Sliding Doors
Eight exceptional experiences getting a masters degree would have denied me
“Why didn’t you finish your Master’s Degree?”
It’s a question I’ve been asked over the years.
After a year of gathering data and crunching numbers, the only significant result those numbers showed us was that the more time you spend studying, the better your grades will be.
“I can’t approve a thesis that has such a commonsensical conclusion.”, my mentor said. He had a plan. Follow a class of engineering students from year one through year four. More data might help us find something more interesting. He believed in me and was willing to hire me as an assistant so I could be paid while doing the research.
“There’s no way I’m going to spend four years doing this.”, I said.
“You can’t leave now.”, he replied. “You’re so close. You can’t leave without getting your diploma.”
“Watch me.”, I said.
He watched. I walked.
In retrospect, although I’ve been told I’m a bacon saver who can only be used as a last resort, it was a move that led me to a life of exceptional experiences.
University helped me extend the gap year I was so unprepared for yet so unwilling to end when I finally overcame the first few months of homesickness.
My mother wasn’t entirely thrilled when I told her I had secured a job as a ticket taker at a newly opened movie theatre in Oslo.
“That’s what you spent six years at university for?”, she asked.
“No, but I have a smart uniform with brass buttons, a gold stripe down the seam of my trousers, and a hat that makes me almost look like a military officer.”
Six months later, I made another move that didn’t impress my mom.
“Yes, I took a 40% pay cut and no, I don’t have an officer’s hat or a uniform with brass buttons and a gold stripe down the seam of my trousers anymore, but this is where I was meant to be.”, I wrote to her.
I probably wrote that to try to convince myself rather than to convince my mother, but landing that job and experiencing all the ups and downs that followed were the keys to opening my mind and taught me much more than any educational institution could hope to aspire to.
As the diploma door slid closed, the door to a life I’d never imagined was sliding open.
It’s like the movie. Had my mentor approved my draft thesis or if I’d accepted the offer to continue the research, life would have been different. I would have landed a job somewhere in Norwegian government administration or education systems, and “seeing the world” would likely have been an annual charter flight to a sunny space in Spain or semi-annual trips to Canada to visit family.
Here are eight exceptional experiences that never would have happened if I had believed a degree was more important than experiencing life. It’s a small sample of situations that make me feel like my arms should be permanently bruised from all the times I pinched myself.
1 - A Funeral for a King
Post WWII Norway’s most covert planning operation started when a trench coat-clad British man and woman met me in the heavily secured PBX room of a hotel.
Two years later, the King died, the plan was successfully implemented and over 100 heads of state were safely accommodated during the week Gulf War I began.
Living that secret life was the straw that broke the camel’s back on my first marriage.
As a well-connected divorced thirty-something paying a mortgage on a home I no longer owned I wondered why foreign intelligence agencies weren’t lining up to recruit me.
None did, so I kept working in hotels.
2 - The Oslo Peace Process
When the Oslo Accords were in the works, authorities used the to covertly coordinate the first official visit of Israeli and Palestinian leaders.
As I led the Palestinian entourage and Norwegian security services personnel to the elevator that took the delegation to the suites, I remember a brief pang of panic when I glanced over my shoulder and couldn’t see the PLO leader. Mr. Arafat was not a tall man.
As war rages today in the Middle East, my heart sinks knowing that we once felt peace was both possible and close at hand.
3 - Celebrity Sightings
Celebrities are people. Some, like Bruce Springsteen, are exceptionally good, normal people. Others live up to the sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll cliché by giving interviews about their habit-free, clean living on the same day hotel housekeepers in hazmat suits remove the used needles and paraphernalia from under their beds.
You have two choices if you want to meet celebrities. Stand in the rain outside their hotel and hope for a glimpse or get a job in hotels and let the celebrities come to you.
4 - Drinking Beer with an IRA Informant
The man from County Kerry had lived a storied life. Member of the Provisional IRA. Irish Government Agent within the IRA. British criminal convicted and sentenced to over500 years in prison.
The stories he shared grew more unbelievable with every beer we bought in the bar of a beachfront hotel outside Riga in Latvia.
The contradictory, complexities of Ireland, which is home to the most hospitable and friendly people on the planet, never cease to amaze me. The fact that they still march in memory of centuries-old conflicts is a reminder that peaceful co-existence is always possible but never guaranteed.
5 - Invitations to Iconic Halls and Rooms
When I was in university, my first public presentation didn’t go well.
Thirty-some years later, I’d been invited to speak in the Palace of Westminster, the US State Department, the EU Commission and UN Headquarters in New York. Each one was a “pinch me” moment in its own right and each one was far from what psychology-researcher me would have experienced.
6 - Life and Work - It’s the People
Working in hotels taught me far more about human psychology than university did. Hotels are a microcosm of society. If it can happen, it can happen in a hotel.
When you see a trusted news anchor trying to sneak an underage person into their hotel room but doing a poor job of it because they’re riding a vintage bicycle with a banana seat through the lobby, you learn that not everyone is what they appear to be.
When your job takes you to hundreds of hotels in over 60 countries, you learn that the similarities between people around the world are far greater than the cultural differences that are often ignorantly used as a foundation for bias, division, and discrimination.
7 - Security is the Job, Hospitality is the Business.
In 1987, SAS International Hotels had about 24 hotels. We were only “international” because we had a hotel in Kuwait. Five years later, we were bankrupt and bailed out with monthly loans from our government-owned parent company so we could pay staff salaries. In 1995, we signed a franchise agreement for the Radisson brand. (I’ve never had more cash in my pocket than the day the CEO gave me a wad of it and told me to go to a jeweller and buy the best pen they had.)
“We can’t sign a historic agreement with one of our crappy plastic pens.”
Five years later we had an agreement for other Carlson-owned brands and five years after that SAS spun us off through an IPO.
I was handed the first global role in the dual-company Carlson Rezidor Hotel Group and five years after that we had the numbers to prove that security contributed to the top line of the hotel group.
From obscurity to the brink of bankruptcy. From bailouts to franchise agreements. Exponential growth, an IPO, and globalization. Riding the wave from 24 hotels in four countries to over 1000 in 100 countries was something a Master’s degree or an MBA would neither have given me nor prepared me for.
8 - Family First
If I had become an assistant in the Psychology Department, bored myself silly for four years to earn a diploma, and did what all my classmates did by getting a nice job in a government or educational administration, I might have had a comfortable life thanks to the ignorance of not knowing any better.
Instead, I did what I had done as an 18-year-old. I took a chance.
Then I took another.
And then another.
In 1998 one of those chances took me to Denmark.
In 1999 I took a chance and set up an online dating profile. (Yes, it existed back then and yes, there was less competition so even an introvert like me had a chance.)
In 2000 I met the love of my life. (Fun fact, after striking out on the first attempt with her, I changed my profile name and hit a home run the second time around.)
Two things happened after I met my wife.
My personal life got better. (Duh!)
My career took off. (Surprise!)
My wife has taught me many lessons, but none greater than that putting family first is always the right choice.
My Sliding Doors
Instead of choosing a path that would likely have led to years of sitting in a comfy office with a fancy diploma on the wall and a cushy pension plan, I chose a less certain path.
I have huge respect for people who chose the path I chose to walk away from.
Education is a fundamental piece of a prosperous society and I’m grateful for the opportunities I have to help coming generations of hospitality and business leaders find their own best paths.
Life isn’t about making the right choices.
It’s about making the most of the choices you make.
Stay safe, Always Care
Written with the clarity of hindsight, the accuracy of a faded memory, and countless creative liberties, 87 Stories is a journal of how my gap year lasted four decades, made me an emigrant, an immigrant and gave me a life I never dreamed of.
In addition to my love for writing, I’m a professor, an educator, and a consultant with a passion for hotels, hospitality, and keeping people safe during their travels.
Thanks for being part of the Always Care Community. Your support is my motivation and I’m genuinely grateful that you’re here. Please share, subscribe, and connect with me.
What a fascinating life, and I love how you ponder on your experiences and extract useful lessons from them. Every choice is the right choice, it's what you do with it that matters.
That's a nice spin on the sliding doors concept! I often think of all the times my life could have changed, rather than all the things I would have missed if I didn't choose what I did. Very nice read (and interesting insight, since I've never worked in hospitality!)