Fwd: Your Application with Midland University

He he. I filed an application for a position as Dean of a College of Business with a small regional university. I got my doctorate from the number one public university graduate school in global affairs, with a focus on economics of science and technology for innovation. I led graduate programs all over the nation with creativity and innovation, promoting new innovative curriculum and advocating for and introducing new technology and new means of meeting the needs of unconventional graduate students in the classroom for over twenty years. My Juris Doctor degree focused in part in international business contracts and intellectual property law and I was there working for our federal court when the largest patent lawsuit in Nebraska's history happened right before my eyes—lowly law clerk impressed with seeking all these million dollars a year attorneys landing in our state from DC for over a month with a tens of millions of dollars patent infringement case against a once small now nationally reputed Nebraska grown manufacturing business. One that will hurt a lot because of the new tariffs in steel imports. The hurting will pass to Nebraska farmers and other small businesses. Wait... I advocated new business trans-Atlantic relations inside the framework of the NATO Parliament since the early 1990s, at a time when the US was barely waking up from the Cold War and the White House was still struggling for far too long to find solutions to South East Europe's crises. Today more than ever the nation and every one of us relies on businesses and communities supporting entrepreneurship and small business development from the ground up in response to the global and national crises that continue to face us. Yet, we all too often don't get it. Because we don't want to learn to get it. 

As you pass Fremont NE, where this little University is, to head to the lakes for a swim, the poverty and missed opportunities of the place strike you. The University got a President who left right after he got the Presidency because he won the race to become Nebraska's then junior Senator to Washington DC. Turnover at this little University has been just as strong as with its President. Student numbers must be dropping and hence finances are tight, and the curriculum has been frozen in time for over two decades if not more, at least that I know of. Just as the country's policies on business and in international trade now are inspired by and come from the era of before the Great Depression. 

I got a letter via email in response to my job application. It took the search committee no more than 14 minutes (from 8 to 8:14 am) on a Saturday morning to assess my credentials against the requirements of the position. Really? They found a better candidate during such time. 

I can only be impressed at how well HR works in this day and age. Congratulations. As for the business college... Best of success. It seems that new business graduates will invade America from China, India, Brazil and the like before we get a chance to even wake up from our decades long sleep. 

Adrian S. Petrescu, Ph.D., J.D.

InnovationTrek

ASPetrescu@alumni.pitt.edu

ASPetrescu@InnovationTrek.org

Adrian S. Petrescu, Ph.D., J.D.

Chief Future Architect, InnovationTrek

We got here. What's next?

Accelerate Innovation. 

In companies and self.

Grow flow. Naturally.

ASPetrescu@InnovationTrek.org

Begin forwarded message:

Resent-From: <aspetrescu@alumni.pitt.edu>
From: "Human Resources" <no-reply@applicantpro.com>
Date: March 24, 2018 at 8:14:32 AM CDT
To: aspetrescu@alumni.pitt.edu
Subject: RE: Your Application with Midland University

Dear Adrian Petrescu,

Thank you for your interest in employment at Midland University and for the time you have invested in the process. Your application was carefully reviewed for the role of  Midland University Dunklau School of Business. At this time, there were other candidates who more closely matched the qualifications we were seeking.

Please continue to stay abreast of our employment opportunities and consider applying for a future or alternate role within the University.  If you have already applied for other position(s), your resume will continue to be reviewed in the context of those roles unless you hear otherwise.

We wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors.

Sincerely,

Midland University Human Resources

Do Not Reply to this email. This is an automatically generated email.

“I am one of you.” is the most powerful empathy device there ever was. We too disliked authority and decisions against us. Then we learned why they had to be.

In fifth grade I broke the chair in my class in public school because it was wooden and I was balancing myself on its hind legs out of boredom in classes that had too much lecture and too little engagement of us learners. I hated my Dad most for siding with my head teacher when she told him. This went on for ages. I got to often dislike my parents for not defending me in situations when I felt I was right. I learned one thing though. Just because you think you're right doesn't truly make you right. Time may teach you a perspective that in the moment you may simply miss by far. I learned the skill of questioning my own thinking and behavior without even being asked by external forces to do so. And of asking what would it look like in five years! In ten? How about in twenty? In one hundred and twenty? If folks would remember you then after you are long gone, and if they remember you well and for all the good reasons then your life, day in and day out, mattered. I learned all that from breaking the chair at school in fifth grade? No, from a caring father who had the patience and love it took to let me figure out things at my pace without judging but by being firm and what may have looked unfair & uncaring sometimes. Let's thank a patient mentor and let's mentor in our turn. 

Adrian S. Petrescu, Ph.D., J.D.

InnovationTrek

ASPetrescu@alumni.pitt.edu

ASPetrescu@InnovationTrek.org

Tap into humanity’s overarching wisdom from history. You may be amazed what new perspectives you’ll find.

The hardest to help are those of us who think we know everything and who don't open ourselves to the fear from accepting the unknown overwhelms us. That fear fuels all of our excuses why we can't do it. Yet, that same fear can be transformed into the most powerful self-motivator if we treat it with the one mantra that made humanity survive and thrive for thousands of years: I can do this. As if my life depended on it.

Let's see. We learned to plant purposefully, to domesticate animals, to produce, to overproduce & trade, to travel, to map, to build, to discover & make new forms of energy, to master internal combustion & the atom, to fly, to master millions of operations on a silicon nail-size circuit, to communicate in space, & with each other globally from our hand, & other things. We learned to overcome instinct to violence with empathy toward one another. At least sometimes—when we reckon peace & understanding are much more beneficial than a fight or war every time... we still have things to learn on this front, from a courthouse to international relations.

Often there was nobody there to teach us how to do these. We can improve. We have the greatest skill of them all—to learn by need. By ourselves. Let's never deny ourselves the goal of reaching our fullest performance!

Adrian S. Petrescu, Ph.D., J.D.

InnovationTrek

ASPetrescu@alumni.pitt.edu

ASPetrescu@InnovationTrek.org

It’s all in a name—make the best of a hard one to carry

Perspective is everything. To Emperor Traian this was a great win, worthy of celebration of his success on Traian's Column in Rome. To others 106 A.D. was the end of their civilization as free Dacian people and their enslavement by the Roman Empire. Dacians were by far not last in a line of many other Roman conquests, that later turned empires in their own right. Except one—Romania—which never learned that imperial trait.

How must it feel to be named Enslaved-by-us as a nation? "Where are you from?" "I'm from the country of 'Enslaved-by-them'." Wow. Amazing that we survived psychologically to such weight on our shoulders. And made a run at global fame in our own right... from rocket science to video compression and from the fountain pen to gerontology, just as from fuel cells to modern thermodynamics and from fighting the Ottoman Empire to pioneering successful world peace in the 1920s... Maybe daughters and sons of Dacians are bound to lead by peace.

Years back I had a few students from Liberia. The one US "colony." In Philadelphia, right on Benjamin Franklin Avenue. I was teaching US Constitutional Law. Ah, the irony! My students must be the closest to an understanding on this odd naming of a country game. Ours lasting for 1912+ years. We're not alone.

Carry your name with pride. Take it further. No matter how hard it gets. 

Adrian S. Petrescu, Ph.D., J.D.

InnovationTrek

ASPetrescu@alumni.pitt.edu

ASPetrescu@InnovationTrek.org