Transcript

When I was getting ready to graduate with an MBA I had a letter from the Division of Research telling me that they'd be interested in talking to me about becoming a research assistant.  Did I make a decision that I was going to have an academic career? No.  I just said, "Well, that's a reasonable thing to do." So I did it.

But I made a discovery, being a research assistant.  I had a talent.  I had a talent for interviewing, for eliciting people's views, and ideas.  It seemed to me I just learned to keep my mouth shut, and they told me everything.  And then I began to write up the case studies.

I was a research assistant for Professor Frank Folts in production.  And he assigned me to write a case on a -- I think it was a tire company up in Andover doing some wage analysis.  So I did that, collected all the information.  And I wrote up the case, and I presented it to Frank Folts.  And he said, "Okay," he said, "I'm going to work on it tonight.  We'll meet tomorrow." I didn't know what to expect, but he arrived the next day, and I arrived, and he gave me the case, and he went through it with a red pencil, not a blue pencil.  And it looked like the thing had the plague; it was all marked up.

But, you know, to this day I'm eminently grateful to him because he got me started in writing.  And I had no idea I had any kind of talent for writing, but it was a forceful, important event in my life.  So I rewrote it, and we went through a couple of iterations of corrections and rewrites.  This was pre-computer.  We had a pool, and they used to type and retype.  There was a lady, Mrs.  Bell, who ran the pool, and she would -- each time I'd appear with a rewrite she'd say, "How many times do you have to do this?" Because they had to start all over.  There was no way they could put in corrections.