Today is the Roberts Convocation. Our new Dean of the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences will be speaking. I love the pageantry of robing, colors of the hoods flying behind faculty as they walk, tassels nodding. Faculty line up in the hallway of the Cultural Life Center, waiting for the cue to move into the auditorium, marching toward the platform, all eyes on the lines of learned people taking their places on the platform. The library faculty usually bring up the end of the line and we are seated at the back of the platform.
After the opening prayer, we are seated, and I am buried in a sea of black robes and backs of heads. I crane my neck to see the various people who take part in the service, from the reader of Scripture to the president and provost. It is tiring to try and follow all the movement. Once the speaker is introduced, I sit back in my seat to listen, and my eyes wander past the platform to those seated in the audience. The house is full including the balcony. Everyone is listening intently, as if somehow they can absorb in the hearing of this speech everything they need to know to succeed in college. The Dean's presentation addresses complicated and weighty topics.
I find myself wondering what is going through their minds, all these students that sit out there, beyond the platform, where once I myself sat. I remember when I first went to college, all the hopes and dreams and expectation and sheer newness of it all. It seemed then as if the whole world was at my disposal. Do these students think the same thing? Or do they bring the disillusionment of constraints that preceeding generations have placed on them?
It is difficult to see their faces from where I find myself sitting these days, tucked away at the back of the platform behind many others who share my life's path. I have great hopes that these students will find the cure for cancer, will solve the global warming problem, will disarm aggressive nations and defuse politically hot issues. I hope they will be smarter, more caring, more informed, more altruistic than we have been to date. Can they do it? Of course! Will they do it? That remains to be seen. I sure hope they will make vast strides in all the right directions.
After the opening prayer, we are seated, and I am buried in a sea of black robes and backs of heads. I crane my neck to see the various people who take part in the service, from the reader of Scripture to the president and provost. It is tiring to try and follow all the movement. Once the speaker is introduced, I sit back in my seat to listen, and my eyes wander past the platform to those seated in the audience. The house is full including the balcony. Everyone is listening intently, as if somehow they can absorb in the hearing of this speech everything they need to know to succeed in college. The Dean's presentation addresses complicated and weighty topics.
I find myself wondering what is going through their minds, all these students that sit out there, beyond the platform, where once I myself sat. I remember when I first went to college, all the hopes and dreams and expectation and sheer newness of it all. It seemed then as if the whole world was at my disposal. Do these students think the same thing? Or do they bring the disillusionment of constraints that preceeding generations have placed on them?
It is difficult to see their faces from where I find myself sitting these days, tucked away at the back of the platform behind many others who share my life's path. I have great hopes that these students will find the cure for cancer, will solve the global warming problem, will disarm aggressive nations and defuse politically hot issues. I hope they will be smarter, more caring, more informed, more altruistic than we have been to date. Can they do it? Of course! Will they do it? That remains to be seen. I sure hope they will make vast strides in all the right directions.
No comments:
Post a Comment