Karl Gude

Want me to cover an election? No sweat. A plane crash? Piece of cake! Explain genomics or nanotechnology? Child’s play!!

Organize a five week trip to Spain with a bunch of college students?

Put a bullet in my head…

I didn’t even MEAN to set up a study abroad program. I just thought everyone at here had one. Duh. The professor who lured me away from Newsweek to academia was passing me in the halls one day at Michigan State’s School of Journalism when he snapped his finger and pointed at me saying, “Hey, we need to get together to discuss your study abroad plans.”

Huh?

“Okay, cool!” I answered, wanting to fit in my first semester on the job.

“You gotta pick a country, figure out what you want to teach…”

“Right, yeah, cool, sure, wow, okay…Lunch?”

That was over a year ago, and my life has become a logistical nightmare. I’m not a detail person, really, except when I make graphics. I leave the planning of our lives to my wife. I’m forgetful, a procrastinator and frighteningly unpredictable regarding how I make decisions about important things. One night, as my wife was quietly reading Newsweek and studying one of my larger graphics that, according to her, clearly explained some complex subject in a tight, orderly way, she looked up at me (as I was reading some newspaper comics), held up Newsweek and asked, “WHERE’S the KARL that made this. I don’t KNOW this guy!”

Putting together this study abroad course on visual thinking required a focus and attention to detail unrivaled in my life: a visit to Spain, meetings and agreements with universities there, marketing (videos, Google maps, posters…), budgets, a million emails between students, my on-site coordinator (THANKS Nancy!), professors in Spain and the office of Study Abroad, housing and transportation issues, etc.

But I pulled if off. Somehow.

I’m writing this from Chicago’s O’Hare airport about to board my flight to Madrid. I haven’t had a knot of excitement in my stomach like this since, well, too much information!