By Allison Henrich @KnottyAllison

Scott Jones was a high school dropout when he enlisted in the Navy at age 17. He went to night school to earn a bachelor’s degree so that he could earn his dream job as a Navy pilot. An athlete who represented the military on the All Armed Forces team, he is a two-time world military champion for Hawaii Ironman. Now Rear Admiral, he is the Commander of the Naval Airforce Reserve where he directs a team of 9,000 people. Recently, he sat down with his daughter Allison Henrich to talk about challenging yourself, lifelong learning, and the importance of community.

AH: What accomplishments are you most proud of?

SJ: There are two things that I’ve been pretty pleased with in my life. Every time I’ve come to those forks in the road—and I think there have been ten or fifteen of those significant forks in my life—I’ve chosen the path that wasn’t necessarily the easiest path but was the more desirable path. I was willing to do what it took to achieve what was on that pathway. The second thing is that I’m doing exactly what I dreamt of doing when I was seven years old. I loved to ride my bicycle around with my friends, and I used to sit at the approach of McClellan Air Force Base and watch the jets come back from Vietnam. I’m doing both those things. I ride my bike, and I fly airplanes.

AH: Can you give an example of one of those forks?

SJ: There’s the path of least resistance, and then there’s the path that’s going to require more if you want to achieve a more desirable outcome. When I was a young sailor, it was very difficult to go to night school after working all day and with a wife and children at home. I would go to night school every night of the week and all day every Saturday. That was exhausting. It was not the easy path, but I really wanted to be a college graduate. I wanted to be the first person in my family to get a bachelor’s degree. I was willing to go the extra mile for that more desirable outcome.

AH: I heard you give a talk recently, and you said something that really connected with me. You said that you were able to really push your limits and keep achieving really great things because you always view yourself as a student. Tell me more about that.

SJ: I would say, first, that it has saved my life in the airplane. I have never ever allowed myself to think I have mastered flying. I stay hyper alert. I always have more to learn. I know that has saved me a couple of times when I was flying more dynamic airplanes in my younger life.

Right here on my computer it says “student.” Today I had a very successful day at work. I was able to really move the football down the field on some things that my team and I have been working very hard on. But when I come home and see “student” on my computer, I think, “Don’t get too big for your britches, mister! You’re still a student. You still have a lot to learn.” Then there was a day last week when I just got crushed in every meeting, arguing with men in the Pentagon over money. I came home and looked up at the computer. It said “student.” I said to myself, “Don’t take it so hard, Scott. You’re just a student. You still have stuff to learn. You’re still under construction.” I’ve been able to use it both ways, Allison. I can use it to soften the blow when I’ve gotten beaten up that day. I can also use it as a way to make sure that I stay in the right mental and emotional space when I’m having a victorious day to not go too far the other way. Being a lifelong learner and looking at life as a student is one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself.

AH: That really resonates with me. The worst class I’ve ever had—the time I’ve been the absolute worst at teaching—was the first class I taught after I won the Alder Award. The Alder Award is a big national teaching award. When I won the award, I thought, “Hey! I’m pretty good at this! I probably don’t even have to try!” Then I went into my very next class and taught. It went absolutely terribly. Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong in that class. It was because I totally had the wrong mindset about it. And it was actually a really big gift that it went so wrong because it made me realize that you can’t make too much out of successes that happened. You have to keep learning and keep focusing. Like you said, in the airplane when you make decisions that are life and death decisions, you have to be really present and be really focused. The same is true with teaching. You have to always try to be upping your game.

SJ: If you think in the modality of being a lifelong student, it can help you to be endlessly curious. One of the most influential instructors I have had was a former ambassador to Venezuela. The first thing he would ask in a meeting was, “And how is it for you?” Then if the meeting went South, he would at least leave the meeting having learned something. If you begin an exchange with connection before content—“How is it for you?” “What book are you reading right now?”—you're going to learn something before you even get into the content. And regardless of how the meeting ends, you will leave richer than you showed up.

AH: So, Pop, you've held a number of very high-level leadership roles, and you have used your expertise to coach many leaders in the military, in industry, and in the athletic world. How do you imagine you could apply that coaching mentality to help someone who isn't understanding material and isn't confident in their own ability to understand the material?

SJ: I would say one of the biggest things we can do to inspire someone is to make things fun. If you can make something fun and rewarding, you'll want to do it again. That's why I'm a triathlete. Every time I go out and I do a triathlon and I do it 12-15 minutes faster, that's very rewarding. And it's fun because I see progress and I see improvement. You can do the same thing as a math professor. When you can turn little lights on in rooms of their brain, they will find that to be fun and rewarding.

Our swim coach says not to focus so much on the send-off times and the performance but on the progress and on the fun and the community. Everybody is social. We are human beings. So, if we think about the community and making the community fun and rewarding, that's going to draw people in. That is a natural magnetism.

AH: This is helping me understand better why accountability mechanisms work so well. A lot of academics will tell you it's really hard to make time for your research when you have all these other demands on your time as a professor. But if you have a collaborator who you're meeting with regularly, that makes working on the project fun because you've got a community around it. Having collaborators is not just about accountability—someone who you're forcing yourself to meet with every once in a while to talk about work—but it actually makes the project more fun, which makes you more interested in doing the work.

SJ: Once they are having fun, tie math to something they care about. Show them an example of how math is used in real life so that they can apply it. That's why I love what you do in knot theory. I love all the diagrams involved. I'm a visual person: I think in pictures. So, when you explain your math to me at the most rudimentary level, I understand it and like it. I think it's great. I've spent my life scared to death of “real” math.

You want to know something interesting? All of my guys are really good at math. Because everything in aviation has to do with math and flying airplanes. It's all about altitudes. It's about density. It's all math. It's all about algebra divisible by sixes. It's all math. When we're talking to pilots, they're all very joy-filled about math. They love doing math. They love doing it in their head. They love scribbling problems. When I'm thinking about manpower issues, my guys will love to get in and do the math on how to figure out the manpower needed for an organization. So, math is fun. I see it every day in aviation. It's about the application of math. It's about using math.

AH: It’s like you said before: what makes it fun is if you can make a connection to something else that you're interested in. Thanks for your time, Pop.

SJ: Thanks, Al. It was great to talk to you. I love you.

AH: I love you, too. Happy Father’s Day!