Coming "Back to School" means different things to different people, but for Stone Dean of Students Alex Funnell it means the completion of a 1500 mile commute from Phnom Penh to Kuala Lumpur.

By bike.

That’s made for a busy summer for Stone’s intrepid Dean of Students – June 8th, Alex celebrated commencement with the great Class of 2024; one day later he flew to Yosemite with a cohort of Stone students and faculty members; two days after he returned from Yosemite – that’s June 18th – he was on a plane to Cambodia.

Alex enjoying a moment of predictability in Yosemite.

Though he’s been training for this trip for months now, it’s very much the case that there is only so much preparation one can do for a trip of this scale and of this complexity – in this case, all the homework in the world can’t entirely predict the challenge inherent to the test, and it’s therein – in the gap between what can and can’t be controlled – where the adventure lies.

(And by the way, Alex didn’t even bring a bike with him – the first step in this great adventure was to find a bike in Phnom Penh that was up to the rigors of the trip!).

For Alex, the tension between the predictable and the unpredictable is very much the appeal of the trip. Two years ago, in a Stone blog post appropriately titled, “You Can Never Be Fully Prepared”, Alex wrote:

“To the best of my memory, I always wanted to be an adventurer. To the best of my memory, I always wanted to be an adventurer. At the time, I had no idea what that meant, nor did I know how one would become such. In my experience, ‘school’ never offered intentional ‘adventurism’ and it also did not create any form of curriculum around the title either. Those feelings intensified during a high school advanced placement biology class while sitting in-front of Jean Michel Cousteau, son of the famous ocean explorer Jacque Cousteau. I wanted to quit school immediately and have him take me under his wing and just do the work rather than sit there and read about it.”

Not only has Alex not quit school, he’s spent the bulk of his career working in schools while also taking the act of adventure very seriously: Alex has completed the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route, and submitted Mt. Kilimanjaro, and cycled from Hanio to Ho Chi Minh City, and trekked to Everest Base Camp, and (just about) cycled from Phnom Penh to Kuala Lumpur. And because it’s a fundamental part of who he is, that spirit of adventure has transferred over to our Experiential Education program, of which Alex is a lead designer. Since Alex has arrived at Stone, Stone students have spent a week doing reef research in the Bahamas, and driven across the country in a van, and taken part in high ropes leadership courses, and camped in Yosemite, and trekked through Patagonia.

All a function of that core belief that it is in challenging and unpredictable contexts that our skills are tested and our agency (as students, and as people) grows.

Since he’s landed in Cambodia, it’s been a real adventure: there was the aforementioned bike shopping, the first night in Skuon, Cambodia (which is colorfully known as “spiderville”), the daily 50-60 miles on the bike, the days of extreme heat and humidity and the days of wind and storms. Alex has ridden through busy cities, remote villages, and empty fields; he’s hopped ferries and crossed mountains and gotten a little lost and even sampled a few fried crickets.

As he might say: he couldn’t possibly be fully prepared, but because that’s true his comfort zone has been expanded and his cup has been filled.

All in time for the school year to begin.

As Alex left for his trip, he wrote on Slack: “Adventure is getting lost, getting stuck, feeling trepidation, problem solving, asking questions and not knowing what the next ten minutes will hold. It’s having a lack of knowledge or information but a willingness to figure it out.”

That’s true of a great trip, and it’s true of great learning too: intentional uncertainty, a lot of vulnerability, and a willingness to figure it all out.

The Stone Independent Blog

The 1500 Mile Commute.