First Day of Class and the Gym

So the question may be raised, "What are you doing in Russia?".  Excellent question...

I have the opportunity to participate in a pretty cool program here in Moscow.  Several universities are involved in the program but the big players are Clemson and Penn State.  Faculty from Clemson reached out to UGA in an effort to get more students interested in going to Russia and thought that a good way to do this would be to send over a faculty member from UGA.  Well I'm not quite at the level of faculty at UGA, but I am a grad student there and the UGA faculty recommended that I go.  I came over last year and taught a course in Agricultural Leadership.  Apparently, I did a decent job and was asked to come back.

So here I am, back in Russia in 2013.  I'll be here for a month.  There are 22 students in my class this year, which is larger than last year's.  There are 7 Americans, 4 French, and 11 Russian students that are taking my class.  Their majors are very diverse, ranging from Agribuisness to Pedagogy (Education) to Computer Science.

Ok... so what is Agricultural Leadership?  Well, I really dive in to the leadership aspect of it in the beginning of the course.  The students take questionnaires that break down their personal beliefs on leadership theory and practice.  We learn about the theories in an effort to better understand how we lead, how we should lead, when to lead, when to follow, and how our followers perceive our leadership styles.  There are not a lot of right or wrong answers in the class, because everything is coming from an individual's own perspective.  It's all about coming to a better understanding of yourself and leadership.

I have the students participate in a lot of discussion, which is very different than typical Russian and French classes.  One of my main goals is to have a very high level of engagement from all of the students in the class.  This allows for a lot of personal breakthroughs and understanding because of the incredible diversity this class has to offer.

They have three main assignments.  I have them interview someone they believe to be a leader.  It can be a politician, an athlete, a teacher, brother, mother, etc...  The only criteria is that they have to view them personally as a leader.  All of the students ask 10 questions in their interview but the class agrees on four identical questions that they will all ask, so that we can compare our findings among all of the people that were interviewed.  We determine those questions by students breaking up into groups and coming up with five questions per group.  They write their questions on the board and then all of the students get to give two votes for their favorite questions.  We picked the four that had the most, and everyone agrees to ask those questions.  We did this activity today and the questions are:

1. What is your definition of leadership?
2. Are leaders born or made?
3. Do you prefer to be a leader or a follower, and why?
4. Do you think it is easy or difficult to become a leader in today's society, and why?

Feel free to leave your responses in the comments section and I'll share them with the class.  I'll post a picture of the board and all of their questions that they suggested.  The next two assignments are a classroom activity that they design in an effort to learn more about leadership.  This allows them to work in teams and considering the different culture backgrounds, they come up with some pretty good stuff that a lot of the students have never seen before.  Then the last assignment is a final paper analyzing a leader's leadership style from history and comparing it to their own, while making a plan for how they intend to grow as a leader.  Outside of assignments, we speak a lot about agriculture in our home countries, the current trends, and problems that we are facing.  We discuss the local and global approaches to these problems.  

And the gym...  

One of the American students discovered a gym here on campus.  I had no idea it was here last year and probably didn't have working out high on my priority list at the time.  I've been working out back home with my brother and was dreading having to take a month off and come back home trying to catch up.  So Chris, or as I like to call him in class, Cliff, and I have started working out together.  He warned me of a Russian custom that caught him off guard.  Whenever you enter or leave the gym, you shake everyone's hand.  Now granted, if a guy is in the middle of a bench press, he gets a pass, but you shake everyone's hand that is available.  As new students came in, they would shake our hands.  It was neat.  A new part of the culture that I hadn't experienced.  The gym wasn't the greatest.  The equipment was pretty old.  I have to get used to doing math with kilograms, as opposed to pounds.  There's no such thing as a 25, 35, or 45 pound weight over here.  With all that aside, it was a great atmosphere.  The students were nice.  They each took their turns hooking their phones up to the computer speakers and playing music.  There was a lot of American music and I wonder if there was more of it because we were in the room.  We worked out shoulders tonight so I got to use kettlebells for shoulder shrugs.  I would love to have a gym full of kettlebells.  I want to say they originated here in Russia, but I can't say for certain.  It's certainly something they are known for.  And I leave you now with the image of this beauty that I saw sitting on the edge of one of the gym rooms.  Anyone remember the movie "Over the Top"?  Now that's a macho movie...  

"Sleeping is for when you're dead!"

Awkward title for the first post on my blog while being back in Russia, I know.  But for multiple reasons, it's appropriate.  If you've ever traveled abroad or across several time zones, you have probably experienced an awkward sleep schedule.  I remember last year it took at least 4 days for me to get a good night's sleep.  I would be completely exhausted after stretching myself thin by trying not to fall asleep all day in an attempt to sleep through the night and I would go to bed only to wake up two hours later.  There's a 9 hour time difference between here and back home.  Last year one of the students was having such a tough time that she looked it up and found that for every hour after four hours of time difference, it takes a day to recover.  That sounded about right last year.

For whatever reason, I slept through the night last night (my first night here) and felt fine all morning.  I got up and Slava, a very good student and even better friend from my class last year, and I went for a walk through a couple of parks.  He met me at the airport yesterday, along with Katya, another friend here who is a Master's student and helps run the program.  In our ride to the hostel we discussed what was new with each other and I told them that I'm taking classes for beekeeping and that Russian bees are prized by beekeepers back home.  He found this interesting since his mother and grandfather keep bees at his home in south Russia (much warmer than Moscow).  He called his mother last night and talked about it with her.  We joked around about trading bees for iPhones.  Slava sent me money this year to purchase an iPhone for him because it is so much cheaper in the United States compared to Russia.  His unlocked phone was about $700 (iPhone 5) and here it would be about $1200-1300 in U.S. currency.  I brought it with me on this trip.  He said if I kept sending over iPhones, he would send over all the bees I wanted.  Ha.

Because of all of the discussion about bees, Slava thought that it would be interesting to take me to a shop that sold honey and wax.  It was a very simple room about the size of most small kitchens back home.  The store owner/worker had customers so we walked in and had a look around and left about a minute later.  There wasn't much to see inside.  However, outside of the shop were signs describing the different varieties of bees they have here in Russia, along with different types of hives/boxes they use here in Russia.  My phone died (it doesn't like the cold temperatures) and Slava took pictures of it on his new iPhone.  I'll post them as soon as I get them.

 The other reason for such an appropriate title to the first post is a sad one.  My baseball coach from childhood, who is much more to me than just a baseball coach, passed away this morning.  Other than "take a lap", "sleeping is for when you're dead" is one of the most memorable things I remember him saying.  It's nothing profound or original for that matter, but when I hear someone say that, I always think of him saying it when I was young.  It was probably said when we were competing for the state championships in Toccoa, GA and unlike all of the other teams in hotels, we were camping out in tents.  I'm sure he made some attempt to get us up and one of us mouthed off about being tired.  I'm almost equally sure that right after he said "sleeping is for when you're dead", he said "take a lap".

In regards to men in my life, he's right up there with all of the family members that I love and respect.  He's right there with my grandfathers, dad, uncles, etc...  He's an amazing man that taught me to dig deep for the best in myself and allowed me to see what could be accomplished when I did that.  He did wonders for my self confidence as a kid and he deserves as much credit as anyone I could name off in regards to where I am today and the man I have become.  Those that know me, know that I love baseball and I love coaching.  I love baseball because of him.  I love coaching because of him.

It pains me to think that I'm not going to be able to be there for his wife and children, whom I consider family.  I know as soon as I get back, I'll be taking a trip back home to pay my respects.  However, in this age of technology, I was able to call his son and another friend of mine.  We all played ball together.  Today for us, there is crying in baseball.  Love ya David!