Orchestra, Senate, and History

At the University of Denver, I joined Alpha Kappa Psi, the professional business fraternity. The organization offered friendship, leadership, and a network that reached beyond campus. I later served in national roles and traveled through that connection, but its first value was teaching me how institutions are held together by people willing to do unglamorous work.^[1]

I represented the business school in the student senate and played violin in the university orchestra. Those activities might seem unrelated, but both required attention to the whole. In an orchestra, one part has meaning only in relation to every other part. In student government, a proposal matters only if people can understand, support, and carry it out.^[2]

History drew me increasingly strongly. Professors opened periods and personalities that made the present feel less inevitable. Graduate study required sustained reading and writing, and I completed a master's thesis on Abraham Alonzo Kimball. Research taught me to distinguish what a record supported from what a storyteller wished it said.^[3]

The schedule was intense because work continued alongside study. Looking back, I wonder how there were enough hours, but youth often supplies energy before judgment learns to ration it. Those years gave me business training, historical perspective, public experience, and music. I did not have to choose only one way of understanding the world.^[4]