Entering college, filled with an excess of teenage angst and self-doubt, I did wonder what the next four years were going to mean. Starting the first semester with a 1.6 GPA didn’t help my state of mind. But Gettysburg College was a time of transformation for me. I became a better student—and a better person.
Gettysburg shared many gifts, the most prominent being learning how to learn: how to approach each issue, problem, and situation with a good foundation for success. We enter college during our most formative years, and at a residential college, we are given the opportunity to learn by trial and error—good choices and bad, fun times and sad.
What sticks with us is remarkable, especially in hindsight as we gain the benefit of time, experience, and wisdom. You learn how to learn about life. You not only learn about happiness, but how to achieve it as well. You learn how to persevere, realizing good luck is a function of hard work, and to my surprise, I made Dean’s List my last five semesters.
Three years after graduating in 1972, I found myself in Manizales, Colombia, living in a town in the coffee zone, being effectively mute in the language in a culture I was clueless about. But I leaned on my liberal arts and sciences education to learn the language and understand the culture, and today, I am now fluent in both Spanish and Portuguese. Little did I know then that it was the start of a career in the coffee, cocoa, and chocolate business—buying raw material from farmers, processing the beans, and delivering them to our retail clients, such as Nestle, Mars, and Starbucks. My career has lasted 50-plus years, from the farm to the C-suite, the board, and now currently managing a hedge fund at Opportune Fund.
A great case of perseverance came when Rich Falotico ’04 interviewed with me at Atlantic Cocoa Company (USA) upon his graduation. At the time, we felt he needed to grow his skills, so we encouraged him to come back in a year if he was still interested. Indeed, he came back 365 days later, was hired, and is extremely successful, while commuting between his offices in New York, London, and Abidjan. He continued to learn how to learn.
“You learn how to learn about life. You not only learn about happiness, but how to achieve it as well. You learn how to persevere, realizing good luck is a function of hard work.”
Throughout my life and career, making both good and bad decisions, it dawned on me that failure is never fatal. We all fall—getting back up is what counts most. The tools I have when I get back up are the skills I received during those four years at Gettysburg when I learned how to learn. I have a process and the humility to know what I don’t know, regardless of the arena. For that, I am thankful for those four years.
by Hank Dunlop ’72
Posted: 02/26/24