The Anthony Reeves Experience

When I decided to compete in karate again, I turned to the person whose judgment I trusted most: my karate teacher. She encouraged me to come down to Florida and compete at least one more time with her there. That meant flying from the Northeast to Tallahassee, spending a week training with her in person for the first time in years, and then traveling with her and a couple of other students to a tournament in Crestview. Each step brought me closer to something I wanted to do—and something I was afraid to find out about myself. I had not sparred competitively in more than 20 years. I knew who I had been as a fighter in my thirties. I had no idea who I would be on the mat at 54. Would my kicks go where I wanted them to go? Would I move quickly enough? Would I remember how to respond when someone came at me? Or would I discover that the fighter I remembered was someone I could no longer be? People sometimes ask whether I was nervous about my opponent. Honestly, that wasn't the part th...

When I graduated from college, I did not know exactly what I was going to do next, but that uncertainty did not frighten me. College itself had been the milestone. It represented four years of growth from a teenager into a young man. I had developed independence, become a leader, and completed what everyone said was the next logical step toward establishing myself. There was also an assumption attached to earning a college degree: once you graduated, the world would open up. Even if you did not have a detailed plan, you had accomplished something significant. You were on your way. Graduate school felt different. The degree was supposed to change something By the time I completed my Master of Public Health in industrial hygiene, I was not entering the professional world without experience. I had already been working in safety and health. I believed the graduate degree would enhance that experience and immediately move my career to another level. In my mind, the degree would speak for it...

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...