#018 Sean Lewis | In search of knowledge

Sean Lewis, guest · [14:16]at the school at which I taught, in 1986, the, Department of Colored Affairs, I can't remember what they were called in 1986 anymore, but essentially the Department of Colored Affairs Banned me from teaching. so they were not just me alone. At my school, there were three people who were banned, and, and we, we weren't banned from teaching. We were just banned from being on the premises of schools within the borders of the Republic of South Africa. So the banning, so they, so we got a banning order served on us, which meant that, so we weren't banned from teaching, we just couldn't go to school. And, so, so in somewhere around, I think it was three months before the end of the year, so the last three months of the, before the end of the year, I was banned, and I think it would have been about September, October. 1986. It was an attempt to undermine, on the one hand, the full, the, the, the, the emerging organization of teachers, and on the other hand, to, to take away the, that alliance between teachers and students, because teachers and students had active relationships, a-around political struggle back in those days. and, and so it was an attempt to identify, it was an attempt by the state to identify people they considered to be agitators of unrest at the schools and to neutralize them. So, so, so that, so that happened in 1986. In, in 1987, early 1987, and it wasn't just at my school. It was at a number of schools in the Western, there weren't many, I think there were about twenty or so people banned across the Western Cape, maybe not even that many, but they were banned from school. So the, the, the, so in, in the next year, The students at the schools refused to go back to classes until their teachers were reinstated. So after the year started and, and, eventually the, we were allowed to, we were reinstated, we were allowed to return to schools. And, yeah. And so in, we start, I started teaching again, I think in about February twenty se- nineteen ninety-seven. But I didn't stay for very long because, yeah, I didn't stay for very long because the, that, that period, that period of my banning, it's, it was challenging for me because now, s-one moment I had a job and an income, and I was living on my own, and the next moment I didn't have a job and an income, and I could no longer afford rent, and I couldn't afford to keep my car, sold my car, and moved back in with my parents, and then had to, had a little bit of time to think about what do I do next, because You know, so at the start of the process, I didn't know what I was going to do. I didn't know that I would be reinstated the next year. I didn't, I had no knowledge, so I had to think of how I would sustain myself, from that point forth.

Sean Lewis, guest · [17:52]I serendipitously came across a, a, an advertisement for black students in South Africa to apply for scholarships to study in the US. and, and given that I had, given that I didn't have a, I, I had no job, and I had no prospects of getting a job, because, and I don't know if you know this, but if you have a BA degree majoring in English literature, you're not very employable. so people look at you as, you're either underqualified for most things that require a, a competence of some sort, or you're overqualified because you have a degree and you can't do entry-level work. You know, so you're either underqualified or overqualified, but you're certainly not qualified to do anything but teach English. So, so after trying to find another job, I came across this ad, and I applied for, to, to study. And I spoke to my dad, and I remember my dad saying to me that, my dad say, my dad said to me that I should go and study computers. This is 1986, and, I knew nothing about computers. so I applied to, to a bachelor's degree, a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science. I applied to, to get a, for a scholarship to do a, to study for the BSc in Computer Science in the US. And then, and went through the process of the application process, and then you had to write the, the, the, the, what's it, the SATs, the Scholastic Aptitude Test. And, so I wrote the, the SATs, and, and then, and, and I wrote the SATs, which I encountered for the first time, and then I, and the, the problem, believe it or not, an interesting problem was that my score was too high. So I scored in the ninety-seventh or ninety-eighth percentile. and I don't think... So what that basically means is that ninety-seven, ninety-eight people, ninety-seven, ninety-eight percent of the people who wrote the test in that year scored below me. So because my score was in the ninety-seventh or ninety-eighth percentile, and I had a degree already, the, the, the, the, the scholarship providers came back to me and said, they cannot accept me for a scholarship to do a Bachelor of Science degree, a bachelor's degree, because my, my scores were too high, and, I already had a degree, but they would offer me a place if I was prepared to do a master's degree. So, I said, I, I had nothing else to do, so I said, okay. And so I had to write the... something, GMAT probably. I pro- I had to write something, some other graduate, no, G, graduate record exam, GREs. I had to write a GRE, which is the graduate record examination, and I don't remember what score I got there because there were no issues with my score. I was accepted, got into a university, and got accepted to do a, to study for a master's in computer science at the State University of New York at Albany. bear in mind that at that point I had no knowledge of computing, none whatsoever. So, so I accepted the scholarship, they made the scholarship offer, I accepted the scholarship, and, And, and did, but I accepted the scholarship, and in the back of my head, I was thinking, there is no way I can do a Master of Science in, in, in computer science. I just don't have the knowledge or the skills, but I'm going to accept the scholarship, and if I fail in the first quarter and they send me home, I would at least have had a three-month holiday in the US.

Sean Lewis, guest · [32:56]One of the things that we needed to do was to start breaking down those barriers. And within the volleyball fraternity, we then had three organizations. we had, we had three organizations, and I was served on the national executive of one of the three. And what we had to do was to then we started having talks about unification. And I became involved in the talk, so we, we, each of the, the national executives elected Selected three people that would represent each organization, so there was this group of nine people that got together periodically to start hammering out how we would actually unify. It was quite a contentious, it was quite, there was a lot of, there was a lot, a lot of conflict. There was a lot of conflict in the process because people obviously felt very strongly about things, and, and at, in that po- at that point, I, so I think I matured quite a bit through the process because in that process, I realized that I have, there, I realized, there, a couple of things about myself. One, that I have the ability to listen very carefully, which, I didn't know that I had. I probably had it, but I didn't realize it quite to the same extent. So I was able to listen very carefully, and I was able to find commonality when this, within the conflict. So, so even though there were the many conflicting ideas that were being, that we were, we were arguing about, and there was lots of passion and emotion, I discovered then that I had the ability to, to, to transcend and move beyond the passion and the emotion and find the commonalities. So, and I remember writing a document after the first session and, in which we argued furiously for two days, I remember sitting down and writing a document in which I define, in which I, I think we called it the basis for unity. I think I, and, and remember this is, or still the pre-computer days, we didn't really have ubiquitous computers, so this was written by hand on yellow paper. I'll never forget it, and there were those yellow exam pads, and I probably still have it somewhere. I wrote a document called the Basis for Unity, so that when the, we met the next time, we could actually debate that basis for unity, and we could then agree on some principles, which was, were agreed, and then we could then start building forward from there. And, so this process lasted for probably about two years. I mean, this process lasted for, from around about 1992 up until, and beyond the time that I left, but I left the country again, no, not 1992, from about 1990, up until about 1992, because I left the country again in '92, in February '92, but that's a different story. So this process happened for those few years, and we got to a point, we got to a point where we were now ready to form a unified organization, which eventually emerged called Volleyball South Africa.

Sean Lewis, guest · [41:08]So I studied these Peterson's Guides. I spent days in the library studying these Peterson's Guides and identified, I thought about what I wanted to study, and I was interested in language because, I was very interested in language because I thought, I looked at South Africa and I said, in South Africa, we need to have an understanding of how we bridge this language gap because in addition to, I mean, we've had all of these various dimensions of poverty and social class and, quality of life, et cetera. The area of, in my area, my particular area of interest where I, the, the factor that I thought could Impact on, on, on all of those things is language. So one of the factors, and I'm not saying it's a definitive factor, but I wanted to understand language. So I looked at, I looked for universities that offered language programs up the, so I looked at language programs, but applied linguistics programs. So I looked specifically for applied linguistics programs up to, up to doctorate level. Because at that stage, I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I had this idea that the, the, a sensible logical choice would be to try and do a PhD in applied linguistics. so that's what I looked for, and I find, found one hundred and twenty-four Universities in the West, in the US that offered a doctoral program in applied linguistics. So I wrote a letter, I, I sat down and I wrote a letter to all hundred and twenty-four universities saying a couple of things. One, I'm a South African, South, South African, in the US, I don't have a visa, I don't have money, but I'd like to study at a, at your university and I need you to fund my studies. so, and I, and, and I sent it to hundred and twenty-four universities and I got nineteen responses, seventeen of which were negative. but there were two positives, the uni, the, the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Delaware. So I looked at these two responses. and, and, and decided that I, that I needed to, that I decided that I, I'm going, that I would go to the University of Pittsburgh. I don't remember why, but I know I decided on Pittsburgh, and I decided that I needed to make, because the University of Pittsburgh said that they would consider my application. So both Delaware and neither of them committed to giving me an offer, but they both said, neither of them said no. So I decided that I needed to go and make a compelling case, to the University of Pittsburgh. So at that point, I was living in Albany again. So I'd moved from New York City, and I was living in Albany because I was no longer working, and I needed to find a place where I could live for free. So I went to live with my good friend in, in, in Albany, my home away from home. And, so I then got on a Greyhound bus. And went to Pittsburgh and went to talk to all of the people in, all of the major faculty members at the, in the linguistics department, introduced myself and said, hi, I'm Sean, I'm the guy who wrote that letter, and, because I wanted them to see me and hear me, because then it would make it more difficult for them to say no.

Sean Lewis, guest · [45:21]from there I then went, so in, in about August, August 1992, I then left, I then left, Albany and went to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where I, and went to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, found myself an apartment, a tiny little apartment, and used all the remaining money that I had left, and I, I used all the remaining money that I had left to pay my rent upfront, so pay for three months of rent, and to buy a massive bag of rice. And the reason was very simple. in order, so while I was accepted at the university and could start taking classes with a tuition waiver, I could not get paid until I had a visa. So I had apply, I, of course, I could only apply for the visa once I was accepted at the university. But the process of getting a visa took time. So when I went to Pittsburgh in Albany, and in August, I did not have a visa, and I had no income, and I had no spare money. So I used, I made sure that I had a place to live, and I made sure that I had something to eat, and that something to eat was rice, because rice was cheap, and it could, you could just keep rice, you take, take a little bit of rice and you boil it, and it becomes a lot more. So I lived on rice for about seven weeks. I lived on rice only for about seven weeks, because I had no more money. And what I did in order to, so I would prepare rice every day for breakfast, lunch, and supper, and, what I did was I discovered that there were shops, so there were little shops that sold, Vegetables and stuff, so green grocers, a little Italian shop close to my house. And at night, they would take the, the, the vegetables that were starting to rot and put them, put it outside the shop. They would close the shop and put the vegetables outside. So I would go and pick up the vegetables every night and take them home, cut away the rotting bits, and then I would prepare a meal of rice with vegetables. And that's how I lived for about seven weeks until my visa came through and I could get paid and I could live like a human, not just eat rice with, with, with rotting vegetables.

Sean Lewis, guest · [55:32]Look, I did consistently well from the beginning, so it's, so I did very well in module, module one. I did very well in module two. In module three, I didn't do as well. And I got cocky. I, I, I'll tell you honestly that I'm, I'm, so I've always been an above-average student. I mean, that's, I, I've always been in a, one of the top students. I've never been the top student, never been the best, but I've always been amongst the best. And I find studying easy. I love studying, and I find studying easy. And I find acquiring new knowledge and making the knowledge my own, I find that easy. I, easy and enjoyable, which is wonderful if you love studying. But in the first year of the executive MBA, module one was bewildering. I mean, I didn't know, I, I, I had no idea of who I was, where I was, and what all of these things meant. But in spite of that, I did very well on my position, with my position paper. And module two was also bewildering, less so than module one, because the discourse had been established, but I also did very well. So I got cocky, and in module three, I did very little work. I think I wrote my position paper in one day. I think, I, I think I started my position paper the morning, it, it was due the Friday. I started writing that paper the morning, and that's writing and the, doing the research, and I created that entire paper, and I submitted it on time by eleven o'clock that night, and I got an average mark for it, and, and I hate average marks, right, just by the way, I'm, so I, I, so And, and, and I looked, I reflected on, on, on module three. I reflected very seriously on module three, and I realized, one, that I got cocky, and two, I'm taking learning for granted. I'm taking, absolutely taking learning for granted. I'm not embracing the, the, the, the, the opportunity to learn new things and really, really, immerse myself in learning. So from that point forth, I completely immersed myself in the learning. I mean, that for me was the most, that for me was the big eye opener, the ma- major turning point. And when I, so, so from that point forth, I worked extremely hard. I worked hard and I worked consistently, and I put my, I put my, my soul into what I was doing. I wasn't just trying to get marks. I actually didn't care about the marks. I just, I, I really just cared about whether or not I would be happy with what I produced at the end.