Watching my former students graduate last evening set the stage for the future. They are moving on, or have moved on -- and now conceptualizations about them (as students) must also change. Now they are colleagues; they are friends; they are fellow-travelers on life's many journeys.
So when we meet them in the street, or at a shop, or in a restaurant -- a whole new way of thinking and reacting should be generated.
Do any students actually grasp this? Do they know their status has changed in the eyes and hearts of those who so carefully worked with them while they were students? Do they get what the real world is about?
I wonder.
Wednesday, June 24, 2015
Tuesday, June 23, 2015
Graduation Today
Today I will be attending the "ten thousandth" graduation of my life, at least! And I won't be liking it much. Graduations have come to mean a kind of "pro forma" passage to a new life --- but it ain't necessarily so.
Lives don't change; jobs don't come flocking to one's email box; life doesn't pin a rose on your forehead. Everything stays the same; and everything also changes. At the point of graduation one has to "get back in the game," move on, get motivated, find the new way, change/change/change ---- now!
Most younger students don't get that. For them the achievement is enough -- it's like running a four-minute mile, or making love without any birth control, or having a really, really fine meal. It is a moment in time to be enjoyed -- and as end -- rather than as a beginning of a long new process. And so it goes.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)