Making the Impossible Possible—The Back Story

As a new professor at UW, I was scrambling over the December holiday to prepare for an upcoming second-year class on sustainability and economics. During the process, I was reflecting on the course material and how we often present environmental and social challenges, the state of the world, and the prospects of our future as bleak and depressing. One might feel easily overwhelmed, especially if you factor in the onslaught of doom and gloom in news and social media feeds. I have often wondered how this impacts the spirit of young people.

What could I do to change that story and reshape how students interpret these seemingly impossible challenges?

It is personal as well. I have two boys growing up in this world. As a dad, I want them to understand we face big challenges as a global community. I also want them to feel hope, optimism, and the sense that wonderful, amazing things happen all the time. I want them to jump out of bed in the morning feeling excited and inspired. Tackling impossible challenges is part of being human.

As these thoughts passed through my mind, I recalled something: in prior classes, to motivate students in my first lecture, I would often share an example of a seemingly impossible achievement – that all of a sudden became possible – such as running the 4-minute mile. My intent, to inspire students.

An idea came to me as I contemplated all these things – what about starting each class with an impossible-possible story? I could also have an assignment where students come up with an example of their own. The class typically has 150 students or more – that would be 150 examples of the seemingly impossible becoming possible.

I could have left it there - then the impossible crept in. Perhaps I could take these ideas and publish them on a website and eventually in a book. Maybe that book would be a best seller – and all the proceeds from selling the book would support hundreds of student scholarships and projects founded on an ethos of impossible thinking.

Then, I did something which unknowingly cemented all of this. On the first day of my second semester teaching, while going over the assignments, I introduced the impossible-possible project. At that point – when I should have been moving on to discuss subsequent assignments - I proceeded off script, the words flowing out of my mouth. And I shared my impossible idea of a website, videos, a best-selling book, and student scholarships. Without any concept of what I was getting myself into, I committed to doing it – in front of a class full of witnesses.

Here we are, 16 months later (and 16 very challenging months to say the least as we navigate the COVID-19 pandemic). Despite these challenges, the project pushes on. There is no book and no impossible-possible project scholarship fund yet, but we do have a website, a growing database of stories and videos, and a team of impossible thinkers that continue to move the project forward.