Everything 101

This odyssey to Jordan is, as I said yesterday, akin to the state of powerlessness one feels as a child, but it is also reminiscent of another exciting turning point in one’s life—the freshman year in college. (Adjust your mental musical score to some 1980s Duran Duran or Air Supply type music! Or maybe “Pomp and Circumstance” if you feel like it.)

It has certainly been a long time since my family dropped me off at Denison University (oh, one can even use fractions of centuries quite easily now!) but being here at KA brings back maaaaaaany of those feelings—you are stunned at the newness of every moment, you don’t know lingo, will you find someone you know/like to sit with or laugh with, you have such high expectations, such a sense of adventure, people tell you, you have such promise, you have a drive and excitement to learn everything, you bristle with energy and possibility, opportunity is your new middle name, you are dewy with naivete—and another thing I remember—the mood swings!

Oh my—I remember back to those days in late August and September of freshman year I would go down to the lobby of Shorney dorm and call someone—usually my best friends Dawn and John—and tell them what was great, maybe even stupendous and what was hideously heinous. I would call my mother and pour out my heart, and then she would worry, call me back later that day, and I couldn’t even remember what the problem had been! The ups. The downs. Like, every two hours. The drama of the adjustment to it all.

Welcome back to freshman year Johnny! And it is one whoppin’ course—Everything 101!

And the trip down memory lane is interesting—if you would normally ask me if I had been happy at Denison—I would trip over myself talking about courses I loved, professors I idolized (Amy Gordon, Ken Bork, Walter Eisenbeis, Susan Diduk), professors who challenged me and opened me up to exciting things (William Osborne, Chuck Flynn, Marjorie Chan) lifelong friends, serendipitous moments, silly moments, study abroad thrills, the overpowering importance of the Denison Singers, accolades, success…….but wait….if I go back to that first semester, it was not all fun as the plate tectonics of my life shifted (ahhh…once in awhile a science metaphor returns to my humanities/TV-soaked brain!). I remember those mood swings even better now. I am having a post-40 year old version!

Today is a perfect example. This morning the Chairman of the Board of Trustees arrived on campus to greet us as a faculty for the first time. I had not seen him since I interviewed with him in his Chelsea apartment in February. I liked him then. Today he was even more of a titanic presence. He addressed us for a solid hour (well he was speaking to all of us, but boy, it felt like a personal pep talk extraordinaire) and he was so inspirational. I don’t remember a Chairman of the Board of Trustees ever addressing any of the three schools in which I have taught, and he relayed to us the journey to get to this day, and his gratitude, his sheer appreciation as we uprooted our lives, and believed in this history-making moment of starting this school.

If he had passed an offering plate, I would have happily put in my year’s salary!

To paraphrase Renee Zellweger, he had me at ‘thank you.’

There was a moment in his speech when I felt that my whole life had brought me to this juncture, and for those who know me well, I love these historic/dramatic moments. I love the chance for reflection, evaluation, connection—and frankly, it feels as if you are soaring over the earth.

You know there has to be a mood swing, right? It wouldn’t be a very satisfying blog entry if the narrative didn’t move in that direction, huh?

So after a meeting about the school logo and school stationery this afternoon, a woman approached me for a chat. This is a woman with whom I had had a not satisfactory chat yesterday about my extra-curricular duties. I had told her that one of the things that excited me about the prospect of coming to KA was that I could head the history department, and continue with the drama education I have been doing for my teaching career.

Well, it seems there are not enough people to help with intramural sports, and she said it was a done-deal, I would not get to do drama, but help with intramural sports. Y’know, like watch kids play squash or table tennis or something.

And thus the pendulum swings.

Maybe she just thinks I “like” drama, the way people “like” going to the mall, for example. Maybe she doesn’t know how integral it has been in my teaching career, and my life, but I didn’t get the impression that the longevity of my work with drama education, nor my direction of 60 plays matter. There isn’t a male teacher working with intramurals.

Maybe I have a new calling!

What will be the surprise around the corner for the mood upswing?

One last remembrance of that first semester in college: I took a course entitled, “Thinking, Believing, and Understanding,” and afterward I could say it changed my life. However, during the course, I couldn’t figure what was going on. All this class discussion about abstract ideas (Ummmm…did I read the course title???) and no facts?? What? And then every Friday Professor Walter Eisenbeis had his secretary put slips of paper in our boxes with our current grade. Dr. Eisenbeis, veteran of the Russian Front in WWII and ex-concert pianist and profound insighter extraordinaire, had the idea that each freshman started at the same grade, an F. We worked our way up (hopefully!) and earned better grades. Can you imagine, on like September 13, going to your box, and kind of cheering, because you had gone up to a D-???!!! He said in class, that by midterm, if you had a C+, you would probably end the semester with a very good grade.

Okay…but the weeks of waiting, and the mood swings just over the walk to the box, and the retrieval of the grade sheet—arghhhhhh, it was torturous.

I should probably conclude the anecdote by saying that when the semester ended, I earned an A+ from Dr. Eisenbeis. It is very easy, all these years later, simply to remember the A+, and not those mood swings, the weeks as you adjusted, evolved and shifted your sights.

Now is a good time to remember Dr. Eisenbeis and those grade slips.

Now is also a good time to remember the definition of “risk” I coined many years ago, the very words I said to myself as I boarded that plane to come to this place:
Risk is when you sacrifice who you are for what you might become.

But I will happily welcome the mood upswing nonetheless!