Curious David Redux: Thank you, Graduating Carroll Seniors: Flashbacks and Flash Forwards

The closer I get to retirement, the more meaningful Carroll graduations, past traditions, and the relationships I have formed with students, faculty, alumni, and other members of the Carroll Community become. Carroll has changed greatly since I wrote the message to seniors below. Baccalaureate is now at 5:00 Friday evening without Faculty regalia. Commencement (no longer on Mothers’ Day) is now at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday. The physical appearance of Carroll continues to change daily with new or renovated buildings.

Carroll has a new President, Cindy Gnadinger. I have personally known five other Carroll Presidents since I arrived in February of 1978. And Carroll Emeriti, faculty, and students look younger to me every day :). Certain Carroll music triggers strong emotions.

My feelings about my overall Carroll experience haven’t changed from what I wrote years ago (or how I felt here forty years ago) so I re-share them here–with a few photos taken since then!

Curious David Redux: Reflections from a few years ago:

As is my habit of the past many years, I am sitting in my office on this graduation day morning reflecting. I drive in early to ensure getting a parking place before the proud families start arriving. Mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, uncles, aunts, babies, babies-soon-to-join-the world—-the campus explodes with sounds, colors, emotions, and celebratory chaos. Often I walk around campus taking photos (or accepting an invitation to be photographed).

My emotions are mixed–not unlike that of the soon-to-be-graduates. Joy–sorrow–elation–sadness–weariness–rejuvenation. At the end of a long Commencement Day  I experience some emptiness and some poignant, positive residual reminders. I often tease my graduating research assistants that upon their exit from campus I “exorcise” our shared office space to better allow me to adjust to the temporary emotional vacuum caused by their absence from “Dr. David’s Neighborhood.” You know of course that when you graduate, you remain in my memories as I have come to know you–and you remain forever at that age! Forever young.

 

 

I can hear chapel bells. Soon I’ll hear the chimes of the campus hymn and that of the alma mater.  My sitting in the front row has its liabilities as I’ll feel that I must behave in an uncharacteristically well-mannered fashion!

Each Carroll Baccalaureate and Commencement ceremony is special to me just as is each student whom I have gotten to know.  I have chosen (or been called) to teach and to learn and though they (you) may not realize it, I truly do learn so much from my students and from the challenges of trying to teach them well.

Thank you, graduating seniors past and present (and for a few ever so short more future time) for all YOU have taught me. Put to good use your many talents, your energy, your playfulness, your empathy, your resilience and your creative ideas to make the world a better place. Come to appreciate (as I did upon graduating from Oberlin College in 1971) that you have been privileged to receive a good education due not only to your own sacrifices and hard work but also due to the many members of the larger community whom you may never have met or whom you took for granted–Board Members, Administration, Staff, Faculty, Physical Plant Staff, and Alumni–who deeply care about you.

The bells call me. And I have promises to keep…

——-Simply David