Doors

Doors Inspire Me

Doors. I’ve always been drawn to artwork and photography with the subject of doors.  For me, doors evoke emotions of both home, security and happiness as well as the excitement of new beginnings and new places.  Contradictory, I know, welcome to my world.

But this time of year, I think of doors as the beginning for many new students. One of my favorite personal sayings is that, “Once you walk through the doors of Maxwell, the world becomes a much smaller place”.  I could not possibly share with you the many anecdotes that has proved this to me over the years.  Time and time again, I am faced with how small the world is through the many common connections between people, places, alumni, current students, faculty and prospective students, simply because they all have Maxwell in common.  It is indeed one of the reasons I am still here.  We continually talk about how tight knit and connected the student community is while they are here at Maxwell – but goodness, how lasting and vast it is as well.

And these connections really do traverse the globe, and I am constantly amazed at all these connections and how almost random they can be.  I know alumni who served in the Peace Corps together – they both attended Maxwell – not at the same time – but share this connection. It is nice being the source that reconnects them.  The Teach For America alumni who both graduated from here and taught not only in the same school in North Carolina – but the same class (albeit years apart)!  The business meeting between government officials of Paraquay and Peru, where an SU mousepad helped make the connection that they were all Maxwell MPA and IR alumni!  Random connections of high school classmates who had not seen each other in years both ending up at a Maxwell alumni event… and I just love the story of an email I sent to Maxwell alumni across four countries in Europe that in a matter of just hours lead to the connection of two alumni living and working in Angola.  All from my desk in Syracuse!  Yes, indeed, “once you walk through the doors of Maxwell, the world becomes much a smaller place”!