I was waiting in line at the Bookstore when it hit me. The fresh stacks of Fall registration books piled high seemed more closed to me than ever. “Fall 2000,” they said. All I could think was that they were intended for someone else as twelve terms flashed before my eyes.
I realized at that moment what I was going to miss most about college — the teachers.
In the past four years, the classroom has seen some remarkable changes. Some courses are offered exclusively on the Web, while classrooms are being crammed with as many students as possible. Teaching is increasingly becoming a less intimate experience.
But the exchange of knowledge from one person to another is sacred and should not be compromised. Learning is human communication at its purist.
When you get out into the real world, no one is going to ask you to think for yourself beyond what it takes to accomplish your job. Media and government will want to think for you and convince you that they are working with your best interests in mind.
The classroom stands alone as a climate free from outside pressures on an individual and one concerned with the development of the individual. It is a great thing to be a part of a community of education. Make the most of it.
To this end, don’t feel like you are ever being asked to be too analytical by a teacher. Read hard. Keep your mind and ears open to what authors and teachers have to say and save your judgments for the end.
I have always considered it paramount to recognize the really good moments in life, be it a good conversation with a friend or a cold glass of lemonade on a hot summer day. Be sure to recognize them for what they are or they might slip past you.
Flipping through my old notebooks, I find those nuggets of knowledge that make college worth all the work. For four years, I have been blessed to have teachers that have changed my outlook on life completely. I have strived to acknowledge every one of those moments.
In school, it is those moments of clarity, those epiphanies where the teacher unlocks a door in your mind that you never knew was there, that are also so important to recognize.
Henry Wonham’s American Novel class during my sophomore year sold me on the English major. His profound reading of William Faulkner’s “As I Lay Dying” was so intense that it left me dizzy with ideas for the rest of the day.
Carl Bybee’s decidedly anti-journalism class Communications Theory and Criticism moved with the intellectual force of a freight train. When he told the class how broadcast companies would have to pay him to watch television given the amount of work the advertisers make the viewer do, I began to think very differently about all commercials.
And just last Winter, in Professor James Earl’s Age of Beowulf class, I’ll never forget his hilariouse description of growing up on the rough playgrounds in the Bronx as an analogy to Beowulf’s rise to power. It at once provided me with a better understanding of the text while supplying a window into the life of a brilliant and fascinating man.
As graduation comes galloping ever closer, I find myself blessed to have been a pupil to so many outstanding teachers and hope that I have subliminally learned how to be a teacher myself.
As I begin my final week on campus, I just can’t stop thinking how glad I am that I did this.