Retrospective
Bearing with my tradition of writing at irresponsibly late hours instead of sleeping, I decided that I was due a retrospective. I realize that just about everyone who reads this (all 4 of you), I have talked to in the last week, and that your conversations actually form the basis for this entry, so I doubt any of this will be new material. But perhaps my conversations have been less repitious as I feared and that the unique threads of the various conversations will find their way into this entry. Also, this records things for posterity, so a background checker 30 years from now will have a personalized time-capsule with which to smear my budding political career.
That duly said, I do want to capture this particular moment in time. I have used this blog in the past as a type of diary to capture the experiences of my life, primarily my travels through China. For that reason, this entry is as much an external introspection as a public announcement. For better or for worse, I have graduated from college, and I am somehow expected to similtaneously change the world and live in my parents basements, to judge by the comments given at the various ceremonies. I'll ignore for the moment the fact that my parents lack a basement and assume that the speaker meant "your parent's second floor guest bedroom," but that they didn't say it because it would be impolite to single me out in front of everyone. And unfortunately, I am largely convinced that I graduated with an education despite my university.
By no stretch of the imagination am I the same person today as I was when I first started class at CU (and incidentally, the last time I had a genuinely "free" summer). I have read more, discussed more, written more, learned more, done more, slept more, earned more, traveled more, seen more, felt more, hurt more, and just generally been more than the toddling little wet-behind-the-ears freshman I was four years ago. I've commented upon this to so many people, but I am in awe of the freshmen I have had in my classes, astonished at times (and unfairly) that these freshmen could dress themselves in the morning, let along check out a book. (Although, that said, I have long since ceased to be amused by the number of seniors who come up to the desk with an aw-shucks-type "So... I'm a senior and I've never checked out a book, what do I do?") Compared to these fresmen, I am the virtual paragon of responsibility and industry, and as the very first sentence of this blog might indicate, I am anything but either quality. Somehow, somewhere along the way, I grew up.
I don't know how, and I don't know why, but rest assured, I am trying to unmake the process as speedily as possible, such as chuckling at friends who still have semesters or more to go, or by adhereing to my (thus far) life-long policy that anything worth saying is worth saying only after midnight. I am, without question, a better person than my four-year-younger predecessor.
But, to return to my theme for this entry, I think that is despite CU, and quite honestly, despite my own attempts to the contrary, however my self-deprecation above might bring a smile to someone's face. I do not regret anything I did in these last four years, but instead regret everything I didn't do. I had barely driven off campus following my final ceremony when I turned to my dad and wondered if perhaps I ought to have participated in more clubs, played more soccer, made more friends, and generally sought better self-improvement. In short, I wondered what I could have done to be a better person than I am now, how I could have made more of the opportunities CU gave me. I have had resume anxiety for quite a while now, and while any of these clubs or activities would have made for great resume padding, my biggest regret is that I missed meeting interesting people. Interesting people do interesting things, and if you aren't doing interesting things, you don't really meet interesting people. And I didn't do too many interesting things, except for China, where, wonder of wonders, I meet interesting people.
I by no means while to exculpate CU in all of this. I think CU could and should have done so much more, and that this last semester I was finally shown that when you expect great things of students, they produce great work. I think CU has slipped too far into the culture of a mutual charade wherein so long as the teacher acts like they teach and the students act like they learn, then everyone, from the department on down in happy. As my poor mother (and many others, sorry...) has heard my rant many a time, I was (and still am) fundamentally frustrated with CU because I felt that it never expected its students to push themselves. I realize this is a bit of an academic cliche, but I really do believe that if students are not made uncomfortable, they will never learn. Additionally, I think it is also a cliche, i.e. a phrase without meaning, because everyone says it, and then no one does anything about it. The teachers do not ask of their students and the students do not ask of their teachers. An informal poll in one lecture overwhelmingly indicated that the students were there for a job. Learning was the inconvenient thing that might generate a lower grade and thus, lower future employability. We were all culpable, I just as much as the next for not stepping up and saying something.
Even as I write, this, I am torn between whether to use this space as my final opportunity for a rant on teaching and CU, whether to use this as a chance to say "this is all behing me, time to face the future and the treasures it will bring," or a chance to say something else entirerly. As I read back over this entry, I realize just how many things I have left unsaid as I hear the echos of conversations from this past weekend. To term this entry a retrospective is to imply a far greater degree of comprehensiveness than is in anyway reasonable. But this is how I frame my experiences at CU. I am sad for the opportunities I missed, the people I never met, and the life I could have led. I am sad that I had a chance to be a better person and I feel asleep at the wheel. I am absolutely glad for each and every chance I took, for the richness each brought into my life, despite the hardship, indecisiveness, or outright pain each opportunity involved. But I am dishearted by looking back at the roads untraveled. I hope I will seize upon my newest chapter to write with a vim and vigor thus far lacking from the earlier pages. I hope I can learn from my mistakes. I hope I can be a better person.
That duly said, I do want to capture this particular moment in time. I have used this blog in the past as a type of diary to capture the experiences of my life, primarily my travels through China. For that reason, this entry is as much an external introspection as a public announcement. For better or for worse, I have graduated from college, and I am somehow expected to similtaneously change the world and live in my parents basements, to judge by the comments given at the various ceremonies. I'll ignore for the moment the fact that my parents lack a basement and assume that the speaker meant "your parent's second floor guest bedroom," but that they didn't say it because it would be impolite to single me out in front of everyone. And unfortunately, I am largely convinced that I graduated with an education despite my university.
By no stretch of the imagination am I the same person today as I was when I first started class at CU (and incidentally, the last time I had a genuinely "free" summer). I have read more, discussed more, written more, learned more, done more, slept more, earned more, traveled more, seen more, felt more, hurt more, and just generally been more than the toddling little wet-behind-the-ears freshman I was four years ago. I've commented upon this to so many people, but I am in awe of the freshmen I have had in my classes, astonished at times (and unfairly) that these freshmen could dress themselves in the morning, let along check out a book. (Although, that said, I have long since ceased to be amused by the number of seniors who come up to the desk with an aw-shucks-type "So... I'm a senior and I've never checked out a book, what do I do?") Compared to these fresmen, I am the virtual paragon of responsibility and industry, and as the very first sentence of this blog might indicate, I am anything but either quality. Somehow, somewhere along the way, I grew up.
I don't know how, and I don't know why, but rest assured, I am trying to unmake the process as speedily as possible, such as chuckling at friends who still have semesters or more to go, or by adhereing to my (thus far) life-long policy that anything worth saying is worth saying only after midnight. I am, without question, a better person than my four-year-younger predecessor.
But, to return to my theme for this entry, I think that is despite CU, and quite honestly, despite my own attempts to the contrary, however my self-deprecation above might bring a smile to someone's face. I do not regret anything I did in these last four years, but instead regret everything I didn't do. I had barely driven off campus following my final ceremony when I turned to my dad and wondered if perhaps I ought to have participated in more clubs, played more soccer, made more friends, and generally sought better self-improvement. In short, I wondered what I could have done to be a better person than I am now, how I could have made more of the opportunities CU gave me. I have had resume anxiety for quite a while now, and while any of these clubs or activities would have made for great resume padding, my biggest regret is that I missed meeting interesting people. Interesting people do interesting things, and if you aren't doing interesting things, you don't really meet interesting people. And I didn't do too many interesting things, except for China, where, wonder of wonders, I meet interesting people.
I by no means while to exculpate CU in all of this. I think CU could and should have done so much more, and that this last semester I was finally shown that when you expect great things of students, they produce great work. I think CU has slipped too far into the culture of a mutual charade wherein so long as the teacher acts like they teach and the students act like they learn, then everyone, from the department on down in happy. As my poor mother (and many others, sorry...) has heard my rant many a time, I was (and still am) fundamentally frustrated with CU because I felt that it never expected its students to push themselves. I realize this is a bit of an academic cliche, but I really do believe that if students are not made uncomfortable, they will never learn. Additionally, I think it is also a cliche, i.e. a phrase without meaning, because everyone says it, and then no one does anything about it. The teachers do not ask of their students and the students do not ask of their teachers. An informal poll in one lecture overwhelmingly indicated that the students were there for a job. Learning was the inconvenient thing that might generate a lower grade and thus, lower future employability. We were all culpable, I just as much as the next for not stepping up and saying something.
Even as I write, this, I am torn between whether to use this space as my final opportunity for a rant on teaching and CU, whether to use this as a chance to say "this is all behing me, time to face the future and the treasures it will bring," or a chance to say something else entirerly. As I read back over this entry, I realize just how many things I have left unsaid as I hear the echos of conversations from this past weekend. To term this entry a retrospective is to imply a far greater degree of comprehensiveness than is in anyway reasonable. But this is how I frame my experiences at CU. I am sad for the opportunities I missed, the people I never met, and the life I could have led. I am sad that I had a chance to be a better person and I feel asleep at the wheel. I am absolutely glad for each and every chance I took, for the richness each brought into my life, despite the hardship, indecisiveness, or outright pain each opportunity involved. But I am dishearted by looking back at the roads untraveled. I hope I will seize upon my newest chapter to write with a vim and vigor thus far lacking from the earlier pages. I hope I can learn from my mistakes. I hope I can be a better person.