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Friday, April 02, 2004
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MY APRIL FIRST
In what I thought must be an April Fool's joke, I was told yesterday that I had won my university's Excellence in Advising award this year. But the two emails telling me about it looked authentic, and when I in turn emailed the dean thanking him for the honor, his gracious reply also seemed the real thing. Making it all unimpeachably real, finally, was the dean's reminder that now I have to attend TWO graduation ceremonies and say a few words... Yet how did I, a faculty member who prides herself on having failed over two decades to learn any useful administrative information, and whose demeanor toward students has always been pleasantly distant, inspire some student to write an impassioned letter to the awards committee about my fantastic advisory skills? Actually, I can think of one or two students who might have written something. There are, every academic year, a couple of undergrads who particularly move me. Last year there was the guy with perfect verbal SATs and a stunning writing style who explained to me that he didn't want to go to college but was being forced to by his wealthy political family. All he really wanted to do was drive and write about race cars. This year there's the refugee from a fundamentalist family who's going off to a first-rate graduate school to write about religion in the novels of Don DeLillo and other modern American writers. I guess signs of early rebellion and a kind of personal stubborness about what matters to you intrigue me... Although I'm useless in terms of directing these students toward the academic vp who will actually help them solve an adminstrative problem, I'm probably very good when it comes to authentic interest in their thoughts about school and life... Not that, in principle, I'm all that interested in crawling into the world of twenty year olds. But every now and then I do learn something new. A student in my literary criticism group - a perky pretty sorority sister - recently wore to class a bright pink sweater with the first letter of her first name sewn on its right breast in large white cursive sweeps. This seemed to me the embodiment of uncool - like butterfly glasses - like something out of Bye Bye Birdie... But yesterday, when I told my [thirteen year old] daughter about it, she got all excited and jumped up and down in her chair and said I've been meaning to ask you if I can buy one of those they're the latest thing everybody's wearing them... |