My Gap Year

Scott Waxman

In a world turned upside down by both a global pandemic and ongoing civil unrest, and where income and minority inequality widens by the week, I search for hope. The globe needs a reset and a source of motivation and inspiration. To each and every member of the amazing class of ’85, I give thanks to both what we learned and shared together while on “the Farm” as well as to what so many of you are doing as leaders on a variety of dimensions to make a difference. We are all needed now more than ever!!

In a world turned upside down by both a global pandemic and ongoing civil unrest, and where income and minority inequality widens by the week, I search for hope. The globe needs a reset and a source of motivation and inspiration. To each and every member of the amazing class of ’85, I give thanks to both what we learned and shared together while on “the Farm” as well as to what so many of you are doing as leaders on a variety of dimensions to make a difference. We are all needed now more than ever!!

Compared to many of you, my career journey has been a long straight road with embarkation in San Francisco in July 1985 with Morgan Stanley in Private Wealth Management. At that time, I asked my girlfriend (now my incredible wife of 34 years) to give me five to seven years to give it a go. Thirty-five years later that same journey continues today. I have a magnificent team of twelve that continue to run circles around me and I have been blessed with kind financial markets. I have learned a tremendous amount about what propels capital markets and valuations (still trying to grasp that literally today), how to provide effective client advice, how to deal with large personalities and egos, how to motivate and lead a high achieving team and how to give back and bring social good to our spheres of influence. But so many of us have had similar learnings and so those are stories for another day. Today, I share my “gap year” experience in the hope that, like the world’s current potential reset, we too can each carve out at least one period of time in our own journeys for uncompromised reflection leading towards validation, reset or some combination thereof.

After pleading with each of our three children to take a gap year before college, none of them took us up on the offer so Barbara and I decided that we would embrace the endeavor. There is never a good time and like so many of you; work, non-profit board positions, parent’s health, children, financial constraints, friendships and the comfort of our network and surroundings are amongst the reasons to love the idea and yet never execute. We were not to be denied!

With our youngest a sophomore in college (we wanted to give him a year under his belt so there would be minimal feelings of desertion) and our parents not getting any younger, in 2015, we moved to Italy for a year. We were blessed to be able to spend 12 months in this incredible country (with two trips back to the States to make sure we were not forgotten). However, it does not need to be a year nor even overseas to accomplish “repotting” objectives. It just needs to be somewhere you can eliminate the barrage of inbound demands on your time and long enough to settle in, unwind and to be comfortable not being a tourist but rather truly “living” the experience.

We spent the first three months living in an apartment in Florence (just across the Arno river from the Uffizi museum), six months in a restored Tuscan farmhouse in the small town of Cortona and the last three months in an apartment in Ortigia in SE Sicily. To enhance and elevate the year long experience, we agreed to only meet and socialize with Italians (no ex-pats), thus language skills became important (thankfully Barbara does well with languages) and we only travelled within Italy. Our toughest challenge was to manage the number of “long lost” friends who, upon hearing we were spending a year in Italy, assumed they were coming for a visit.

Although I could fill a book or a late night at the Dutch Goose with anecdotes and stories of our magical Italian experiences, outlined below are six takeaways that I believe make a “gap” experience so valuable and meaningful:

Slow It Down – we have a tendency to run fast, never pause or quiet our minds. Creating a new setting without common distractions gives us a chance to alter our routines. It was six weeks into the experience in rainy, cold Florence before I even began to feel rested and energized.

Appreciate Relationships – as we all know and it is so commonsensical, in our daily existence we take much for granted. Potentially none more so than the person or people we spend the most time with. Moving to a novel environment with no ties or other relationships places the emphasis where it should be, on each other. Our conversations were richer, we laughed more and we realized and gained greater clarity (even after thirty years) on what we each bring and take from our relationship.

Break Out and Try New Things – I spent the first three months learning Italian, studying Renaissance Art with a tutor (and the museums of Florence close by) and reading ferociously for pleasure (not macro-economic reading as I do back home). Cooking, yoga, gardening, chi quong and photography came later in the year. Of course, it allows time for old habits as well (the hiking and vino were epic).

Reconsider What is Important – doing anything for over three decades, given our lifespan, is a very long time. The time away gave me the chance to recalibrate, realize the multitude of things I like about my career and my outside pursuits and reaffirm my priorities, set against an ever changing world.

Prepare to Pass the Baton – for those of us in a service, relationship oriented business, it can be very hard to exit. Client relationships have been built up over decades and, although misaligned, clients disproportionately focus on the leader of the business unit. Although we know the value and immense skill set of our team members, there is no better way to alter this reliance than extract yourself for some period of time. During my year away, the client base, resource providers and the firm realized the value and significance of each and every team member. There is nothing better than to come back feeling irrelevant

Immersion in a New Land – from culture, to politics, religion, history, food, wine, language, mores et al, every new environment provides educational opportunities, new stimulation and tremendous areas for growth. Of course, leaving our borders enhances this aspect dramatically. Our year in the “old world” was a great contrast in pace of life, priorities in life and cultural depth.

Graduation day from the GSB seems like both ancient history and in other ways, only yesterday. The world is in a vastly different place and so are we. I am forever grateful for the time we shared, for the faculty and the manner in which they embraced us, and for the depth and richness of our interactions. Thank you to David for crafting and weaving together these vignettes that help create Our Story!