The end of summer is the beginning of a new year for most of us who work in the academy. It seems that it takes us at least the three months of summer to get over what we experienced in the first five months of the year, which often carried some of the lingering effects of the previous fall semester.
Still, it is wonderful to prepare for a new semester and hope that the students will continue to be a reason why one teaches at a university. For returning students, there is always the hope that this year's professors--or adjuncts--will be as good or better than the last semester. There is much hope and if the year is good it lasts the whole academic year. If it is not, you can wait for the next semester, and if that is bad, then you are up the proverbial "creek without a paddle".
Nonetheless, the American university--and that is the only one I know--is a place where one can learn much and experience even more. If we just confine ourselves to our classes--whether teaching or being taught--we lose out. Even as universities change and become more of "job trainers" there is still much that can be learned and experienced in those acres of buildings, labs and athletic fields. We make a mistake when we only go there to do what we came to do, if that "to do" is confined to get training for a job or to get our paycheck.
Too many students today are utilitarian and they miss the value of an education. The obsession on getting a job after the degree is killing this country's intellect. I understand that "enjoying learning for the sake of learning" can be seen as elitist, a possibility only for those who have money or a family job waiting on the outside. And in some ways it is, but precisely because it is makes it valuable. Those who take time to learn are those who learn better. Those who are stressed are those who learn less and rarely ever make the connections to all that learning provides including a good job.
It is an unfair reality for those students who have to work long hours in order to go to school. And the mounting financial burden of college is killing a lot of learning, but as students and teachers we cannot let that reality dominate our experiences. Learning is important and we must find a way to impart it--as teachers--and to get it as students. With few exceptions most poor students still have a few hours to spend walking around their campuses to see the exhibits and museums, to listen to lectures, to read a new book in the library, etc. And every faculty member, no matter how many tests and papers they have to grade, has a few hours to mentor, converse and motivate a student or two.
We need to maintain our vitality and our love for learning. Sometimes the university can be a terrible place if you feel isolated and out of place. Yet, we need to empower ourselves with all that it can offer so that we can validate our own existence within it. No place has a many resources and presents as many possibilities as a college or university. But we often not take advantage because of so many of the issues that surround it. I have had colleagues who "run away" from the university as soon as their classes are gone, and it makes me wonder what they think they bring or take to the institution or their students.
I feel an urgent need to remind people of why they come to the university. Maybe I feel this way because having to be there for my partially disabled wife doesn't allow me all the time that I want to spend at the university.
Ironically, I write this knowing that I will leave the university before retirement age to pursue other interests. Still, I have been around universities in some capacity for the last 28 years and it has been, for the most part, a great experience. Even if a significant part of that time has been spent battling administrators, insensitive policies, a lack of diversity, and an engrained condescension toward working class communities that often surround these ivory towers. Still, the university is one of humanity's greatest inventions and we need to act as if we understand this. And as the activists of the Plan de Santa Barbara said decades ago, "we are here to make the university work for us". That should be our attitude, but it shouldn't keep us from taking in what it has to offer.
