boat # 1 will maintain a strict and well worked out itinerary, following a route popularized and perfected by hundreds of travelers before you, reviewed and curated so that every detail and contingency of the trip is managed. You can be guaranteed, in this boat, to be treated to comfort and predictability, and satisfaction. Boat # 2, on the other hand, makes no such promise. This boat will simply set sail and go where the wind takes it, having as its aim only to explore and discover things. There is no itinerary, there is no guarantee of comfort or predictability, or satisfaction, only the boat, the wind, and the folks on board who will navigate together along the way.

This exercise added something to the usual round of introductions and acted as a fun device to reveal something interesting about ourselves. And, as it turned out, it also reflected something about the ways in which we collectively envision the SERT project –  our conversations about boat choices has become a kind of productive reference point in our ongoing conversations about other things.

In this first round of SERT there is Emkay, Matthew, John, Tesni, Ryan, Zinab, Alicia, and Vanessa.

And we all chose Boat # 2.

~John