The Anthony Reeves Experience

Nobody ever told me how lonely it could be to begin professional life on my own. We spend years preparing people for the work. We tell them to finish school, earn the degree, complete the training, build the resume, and get the job. But we do not always prepare them for what happens when the structure that carried them through one stage of life suddenly disappears. When I began my first professional job in Tallahassee, Florida, in April 1992, I was prepared to work. What I had not prepared for was the loneliness that came with starting that chapter by myself. College Came With a Built In Community Leaving high school for college did not introduce me to that kind of loneliness. Most of the people I knew were moving into familiar groups. Some went into the military. Some entered the workforce or technical programs. Others went to college. Even when our paths were different, we understood that we were all beginning something new. During my four years at the University of Tampa, I built mo...

Years ago, as I was preparing to graduate from the University of Tampa, a young woman told me something I wasn’t expecting. She said there were students who found me annoying because they thought I was arrogant. It wasn’t the first time I had heard that characterization, but it still caught me off guard. I didn’t see myself as arrogant at all. In fact, internally, I was extremely insecure. That left me with an uncomfortable question: How could I project so much confidence when I didn’t feel particularly confident inside? Looking back now, I think I finally understand. What Other People Saw By my senior year, I had become a fixture in many parts of university life. I was a University of Tampa Diplomat. I was a resident assistant. I served on student-faculty committees. I participated in ROTC and college work-study. I was a member of a fraternity. I wasn’t deliberately trying to be everywhere. I was simply involved in things that interested me and moving through spaces that had become co...

Can you believe I was one vote away from being homecoming king in college? You might hear that and immediately think,  Man, that must have hurt. It didn't. In fact, losing by one vote gave me something far more valuable than winning ever could have. It changed the way I saw myself. I Wasn't That Guy Growing up, I had a very particular idea of the kind of person who ended up on a homecoming court. They were the popular people. The attractive people. The well-connected people. The people everybody seemed to know. And I was absolutely convinced that wasn't me. I still sometimes describe my younger self as the goofy kid from Arkansas with the Coke-bottle glasses and high-water pants. I knew the people who became homecoming kings and queens. I knew the people who seemed destined to be on homecoming courts. I just never considered myself one of them. Nothing about my high school experience had given me a reason to think otherwise. I wasn't nominated for homecoming court. I wa...

We talk a lot about getting to the “next level.” It has become one of those phrases that we use almost automatically. We want to take our careers to the next level. We want to take our businesses to the next level. We want to take our relationships, finances, education, or personal development to the next level. But I have often wondered whether we actually recognize the moment when it happens. Because sometimes the next level does not arrive with an announcement. Sometimes there is no promotion. There is no graduation ceremony. There is no award. There is no moment where somebody walks up to you and says: Congratulations. You are now a different person. Sometimes you only recognize it years later. For me, one of those moments happened during the summer of 1990 at Army ROTC Advanced Camp. I Thought I Knew What Success Looked Like When I returned to the University of Tampa in the fall of 1989, a lot of things in my life were changing. I was 20 years old. I had recently pledged the frate...

Recently, I had a conversation with a young fraternity brother who was 25 years old and beginning to become active with our graduate chapter. As we talked, I shared my own experience. I told him how out of place I felt when I attended my first graduate chapter meeting at the age of 22. I went to the meeting, sat through it, left—and never returned. It would be another four years before I became active with a graduate chapter. Another brother who was listening to our conversation stopped me and asked a simple question: “Did any brother reach out to you while you were at the meeting? Did anyone engage you or try to talk to you?” I thought about it and answered honestly. “No.” He responded, “That was the problem. You just needed one brother to reach out to you.” That statement stayed with me because it was true. One Brother Made the Difference When I was 26 years old and stationed in the military, I met a fraternity brother who would eventually become one of my mentors. He remains a mento...

One of the greatest lessons I've ever learned about growth didn't come from winning. It came from losing. During my time as Step Master for my chapter at the University of South Florida in the mid-1990s, we had earned a reputation. Locally, we were one of the strongest step teams around. We knew our audience. We knew the stages. We knew how to perform in an environment where people expected us to succeed. But there was one thing we had never really done. We had never taken our success on the road. Some older Alpha brothers kept encouraging us to compete outside of our area. Looking back, I realize they weren't just encouraging us to enter another competition. They were encouraging us to test ourselves. Eventually, we decided to do something that, in hindsight, was probably a little crazy. Instead of entering one out-of-town competition, we entered two on the same weekend. On Friday night, we competed in Fort Lauderdale. Then we immediately got back on the road, drove to Gai...