August 22, 2009
A few months ago our splendid college counselor, Brennan Barnard, forwarded me an article from the Wall Street Journal wherein college and university presidents were asked to complete the student application to their own school, presumably thereby getting greater insight into the potentially torturous college acceptance process. The resulting pieces were fun to read. I thought it was a terrific idea, so I asked that the five new employees we have at Derryfield this year “apply” (even though they were already accepted) to the school using our student application, and I plan to use the documents as a conversation piece in our faculty/staff start-up days.
It seemed only fair to turn the tables on myself, so I got The Derryfield School application and, admittedly, studied it like never before. Without a doubt I re-lived some of the fright that comes with staring at a blank page after questions like “Why do you think Derryfield is the right school for you?” or “List several adjectives or descriptive phrases that you feel accurately capture your strengths and weaknesses as a student and a person.” Where to begin? “I like school” seemed too benign, and “The mission and core values reflect my way of thinking” seemed too obtuse. Do you go with an attempt at humor that could fall flat (“Weaknesses: kryptonite”) or do you play it down the middle (“Strengths: Honest, empathetic”). Neither worked. I moved on, appreciative that I have a choice that our applying students do not.
Next came the imposing (was it the bold all-caps, or the declarative tone?) “ESSAY: Required of all applicants” and it became unthinkable not to comply. I decided to apply to our high school, and was met with the requirement to “choose ONE of the following topics:
1. Pretend you are sending yourself an e-mail from the year 2020. What have you been your successes? What have been your failures?” or
2. Evaluate a situation in your life that you wished you had handled differently. What did you learn from the experience?”
In the year 2020 I’ll be 58, and my hope is that e-mail will be a distant memory, like eight track tapes or Sanjaya is now. I moved to question number two, checked the instructions once more (“Choose one of the following topics and write a one-page essay”) and started. I hope I get in.
“Evaluate a situation in your life that you wished you had handled differently. What did you learn from the experience?”
In January of 2006 I finished a typically sweaty elliptical workout and, within a few minutes of getting off the machine, thought I had pulled a muscle around my left hip. After a few weeks I realized it was not getting better, so I thought about seeing a chiropractor. Two or three months after that I began seeing the chiropractor. The pain was getting worse, but I thought the twice-a-month treatments were helping. After a few months I moved to weekly. After a few months more I went twice a week for a few months. My wife saw me pulling myself up the banister one evening and she “It really isn’t getting better – why not go and get X-rays?” Her observation killed my determined belief that my hip was improving, and the X-rays made it clear that it would never improve by itself. You don’t need years of training to recognize a picture of two bones that should not be touching. The doctor was straightforward – I was a candidate for hip replacement surgery. I could suffer and hobble along, or I could make a decision that would lead to improvement. For reasons that still leave me wondering, I chose to suffer and hobble along. I had the surgery in October of 2008, and not until recently have I realized how
much of my life I missed for close to two years. I rediscovered the simple act of walking with my family this summer – around fairs and festivals, around town and campus, around the house – and, in that flash of recognition, re-evaluated the decision not to act. This summer in particular I realized I lost time – pain-free, serene, healthy, mostly non-limping time – that I will never get back. I am so grateful to have received extraordinary medical care, and wonderful support from family, friends and the Derryfield community . . . but I would handle the decision to delay differently. While it is understandable to want to delay (or was it to avoid?) something as scary as major surgery, I learned there is a normal existence waiting on the other side.
I’ll keep an eye out for the fat envelope.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Climate Change and Security
August 12th 2009
The headline above the fold on the front page of the New York Times on August 9th was Climate Change Seen as Threat to U.S. Security, and while reading the article I thought I heard the discussion of global warming click into a new gear. The opening paragraph says “Such climate-induced crises could topple governments, feed terrorist movements or destabilize entire regions, say the analysts, experts at the Pentagon and intelligence agencies who for the first time are taking a serious look at the national security implications of climate change.” Why is it that we need to invoke the specter of war, stability and safety before many of us are motivated?
Every student at Derryfield should be challenged to learn about climate change, think about their role with respect to both causation and solutions, and develop their own understanding of what could be this generation’s defining global concern. The world needs leaders in this effort, and I want Derryfield students to be at the front of generating peaceful solutions. In this regard, I am in complete agreement with the article when it states “If the United States does not lead the world in reducing fossil-fuel consumption and thus emissions of global warming gases, proponents of this view say, a series of global environmental, social, political and possibly military crises loom that the nation will urgently have to address.”
No doubt commitment to reversing climate change has many facets, but a key one for me is the sense that the effort is a form of proactive peaceful conflict resolution. As our society and our schools get clearer that “rising temperatures, surging seas and melting glaciers are a direct threat to the national interest,” I hope we will have a similar understanding that our efforts to reduce, reuse and recycle are also a form of peace activism. Meanwhile, the cost of doing nothing is becoming more apparent, more urgent, and more militarized.
The headline above the fold on the front page of the New York Times on August 9th was Climate Change Seen as Threat to U.S. Security, and while reading the article I thought I heard the discussion of global warming click into a new gear. The opening paragraph says “Such climate-induced crises could topple governments, feed terrorist movements or destabilize entire regions, say the analysts, experts at the Pentagon and intelligence agencies who for the first time are taking a serious look at the national security implications of climate change.” Why is it that we need to invoke the specter of war, stability and safety before many of us are motivated?
Every student at Derryfield should be challenged to learn about climate change, think about their role with respect to both causation and solutions, and develop their own understanding of what could be this generation’s defining global concern. The world needs leaders in this effort, and I want Derryfield students to be at the front of generating peaceful solutions. In this regard, I am in complete agreement with the article when it states “If the United States does not lead the world in reducing fossil-fuel consumption and thus emissions of global warming gases, proponents of this view say, a series of global environmental, social, political and possibly military crises loom that the nation will urgently have to address.”
No doubt commitment to reversing climate change has many facets, but a key one for me is the sense that the effort is a form of proactive peaceful conflict resolution. As our society and our schools get clearer that “rising temperatures, surging seas and melting glaciers are a direct threat to the national interest,” I hope we will have a similar understanding that our efforts to reduce, reuse and recycle are also a form of peace activism. Meanwhile, the cost of doing nothing is becoming more apparent, more urgent, and more militarized.
Monday, August 10, 2009
Flannery O'Connor
August 2nd 2009
Today I heard a lecture by Brad Gooch, the biographer of Flannery O’Connor. In preparation for the talk I read a variety of her short stories, which I first touched on my sophomore year in college in an American Writers survey course - taught by a passionate teacher who seemed to have read everything ever written by an American author, O’Connor made me laugh and wince at the same time. Her fiction helped to tip the balance and have me declare an English major.
I think the first story I read in 1981 was Enoch & the Gorilla. I remembered A Good Man is Hard to Find and Good Country People (how could you not?). Gooch talked about O’Connor pretty much keeping to herself until going to The Iowa Writers Workshop in 1946, but having to write a note of introduction in the presence of the her interviewer because he could not understand her through her thick, southern accent. She wrote tough, funny, lean prose and many of the characters were inspired by friends and acquaintances in her small Georgian hometown. Flannery died of lupus in 1964, age 39, at the height of her powers.
I wonder how many students she helped inspire to become English majors.
Today I heard a lecture by Brad Gooch, the biographer of Flannery O’Connor. In preparation for the talk I read a variety of her short stories, which I first touched on my sophomore year in college in an American Writers survey course - taught by a passionate teacher who seemed to have read everything ever written by an American author, O’Connor made me laugh and wince at the same time. Her fiction helped to tip the balance and have me declare an English major.
I think the first story I read in 1981 was Enoch & the Gorilla. I remembered A Good Man is Hard to Find and Good Country People (how could you not?). Gooch talked about O’Connor pretty much keeping to herself until going to The Iowa Writers Workshop in 1946, but having to write a note of introduction in the presence of the her interviewer because he could not understand her through her thick, southern accent. She wrote tough, funny, lean prose and many of the characters were inspired by friends and acquaintances in her small Georgian hometown. Flannery died of lupus in 1964, age 39, at the height of her powers.
I wonder how many students she helped inspire to become English majors.
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