John Duke

Weird dreams

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 03:30:00 GMT

I used to have this nightmare that I had enrolled in a math class - a really hard one like differential equations as I recall - and then forgotten that I had enrolled. The semester would trickle by and I would attend not a single class. The material and assignments would pile up and all the students would do the work but me, since I had obviously forgotten. I would, in the back of my mind, sometimes feel like I was missing something but couldn't quite figure out what it was. And then the end of the semester would arrive and I would receive a note from the teacher that the final exam was coming up and if I didn't ace it I would fail. "Where have you been all semester?" the note would say. And I felt hopeless about the test and stupid for having forgotten - "How could I have been so careless?" I would ask myself.

In yet another dream I used to have - it takes place when I'm in middle school I believe - I could not find my way to the right classrooms. The middle school I attended (in reality) was housed in a huge old building with three floors and quite honestly you could get lost in there if you were a first-timer. I wasn't a first-timer but in my dream I couldn't remember where my classrooms were to save my life. So as a result I would end up in the wrong class or miss class entirely because I was too busy wandering the halls. I recall I didn't know my locker combo either so going to class may have been moot - I didn't have access to my materials. All of it felt incredibly frustrating. And then at the end of the semester I would have missed a bunch of classes and would be penalized by the teachers and at the risk of failing if I didn't make up for all the missed time.

This next one is really weird. A third dream I had once was of me sitting alone on a toilet in the middle of the back parking lot of my elementary school which was the place we had recess and PE. I would sit there, cold and embarrassed and unable to do anything and all the kids were playing around me. They weren't making fun at all - me on a toilet at recess was normal in my dream I guess. But I just couldn't figure out how I got there or why I was there - I just was. And I had to make the best of it because that's all I could do. So I just looked around at the kids playing, unable to get up because getting up off a toilet in front of a bunch of people would obviously be embarrassing, not to mention inappropriate.

I'm sure each of these dreams has some psychological aspect that implies I'm really screwed up but it turns out dreams like this are pretty normal and represent the manifestation of things you experience as students. The website Dream Moods has some interesting takes on what such dreams might mean - according to the site my dreams seem to fit into the buckets of "I failed the test" and "I'm naked!"

Dreams that fall into the former category can mean you feel like you're being scrutinized or are experiencing feelings of anxiety. They may also mean you feel unaccepted, unprepared or not good enough. And when you think about it being in school can make you feel these things. If you're a busy grad student for example you're bound to be so busy with so many things that you'll be unprepared sometimes. You'll feel anxiety by virtue of being in a new place with new people or in a new class with a new professor. You'll feel not good enough when a professor cold calls you and you blank.

Dreams in the "I'm naked!" category can mean feelings of vulnerability. Or, again, that you're unprepared. Or that some flaw will be brought to public attention. But, as Dream Moods says, and as my dream was, if nobody notices then your fears are unfounded. It's just you noticing. You're making an issue of nothing! Harder to get your head around but probably true nonetheless.

You can react in at least one of two ways to what I've written. 1. I'm a nut who has crazy deams and wrote about them here, or 2. You may not have these same dreams but have experienced these feelings as a student. To the latter I say, embrace it. You're a student who's there to be challenged and learn. Insecurities and anxiety are bound to accompany you. And by embracing it you'll not only feel better but also achieve more at the same time.

Insight for grad students

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 21:22:00 GMT

The site's tag line is "Insight for grad students." In the spirit of providing some I thought I'd share some of the reasons I went to grad school, in no particular order. (I have an MBA so naturally this will be biased toward that sort of program.)

I wanted out of the job I was in. The career trajectory I wanted to be on wasn't being offered by the firm I worked for. I wasn't being challenged and stimulated by my co-workers in the ways I wanted. And if the job I was in didn't work out, I would have had far fewer options than if I had attended grad school.

I wanted to be a student again. Being a student is fun if you've done a good job ensuring a good fit for yourself. You work hard and hopefully play hard as well. You can challenge yourself in a risk-free environment. You get to meet people from all over the world. A variety of extracurriculars and other activities are available that wouldn't otherwise be.

Network. Going to grad school gives you a career network of people who can help you when you begin working again. They can provide job opportunities. Referrals. Advice. And much of it is simply by virtue of the fact that you went to the same school.

Brand. Whatever you want to call it - brand, pedigree, reputation - I wanted something on my resume that people associated with quality and prestige. Not that one would want to rely on this in and of itself, but attending a school that has a heavy-weight brand can help in lots of ways once you graduate.

Career opportunities. Lots of organizations recruit on school campuses. It's a reliable and accessible pool of talent and is more targeted than using headhunters or posting postions online. Students are effectively pre-screened to a large extent by the admissions process. The benefit works both ways though - regardless of what career you were in before school, the world is becomes your oyster. With all these organizations hoping to meet you, you can explore any career opportunity you want.

Golf. Okay, I admit it. I wanted to carve out more time to play more golf. I can't really say I accomplished that goal but I did play. And sadly I still shoot the same score as I did before grad school.

Professors. Where else can you gain first-hand access to minds who are spending their waking hours thinking about subject matter you are intensely interested in?

The mystery. Life offers many roads you can go down. I had long wanted to go to grad school, and like anything you haven't done before there was a certain mystery about what you did once you were actually there. How closely linked was the content of student applications with what they actually did at school and afterward? How did the class lottery mechanism work? What's a section? What was grade non-disclosure all about? What was it like to be cold called? All of these were questions I had at the time.

The opportunity to think. Of course you think at work also. But you learn the business and get good at your job and eventually get into a groove and things become sort of mechanical. As a student you are always up against things you haven't encountered that put your mind to work.

The satisfaction. I attended a top 5 program and succeeded.

I post this to ask you to think about why you are in grad school. Sure, you completed your application and hopefully got in, but it is important to bear in mind the reasons you're there. It is what you make of it.

---

You can also visit my other blogs at OrangeHornet.com and 2andahalf.com

Happy Cinco de Mayo

Wed, 06 May 2009 01:55:00 GMT

Have a good one. And check out my Cinco de Mayo post at OrangeHornet if you're up for a little history and amusement.

---

You can also visit my other blogs at OrangeHornet.com and 2andahalf.com

One view on investment banking

Mon, 04 May 2009 23:09:00 GMT

This is not to dissuade you from becoming one, but it is quickly becoming a favorite past time of mine to poke fun at investment bankers. Not because you can't learn alot (you do) or because it isn't lucrative (it can be) or because it's not a good launch pad to other careers (it is), but because I now work across the table from them and can see how silly the whole thing can be.

Last week I was in meetings with various folks from other companies, talking about assets and products and strategies. Bankers, who love to accompany their clients everywhere, lined the walls. Each of their firms had paid for each of them to fly out from New York to sit in on meetings that had nothing to do with valuation or finance and everything to do with operating a company. As a result they said nothing the entire time, other than to announce themselves at the outset. And these weren't peon bankers like I once was - these were senior-level Directors and Managing Directors who are supposed to find a way to add value in such a setting. I once would have paid no attention but now find it somewhat puzzling.

In fact the view of bankers from an operators' perspective doesn't amount to much - at the end of the day you've built nothing. You've not understood the nuts and bolts of how a business works. You haven't (really) managed people. You've only skimmed fees from deals and hopefully deposited proceeds from those fees safely into your bank account so that at age 45 or so you can retire. This is why the operators I work with poke fun at them - they don't really understand the business.

Bankers do add value in certain ways of course - we use their analyses as a sanity check for our own. They provide a sounding board for ideas. They help raise capital and provide perspective on the capital markets and make introductions among clients. And as a college or MBA grad, investment banking can be a very rigorous and very rewarding experience.

But I guess I would say, don't stay there unless you have to. Some bankers are bankers because they can't do anything else. But I think lots are bankers because they are compelled by money or perceived status or because they don't know what else they would do (the latter is an oft-quoted reason). The reality is there are many things to go do, many ways to be successful and many ways to make money. And there are lots of more balanced careers on the other side of which you aren't 40-going-on-60 from working 80+ hour weeks.

If I have not dissuaded you, which as I stated before I wasn't trying to do, go for it if banking is what you want. If you're on this site and you are reading this you've probably thought about it as a career. Just have a good reason for wanting to do it and a good exit plan and you're all set.

---

You can also visit my other blogs at OrangeHornet.com and 2andahalf.com

The billboard effect

Fri, 01 May 2009 20:45:00 GMT

I'm sure you're going to travel somewhere this summer. Or this fall. Or sometime soon. And if you're like me you'll use online travel agencies like Expedia, Orbitz or Priceline as part of planning your flight, hotel and rental car arrangements. But how, exactly, should you use these online sites?

Secret agent or secret merchant?

Consider Expedia which you're most likely to use because it has the highest market share of the three. It has an agency business and a merchant business.

Its agency business works like you might expect - Expedia brokers a sale between you and a travel supplier (United, Marriott, Hertz, etc.) for a fee. If you buy a plane ticket through Expedia it gets a commission on that sale - say, $5.00. (Note that right now is an exception - to get you to buy now, flights are available with no booking fees though May 31.)

Its agency model is different though. For a small percentage of its flights, and for most of its hotel and rental car sales, Expedia re-sells inventory to you at a markup. That, plus a booking fee of course. The arrangement works well for both sides because travel suppliers get broader inventory distribution while Expedia earns the bulk of its revenue and profit from this business.

Why you should care

Cost is one reason. You can go directly to the travel supplier and avoid the commission or markup or both. But flexibility is just as, if not more, important.

When you book an air ticket through Expedia you get charged up front regardless of whether you buy it from Expedia or the airline. But then for any changes you've got to go through Expedia instead of the airline which can be a major inconvenience, especially if you have status.

For hotels and rental cars it's worse: i) You get charged a markup, ii) You pay a booking fee, and iii) You pay for all the inventory up front. It's this last piece that Expedia loves and you should dislike very much.

Expedia gets all that cash up front, at the time of booking, which is a really nice source of working capital for the company. If you're staying at the Hilton for 5 days, for example, you're paying Expedia for all 5 days when you book. Same thing for a rental car. And if you need to adjust your travel plans you can't without paying cancelation penalites or forfeiting nights - you're on the hook because you've already paid.

Note the difference if you go directly to the travel supplier. You can book as far ahead as you want and get charged nothing until your trip occurs. And you can generally change or cancel all the way up until, say, 24-72 hours prior to your trip. (Bear in mind I'm talking mainly about hotels and rental cars.) You have all the flexibility you need (and should want) and on top of that you're not paying a markup or a commission.

The billboard effect

What are Expedia and other online travel agencies good for then? Use them as a billboard. Survey all the options at your disposal for free and then go to the travel supplier and book what works for you. No booking fees, no markups, no added hassles and you keep your cash in your bank account (earning interest, hopefully) until you actually travel. (Note that this works only for travel suppliers who allow others to crawl their websites - Southwest Airlines is an example of a supplier that doesn't, forcing you to go directly there to compare its travel offerings with others.)

Certainly Expedia, Orbitz and Priceline and aware of this "billboard effect" and don't like it, and on top of that there are plenty of travel metasearch engines now that accomplish the same thing. But they still do good business, either because people don't care or more likely because they don't understand how it works.

All this is not to say you can't find deals on sites like these - you can. Priceline is a great way to get an outsized discount on a rental car, for example, if you bid correctly and are willing to pay up front. But generally it's good to buy direct.

---

You can also visit my other blogs at OrangeHornet.com and 2andahalf.com

Not a Top 10 list, a list that happened to be 10

Mon, 13 Apr 2009 17:35:00 GMT

This morning I wrote the following list of ways to make your academic or professional life richer and more productive. It just so happened that I came up with 10.

1. Learn how to paste a logo, picture or full screen onto a PowerPoint slide (works great, for example, when you encounter a print-restricted PDF document - just hit the "Print Screen" button on your keyboard with the document in view, toggle to your PowerPoint slide deck, and hit Ctrl+V to paste. Then use PowerPoint's cropping tool to adjust the image).

2. Giving a PowerPoint presentation? If you've covered a slide but want to continue talking, hit the "B" button on your keyboard to darken the screen - that way the focus will be on you instead of your distracting slide.

3. Carry a USB stick around, maybe even on your keychain. They come in handy.

4. Learn how to register and manage a domain name - including things like creating an alias for your registration for privacy, basic HTML and web page design, placing ads and understanding how to use web analytics. Clueless on this stuff? The modern Internet is almost 15 years old - time to get up to speed.

5. If you work from a laptop at your desk, get a second monitor - it improves your productivity and you can get a larger screen. And with free tools like this one it's easy to switch back and forth between the two.

6. Wondering whether you're viewing the most current content on a web page? In many cases what comes up is cached on your computer. Hitting Ctrl + F5 (refresh) will take care of that.

7. Interested in viewing your desktop without minimizing each open window individually? (Or interested in hiding from view whatever you're viewing in a hurry?) Hit the button on your keyboard that has the Windows logo on it + the "M" key and voila - clean desktop.

8. Want to improve your web surfing experience? Download Google Chrome - it's tabbed browsing feature is the best on the market, including showing you miniature page views of your most visited sites, and it tends to be faster. A version for Mac should be out soon.

9. Converting a document to PDF can be a pain. But if you have Cute PDF Writer it's a snap. Once you download and install it the application will show up as a printer in your print window - select Cute PDF Writer and hit "Print" and you'll then be given the option to save your as-converted PDF document wherever you like. This can also be handy for documents that have download restrictions - just print them to PDF and you've got your download.

10. Learn how to aggregate RSS feeds from the websites you like to read into an application like Google Reader. That way you can view all the content from your favorite RSS-enabled sites (which is most sites nowadays, not just blogs) in one place.

---

You can also visit my other blogs at OrangeHornet.com and 2andahalf.com

A healthy dose of paranoia

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 17:06:00 GMT

Are you careful about your online behavior? It's such a casual way to interact with others that it's easy to get lax about things and one day you may regret something. It's probably already happened to you - a flippant email, a wrongheaded post, a photo that's probably best left out of others' view. The consequences may have been minor but the stakes for such mistakes continue to rise.

Spring training

Take, for example, major league baseball. During spring training many young players hope to attract sufficient attention to secure roster and position spots. What, in addition to watching them play, are scouts and coaches doing as part of the "interview" process?

They are creating phantom Facebook profiles and friending these players to get a first-hand look at their personal lives as displayed online. These guys are young and therefore are among the most active demographic of Facebook users and undoubtedly are inclined to post pictures of themselves at parties and converse in casual ways on their walls. One questionable photo or comment and they may very well find themselves in trouble (Michael Phelps, anyone?) or out of a job.

And then so much for warm weather and baseball.

Jobs in general

From an employment perspective, among the most obvious uses of an online platform like Facebook is as a source of information for a background check. Your current employer may have done this and your future employer almost certainly will - especially if you offer public access to your online profiles, or perhaps you'll end up being "friends" online with someone inside the company already. And if you're lax about accepting friend requests that could have adverse consequences, well, that's your fault.

We once made the decision to stop using one of our regular babysitters because we thought she was showing up hungover most mornings she came to our house. What did her Facebook profile picture display? Her at a party with a beer in hand, looking rather tipsy. Nothing wrong with that, in and of itself, but it helped paint a broader picture.

Other examples

Admissions officers at colleges, business schools, law schools, medical schools - whatever school you can think of - are surely doing this as well. That 4.0 GPA, 1500 SAT score or 760 GMAT score you have? You're risking throwing all that out the window if you've got a picture of yourself online engaging in questionable behavior, for example.

Lawyers are using social networking applications to help select jurors. It's an easy way to determine someone's biases if that person hasn't been careful - personal information combined with comments and pictures can be pieced together to help determine whether that individual is a favorable pick or not.

Consider how many people have been brought down on Federal charges from seemingly innocuous emails sent in the past. Engaging in questionable business behavior? Perhaps your online persona could give regulators clues. Using a "gray area" loophole on your taxes? Maybe the IRS looks for information about you online as part of an audit. Worked on an M&A deal? The antitrust folks could be very interested in any careless commentary you've made online as part of a review. All worth thinking about.

One more not-so-pleasant-to-think-about example? People, including myself, love to post pictures of their kids online. Most people I know are right around the age of having one or two kids who are one to three years old and many parents' Facebook profiles proudly display their cherished little ones. I see nothing wrong with this as long as you apply discretion - there are people out who have absolutely the wrong motivations when it comes to your kids and so would make those pictures viewable only to people you trust.

The web in general

Forget about Facebook and other social platforms - just Google someone's name and you'll be amazed what you can find out. What you put online becomes part of the web and is generally searchable unless you've placed it behind some sort of password-protected wall. And even so, the relatively newly coined "deep web" (definition here) is searchable via new and more sophisticated applications like Pipl.

After re-reading this post it sounds a bit paranoid, but I think a little paranoia can go a long way toward keeping your life free of future hassles that a digital "paper trail" can create.

---

You can also visit my other blogs at OrangeHornet.com and 2andahalf.com

Is learning overrated?

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 05:19:00 GMT

You like to learn things, you say?

Presumably that's why you're attending the school program you're in, or why you're working in your current job. Maybe that's why you're studying for the CFA exam or taking a Spanish class. Or perhaps that's the reason you spent a month traveling the globe last year. Because you like to learn.

To what end are you learning, by the way?

When I was part of the investment banking world I always wondered what it really meant when people stated they wanted the job because they "liked to learn." And they said that a lot. Candidates would say it in interviews as the reason they wanted the job. Colleagues would say it at recruiting presentations to eager college students. (In the latter instance my favorite reason for doing banking was, "I hate being bored." Really? Gosh. That makes you a standout.)

No doubt that learning stuff is a good thing and that there is a certain base of knowledge one needs to make it in the world. High school might be the minimum and somewhere between the beginning and end of college might be just enough. Everything from there is gravy unless you need it for a specific purpose (a doctor, for example) or if you're good at putting that knowledge to good use.

I think too often people don't do the latter. They just like absorbing information and call it learning. Today I absorbed a whole bunch of information about the workings of telecom, for example. I didn't know before today what I know now. But will I put it to some good use? Will I get somewhere better career-wise from it? Will it help me get wealthy? I don't really know. Similarly, will a banker put her knowledge about how to spread a perfect comp to good use down the road? Or his knowledge about how to move boxes around on a Powerpoint slide? I don't know that either, but I doubt it.

Learning at some level may be overrated. Did the entrepreneurs and other successful people of the world spend more time learning than the rest of us to get where they are? Doubt it. They took risks and figured things out as they went. Yes, luck is part of it. But they think and execute when it matters and simply know what they don't know.

Maybe your mind is a trap for a lots of facts and information. But are you putting that knowledge to good use?

---

You can also visit my other blogs at OrangeHornet.com and 2andahalf.com

People you may know

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 18:57:00 GMT

You know who you know - don't you?

Well, apparently not. At least according to Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Plaxo and other business and social networking platforms that offer "People you may know" tools, or algorithms that determine who you may also know based on who you know.

I tend to agree that I don't necessarily know who I know. Pretty regularly, in fact, the name of a person I've forgotten about will show up and I'll be reminded that I do, in fact, know that person. And then we'll connect and reminisce and sometimes new and better things will come from it.

In other cases, whether it's through the People you may know tool or via other means, you may end up "knowing" people you don't know. I sometimes hear people say, "I never invite or accept invitations from people I don't really know." But I'm almost sure that approach leaves friendships and opportunities on the table and fails to leverage the technology that is at your fingertips.

How's that? Broadly speaking, the value of your network is proportional to the square of the number of nodes you have. In other words, add a node and you increase the value of your network by a bunch. In a business or social networking context, you are a node and everyone else you are connected to is a node. Each of those individuals is connected to their own set of nodes as well, and so on. You can imagine how big things get pretty quickly.

Think about a small network with lots of people who know each other and share similar ideas - your "core" group of friends from high school or college, for example. All that redundancy means you are exposed to the same ideas and opportunities as the nodes of your network.

Now consider a larger and more open network with lots of loose ties and lots of nodes. A tie can mean many things; it could mean that you're really close friends, but could also mean that you share an interest in music, or went to the same business school, or play the same sport, or worked at the same firm, or grew up in the same town, or traveled to the same vacation spot, or have the same kind of pet. I could go on ad nauseum about the different kinds of ties nodes can have, and it's easy to see how much more valuable such a network can be.

A big part of the value of going to business school, for example, is the network it gives you access to. Harvard is a classic example: what is a key part of value of a Harvard degree? Simple - they hire each other, and the fundamental tie they have is nothing other than the fact they attended the same school.

The network I have from attending Kellogg has done the same - it has given me access to people, ideas, experiences and opportunities that I would not have otherwise had. The difference today, though, is that broadening that network beyond just your own class is significantly easier - on Facebook or LinkedIn, for example, you can connect with people from any class you want going back decades and dramatically increasing the value of that network.

To take another example, let's say you're a struggling musician and you want to switch gears and go to law school so that you can make a decent living. If your network nodes consist mainly of your other musician friends, good luck getting your foot in the door. Even if you've got Eric Clapton or Bret Michaels or Carrie Underwood in there, still might be tough. But if your network includes folks who have law degrees, you can learn about the application process. You can develop an understanding of what the experience is like during and after. And most important, you can determine whether it's really something you want to do.

There are people you don't want to know, of course, or people you no longer want to know or only want to know in a certain way. But generally those goals are achievable too using online networks - you can decide not to include someone in your network, for example. Or if someone has rubbed you the wrong way you can "un-know" them, most of the time without them even knowing the difference. And in some cases you can even customize the side of you that you want to show to the world, or even to disparate individuals.

That last point is really quite interesting and is something Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook is working on developing further. Based on your digital persona, one person could know you as a rock star musician while another knows you as an academic. Someone might know you as a dog lover while another knows you as a cat lover. Or maybe you're a blogger to some but have a day job to others.

Talk about the potential for split personalities.

You know?

---

You can also visit my other blogs at OrangeHornet.com and 2andahalf.com

You don't get to choose

Wed, 25 Feb 2009 21:31:00 GMT

Brought to you by OrangeHornet

I'm violating my self-imposed rule not to post others' content again, but if you're not on ESPN.com today you're not going to find this article. (Similarly, if you're not on my blog, as you should be, you won't find it either.)

The point I would add is that the below isn't just true of pro athletes. It's much broader - it's true of business heads, politicians, actors and other leaders who desperately need to take heed.

Hey, pro, don't want to be a role model? It's not your choice.

By Rick Reilly

This is a story I want to tell ALL athletes who think that what they do, how they act, the little kindnesses they give or withhold from fans don't matter.

It'll take only a minute.

My wife, Cynthia, is adopted. At 36, she found half her biological family on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in Montana. Turns out she had four half brothers, one named Lil Bob, who was as big as a tree.

Lil Bob, a bar owner, could pick a man up with one hand and throw him out the front door. He was gregarious and funny and always seemed to have his son, Jake, hanging onto one of his huge legs. Unfortunately, he was also a full-blown alcoholic. Many were the days that started and ended with a quart of Jack Daniel's, although you could never tell.

In size and in heart, Lil Bob was one of Montana's biggest Broncos fans. His hero was John Elway. He joked that he wanted to be buried in an Elway jersey, with pallbearers in Elway jerseys, and an Elway football in his huge hand. His one regret was dropping out of school in eighth grade, ending his football career. His one dream was to take Jake to a Broncos game. Sometimes on the reservation, the dreams come small.

Last March, Lil Bob's liver failed. One awful hospital day, Jake, now 13, walked up to the bed, took his dad's head in his hands, put his mouth on his forehead and told him he couldn't go yet. Told him he needed him to stay and take him to a Broncos game. Stay and watch him grow up and play for the Broncos.

Lil Bob's death, a few days later, seemed to send Jake into that shapeless, black sinkhole where boys go when their best friend is gone for reasons they can't understand. "I tried to talk to him, but he was closed to it," says Jake's mom, Lona Burns. "He started doing bad in school. Kids picked on him. Every day I fought him just to go. His grades dropped. He didn't even care about going to football practice, didn't want to play."

Worse yet, since the day Lil Bob died, Jake hadn't cried.

And then, this past October, one of Lil Bob's best friends—a restaurant owner named Christopher Hamlet—decided to make good on an unfulfilled dream: He bought two plane tickets, packed up Jake and flew to Denver. Jake was finally going to a Broncos game.

As locals, Cynthia and I took them to lunch at one of Elway's restaurants so Jake could see all the jerseys and photos. The kid was so excited he hardly ate. And that was before a certain Hall of Fame QB walked in, all keg-chested and pigeon-toed. Immediately, Jake turned into an ice sculpture.

We introduced them, and it took a few seconds before Jake could even stick out his hand. Apparently, 13-year-olds are not used to meeting gods.

Elway took the time to sign Jake's football and pose for a picture. He even made us all go outside, where the light was better. Then, as we said good-bye—Jake's feet floating a foot off the ground—Elway turned and said, out of nowhere, "Hey, why don't you guys come by the box today?"

And the next thing Jake knew, he was in John Elway's box, asking him any question he wanted, all with a grin that threatened to split his happy head in half.

Then Elway said, "Comin' to dinner?"

And suddenly Jake was having his lettuce wedge cut for him by the legend, who tousled the kid's cowlick. Like a dad might.

Halfway through the night, a guy came out of the bathroom and said, "Are you guys with that kid? Because he's in there talking to his mom on the phone, crying. Is he okay?"

Yes, Jake would be okay.

"Jake came back a changed boy," his mom says. He started climbing out of that hole. He started making A's again. Started loving football again. He told his mom, "When I make it to the NFL, I'm going to buy you a big house in Denver so you can come to my games."

And I ask myself: Why did Elway do all that? Maybe because his late father, Jack, was his best friend too? Maybe because his own son, Jack, went away to college last fall? Or maybe because that's how he is. In my 26 years of knowing him, I've never seen him turn down an autograph request, a picture request, a Can-I-just-tell-you-something? request.

A lot of athletes don't want the burden that comes with being a role model. But what I want to tell them is: You don't get to choose. You don't get to tell 13-year-old boys with holes in their hearts who can help them heal.

I know it's a hassle, but it matters. Because you never know when you might just lead a kid out to where the light is better.