Yesterday was graduation. As always, it was a strange mix of emotions—joy
at seeing my students graduate and sadness that they are leaving.
Last night I read a couple of stories by Wodehouse (“Extricating
Young Gussie” and “Jeeves Makes an Omelette”) and a story by Gaiman (Odd and the Frost Giants). Finding things to read the evening of
graduation is tough. It is hard not to
let my mind wander.
I realized this morning why those two authors were the ones
I ended up reading last night.
I spend a lot of time talking with students during the
school year. Rarely do we just talk
about the material in a class—there is a whole universe of interesting topics
and, as a result, conversations in my office or over lunch wander far and
wide. I always call the people with whom
I talk “students,” but truth be told, that isn’t always the right word. Some of the people in my classes are just
students—they are in a class and maybe they come by to talk about how why a
line on a graph shifts the way it does and then they leave, but never anything more
than that. Most of the ones who come by
to talk end up staying for a bit. I
never kick anyone out of my office—we talk until whomever I am talking with
decides to leave. (I never answer the
phone either when I am talking with someone—some students find this disconcerting. As I tell them, “Why would I assume the person
calling is more important that you are?”)
I enjoy talking with my students.
There it is again. That word “students.”
Calling these people “students” reduces them to a single
dimension. They are so much more.
A more accurate word: Friends. I spend a lot of time in my office talking
with my friends. The friendship that can
form between a professor and a student is one of the most fascinating and
fulfilling friendships I can imagine.
Stripped of all the social obligations that come with other types of friendships,
this type of friendship exists purely in the realm of conversation—wide-ranging,
deeply personal, important conversations.
When my friends want to talk, they stop by or e-mail and we talk. When they have other things to do, they need never
fear that I will feel neglected or left out.
And when they stop by or write again, the conversation continues exactly
as if we were just talking yesterday.
I have a number of friends who graduated in the past and
with whom I still regularly or irregularly talk. Graduation does not end this friendship. So, what is this loss I feel at graduation? Not a hard question.
While many of my students are my friends, they are not all
the same. I suppose that is like other
sorts of friendships. Many, well most,
of my students are ones with whom I spent some time here or there having some conversations;
I like them; I always enjoy talking with them.
They are my friends. In the
future, they will occasionally send me an e-mail updating me on their lives, and
I will read those e-mails with great joy.
I really like it when my former students write me. (Though, I always feel bad trying to answer them
when they ask me what is new in my life.
Nothing. My life never really changes.) But, I never know at graduation which ones I
will hear from again and which ones will vanish. Some of the students who just graduated I
will never see or hear from again. I
will miss them; not in some crippling sense of saying life can’t go on, but in that
sense of I spent time talking with her and I always enjoyed talking with her
and I wonder how she is doing.
Of all the blog posts I have ever written here, “The Love of Scrooge” is without a doubt the one I think about the most often. I love many of my students. They are truly my
friends, and I love them. I know them in
a way unlike the way anyone else knows them and I care about them immensely.
Then there is that other set of students, the ones I deeply
love. Every year there are a few
students whom I can honestly say I love as much as anyone outside my immediate family.
I am always glad, very glad, when I know that they know this. When these students graduate, there is
undoubtedly a loss. I will hear from
them again—these students almost always write, some more often than others, but
the frequency of e-mails and the time between e-mails makes absolutely no
difference with these friends. They will
come back for reunions and we will find some time for a conversation. I will continue to love these friends of mine
for as long as we are both around. But, graduation
inevitably marks a change. I will
necessarily see them less often. And that
is sad. It is a strange world when your
best friends are constantly moving away.
Here is the thing I find most curious about these friends of
mine. Some of them I have known for
their entire time at Mount Holyoke. Some
of them I have met only in their last semester.
The depth of my friendship is uncorrelated with length of time I have known
them. Some of the students for whom I
have the deepest love, the bond which will certainly persist no matter what, I
have met in their last semester of college.
Some of them I had in a class in their first semester of college.
My students occasionally tell me how much I have given to
them. I don’t think many of them understand that they also have given much to
me. That magical moment between the ages
of 18 and 22 when a person is just beginning to craft an adult self, when the
world is all open and new and exciting, when ideas seem like the most important
thing in the world because they are, in fact, the most important things in the world,
that time before opinions have hardened and life has become routine, that moment,
that magical moment, my students share with me.
My students, my friends, have made my life richer and fuller than it
ever could have been. I perpetually
dwell in a world of discovering Beauty and Truth with friends for whom discovering
Beauty and Truth is more important than anything else. That is what my friends give me. By bringing me in and letting me share in the
wonders of their lives, I experience great joy.
The friendships I have with my students is very much a mutual
friendship. I am not sure why it is so
hard from them to understand that.
Why did I read Wodehouse and Gaiman last night? Like I said above, I only realized this morning
why those two authors would be the ones I would read after the very draining
weekend of Commencement. They are both
utterly predictable authors. They are
the literary equivalent of friends, writers whose work never ceases to bring
that same easy joy of a conversation with someone with whom you “just connect.” That phrase, “just connect” is from a very lovely
letter I received from one of my dearest friends who just graduated
yesterday. And it is a perfect description. Gaiman is like that clever friend with whom
you just like to spend time because he always makes you smile. He is an easy friend, not a deep friend, but
one you know will never present anything particularly challenging or particularly
dull. Wodehouse is the better sort of friend. The friend with whom you never need any pretense,
the one you can just slip into and know will bring you to a more enlightened
place through the mechanism of a lovely, wide-ranging, impossibly deep and
fulfilling, amusing and vitally important (all those things rolled into one) conversation. Both authors are perfect for graduation night
because both allow for that subconscious ruminating about the joy and the
sadness of graduation itself.
To my friends: both those who just graduated and those who graduated
in the past: I love you. Thanks for all
the joy you have brought me and will bring me in the future just by being You.
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