I am not at graduation today because for the second time in four years I have a really bad back, which means I would not be able to sit for two hours on a hard chair with no room to wiggle and shift around. But this year they are very nicely streaming the graduation ceremony and I probably am getting a better view of the students than I would on the ground, as part of the gauntlet students walk through on their way into the stadium (we are lucky that the weather has let up enough for them to hold the ceremony in the stadium outside, or they would have been splitting it into two halves and there would still not have been room for everyone to see the ceremony). The streaming is working well, and I am at home, with ice on my lower back, watching the governor of my state joking with someone on the podium as a break from the crowds of graduates and parents and photographers. I will go in to campus later in the hopes of catching those students I have not been able to congratulate in the past week or two. And to congratulate again the ones I have seen.
This is always a time of awkwardness. I will miss these kids, but if/when I see them again they will be even more differentiated by life experiences and (maybe) more interesting in long conversations. While students are at college, they (and I) keep a very distant, professional relationship, but after graduation I get to know some of them better, even if I don't see them nearly as often. I hope that they have gotten something from me. I certainly know I have gotten a lot from teaching many of them. It is both happy and very sad. I always cry at graduations, just as I cry at weddings, and funerals. Life passages. Yeah, that's the ticket.
Follow me below the tangled orange graduation path for more thoughts on graduation.
I have learned much in my 24 years of teaching at the university level. I knew before I came (because my mother told me!) that I was lacking in patience and thought everyone should be as quick as I was. My Mom thought (of course, because she was my Mom) that I was bright and well-spoken, capable of anything, and if there were problems with my grades it was because I was not being taught as well as I needed to be. There was a bit of truth to that, but it wasn't that I wasn't being taught in the way that she meant it.
The most important lesson I needed to learn was how to learn and produce new knowledge (for me, at least, but maybe with some faint echoes in subsequent literature as well). That kind of activity is not something you can just be handed. It isn't content, the dates of great events, the number of elements in the Periodic Table, the conjugation of irregular verbs in German, or how long it takes to travel to the stars. I may know that, and it is useful to have a framework for historical developments or be able to converse in Arabic or know how the Grand Canyon was formed and why big earthquakes are more likely to occur in Nepal than in Oklahoma (even today). But for most of the facts I need to know with short notice, I stand a good chance of being able to find them by typing in a few letters in the tiny computer that serves as a phone as well.
So what did I really need to know? And what do I try to teach my students?
For me, yes, I do need to know periodicity in Art History (for my teaching) and the history of Egypt and the Near and Middle East (for my research). And I think it is useful and at least temporarily important for my students to know these things as well. But I know that in five years, most of them will have forgotten much the things they were taught by me, but maybe they will remember several ways of knowing, and ways of learning, as well as a better understanding of the world around them. I do my best to sensitize them to differences between people and respect for those differences and acceptance of the variety the world has to offer.
For example, I hope that they will have a better knowledge of the Middle East, perhaps understanding (if not accepting) why the Islamic State might choose to destroy (and sometimes loot) manifestations of older civilizations. I hope they have an appreciation that there are reasons behind the creation of art and paintings and if you look into the visual record and have an open mind you will have a greater understanding of such things as advertising images, movie environments, and even gaming environments, and you will be able to better understand how these are used to create moods and sometimes other emotional responses that are overwhelming and potentially dangerous. A well-educated person will not perhaps know how high the unemployment rate is or was at any specific point in time, but will have a suspicion of political rhetoric, understanding the susceptibility of statistics to purposeful manipulation.
And more important than sensitivity and suspicion, I want my students to know where to get information, how to evaluate the information they find, what effort might be needed to accomplish what they set out to do, whether it is learning a new language, how to listen to a patient to understand what the real physical issues might be, or why one might want to make a decision that does not lead to immediate gratification. And yes, of course, I would like someone to know why he or she should want to pick up a book to read, go to a museum voluntarily, and/or see a play. I want to have former students who will travel the world as interested adventurers, curious about the people they will meet, and who, when they return home, will recycle, walk instead of drive where possible (enjoying the sights and sounds of their environment), and turn off the lights when they leave a room.
I will develop their attitudes and skills through developing their knowledge of the world around them, just as mine was developed by some marvelous teachers I was fortunate to have when I was in high school and college and even when I got here, and was a teacher myself. I have learned in class and outside of class, in my job, and outside of it.
But I remember more than any single lesson, the failure I had in a class my freshman year of college. It was not in my major, and it was one I didn't really pass (although the professor gave me a D because I kinda passed the final that semester). It was a first year Greek language class, and I didn't realize how hard one needed to work to learn the material, how much effort it would take, and that I would have to simply buckle down and memorize verb forms, etc. When I realized it, frankly it was too late for that semester's benefit. But I never forgot it, and I never got as low a mark again in any class. Because I started working, and made the effort to get ahead of things. That is what I am thinking about when I say I learned from a class, but not the lesson my mother thought I should be learning. She thought of content, and I thought about the attitudes I had when I walked into the class, and those I had when I left. And the skill I had to develop, which I did only after failing that first time. I thank the professor for that. I wonder if any of my students ever feel that about me...
Congratulations, graduates, and don't stop learning. You can't, really, and keep up in your life and work. But I hope you will find it a good thing. I certainly have.