Dean offers final message before students depart for a trip of a lifetime

Tashi Dalek,

The next time we’re together, in less than four weeks, will be at the New Orleans airport preparing to board a plane for a 24 hour flight to India. For all of us, our journey has begun, with our preparations over the summer as only a small part of this preparation. As I think about “what’s to come,” it is not possible to escape the human drama that is India and for every sense to near saturation. At every turn one’s senses are drenched with exotic fragrances, brilliant and confusing sights, a cacophony of sound and the intimacy of the crowded streets. Some time ago, I was asked to share some thoughts about what was coming and said “From the moment we step off the plane in the Delhi airport, fatigued after 24 hours of air travel, we (will) discover in India a story too complex to comprehend from pictures and too human to gather from the pages of books.”

With this thought in mind and as you continue your preparation over the next few weeks, remember that, as an immersion, you will receive from this journey in proportion to what you put into it, no more, no less. I maintain that as a journey, it will require our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual engagement. For each of these, you may want to begin thinking how you will be engaged with these aspects of yourself; what this journey will require from you, and what you are able to give in relation to each of these parts of the whole. If you haven’t gotten a journal yet, now is a good time to do so and begin journaling. Your thoughts, ideas, and feelings as you ready yourself, are an important part of your voyage. The preparation for the journey, the “getting there,” is as much a part of it as the “being there.” We’ll talk more about this throughout our time in India.

One last thought…in order to make sense of our world we each have a paradigm that enables us to translate the world around us into a framework that makes sense and gives it coherence. It is the lens we use to view the world. I quoted Marcel Proust to you in one of our first meetings. He said “the real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” To be truly on a journey means that we are going somewhere we have not been before. If we know everything about where we’re going, what we will see and do and what we will feel and think about it, then it is not really a journey, we aren’t going someplace new. Being on a journey means we need to be open to “getting lost” along the way from point A to point B. Otherwise, it’s not really a journey. So, I submit to you that along the way, we need to be open to change the lens from time to time based on new experiences.

I look forward to sharing this journey will all of you.

Ron Marks
Dean, Tulane School of Social Work