Dear Nephew #2:
The old saying goes, “If I knew back then what I know now….”
People often believe they would have done some things in their lives differently with the benefit of hindsight. It would be great fun to go back to college and live as a full-time student in my late teens and early twenties again, but obviously I can’t. However, you are only weeks away from starting that life. In that spirit, here’s a round of advice for you to internalize or ignore as you see fit (but a lot of it is pretty good, so I hope you don’t ignore it). I’ve written a few posts like this for different people in the past, and with any luck it will at least give you things to consider. I’m posting this as open in case there are any other people on their way to college this fall who might get something out of this. (Good luck, Alejandro!)
*Think about your reasons for being there. Many people go to college only because it seems like the next step in how they think they’re supposed to live their life. What do you hope to get out of it? The truth is college isn’t for everybody, and by no means does it guarantee happiness and success. Happiness comes from getting to do what you want with your life. Having a college degree will be the best path to the greatest number of available choices and opportunities.
*It isn’t going to be like high school, where you can just show up and mark your time until you get a diploma. Whatever you get out of college completely depends on what you decide to put into it. In high school, it was the job of the teachers to teach you. In college, it’s your job to learn. Professors are there to help you, but you’re the one who has to live the life that comes after. Also remember another big difference between high school and college: High school was free.
*The first two years are when you establish a baseline for your GPA. Once you start working on your major, classes will be more difficult. And even though the GPA will only be one line on a resumé, it will be one that future employers will spend time considering.
*Set goals. Plan for ways to work around any patterns that get in your way, and take advantage of the ones that work. If you know 8:00 AM classes aren’t going to work for you, don’t take them. If you ever get stuck in a situation where you don’t have any other choice, figure out a way to make it work. Find a routine to get your class work done, and seriously, get your class work done. It won’t be just completing assignments anymore; it’ll be learning what you need to know to get through adult life.
*Some of the best memories I have from college were the result of the chances I took. All of my biggest regrets were from the ones I didn’t. Don’t let hesitation choose your path.
*Today’s trials are tomorrow’s footnotes. Sometimes you’re going to screw up in epic ways, but everyone does, so don’t beat yourself up over it too much. If you make a mistake, own it, fix what you can, learn from it, and move on. Don’t get caught in a spiral of having things go wrong and automatically blaming other people and scenarios. College life is filled with both boys and men. It won’t be hard to tell them apart.
*Take advantage of this time to discover who you are and prepare for the life you want to have. Learn to recognize the significance of small events as well as big ones. Enjoy the blank slate and the chance you get to define yourself. Pause and occasionally allow yourself half a thought to appreciate what’s happening to you in the moment, because, believe it or not, these next few years are going to absolutely fly by.
*Own your past and acknowledge the role it played in establishing the person you are, and how it can still influence the person you’ll become.
*You will be responsible, in some way, for anything and everything you do. College is a great time to get the stupid out of your system (you’ll see a lot of people doing this) before you have to officially join the real world as a full-fledged adult, but you will still be held accountable for your decisions and actions. You’ll hear people frequently using something like “Dude, I was sooooo wasted” as a reason for making complete asses of themselves, but that’s a weak excuse. Teachers won’t care. Employers won’t care. Police won’t care. (Not that I expect you to have any run-ins with the police, but still.) People will see your actions as a result of the decisions you make, and take that as a representation of the person you are.
*NEVER walk into a dorm bathroom with bare feet.
*You’re 18 so you could probably nutritionally absorb cardboard without experiencing so much as a stomachache for a few more years, but there’s going to be an extraordinary amount of pizza in your future. Keep exercising! See what’s available on campus and take advantage of it. You’ve played team sports since before you could read; there will probably be some campus intramural programs you can find. Think of that last baseball game from this summer, when your team played and mixed things up just for the fun of it without caring if you won or lost. Pursue that interest for the people you’ll meet, the exercise you’ll get, and the mental balance it will help bring to your life.
*You’ll be approximately halfway between the Cities, where your family lives, and Madison, where your brother lives. Either way, you’re going to be driving a lot. I know you’re smart enough to know better already, but I’m saying it for the record: For the love of God, don’t text and drive.
*When you feel insecure about things, remember that everyone around you will be insecure. Everyone is just trying to get by. Everyone is looking to define themselves and figure things out, even the people who either seem like or act like they’ve already figured things out. They haven’t.
*Respect the people, and especially the women, around you. Luckily you and your brothers all have strong relationships with your mother, so that’s going to give you a head start. Demonstrate that respect in ways that will help you earn it from others. At the same time, remember that you can’t control how other people think and feel, and that no one has either the right or the power to marginalize you.
*The people you'll know and the friends you'll make will come from three groups: The ones you live with, the ones you learn with, and everyone else. How big Everyone Else is completely depends on how involved you decide to be in campus life beyond your dorm room. These next few years are going to be the last time in your entire life when you will be surrounded by people your age. Take advantage of that.
*Text your mom sometimes, just because she’ll miss you.
*Remember there are all kinds of us who want to see you succeed and are cheering you on. Don’t be afraid to ask for help if you ever feel it’s all becoming too much. We’ve always had your back, and we always will.
I was messaging this morning with a teacher friend, someone I used to work with who moved on to a different school a while ago. Being that it’s mid-August right now, of course we covered the topic of what we had ahead of us in the coming school year.
Things change for teachers in some way every year. From one perspective, this can be good, since it keeps the job fresh. Speaking as someone who has reported to the same building on the first day of school for a quarter of a century now, changes can sometimes be a good thing.
However, when I refer to changes I mean things like maybe being reassigned to a different classroom, or perhaps a new grade or curricular area, or having to adapt to a new schedule. New people join a staff, new policies are put into place. Maybe, if you’re lucky, you show up on that first day to discover that you have a new set of chairs that are the appropriate size for the two oldest grades in the school.
These days I’m not thinking so much about those kind of changes, the procedural or organizational or cosmetic. Not the resources available to me, both in capital supplies and the collaborative willingness of colleagues. I’m thinking more about how I’m supposed to keep my students engaged, and how I can convince them the things I’m teaching are important, while it can seem on any given day how our society and our world are in the midst of consistently building turmoil.
Last fall, following Election Day, I had a student come in from recess crying hysterically because someone had told her that the newly-elected president wanted to kill all the black people.
Our president is currently engaged in back-and-forth posturing with the leader of an emerging nuclear power. A nuclear power, for God’s sake.
The travel ban, which first wasn’t called a ban by the administration but then finally the language evolved to a level where they admitted that’s what it is, most likely would have kept the families of some of my students out of the country, if the timing of their lives had been slightly different.
Last night hundreds of white supremacists marched in Charlottesville, Virginia, chanting incendiary language and carrying torches. In the south. Today, when other groups rallied together for a counter protest, violence erupted, someone used a vehicle as a weapon, and lives ended.
People who dare to go online and express beliefs contrary to sexism, racism, homophobia, or any other set of ideals that would see one group marginalized in favor of another, are too often threatened and subjected to personal attacks.
Now, the kids I teach are of the age where they are more concerned with which NBA or NHL teams are playing on any given night, or when Taylor Swift or Chance the Rapper will release a new song on YouTube, or what the title of the next “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” book will be. Consequently they usually don’t show up in the morning looking to debate with their classmates on any of the points made the night before by the guests of The Rachel Maddow Show.
This doesn’t mean they’re ignorant, though. Not all of them. Some of these kids are surprisingly well-informed. Even more of them think they are, but only have a cursory knowledge of what’s happening in the world. These are the kids that seem to have the most questions.
I’ll be back in front of my classes in less than a month. There are a lot of issues floating through the ether these days, and those kids are going to be grabbing onto pieces of it. It will at least be partially my responsibility to help them understand what’s going on in the world, how it might affect them and the people in their lives, and what they can do about it.
Of course at the same time I’ll need to make sure they feel comfortable and safe while at school, and all of their basic needs are being met, and, along with that, do my best to help them end the school year with multi-digit division strategies in place and an understanding of why the Order of Operations works the way it does.
I’m anticipating a lot of changes ahead of me this year. I can only hope I’m up to the challenge.
When school is in session, managing my teaching and my classroom and all of the peripheral nonsense that accompanies it is more than enough to keep me occupied. This usually means I start my summer with a long To-Do list. It typically includes the kinds of jobs, chores, errands, and appointments I'll decide I don't have time (or want to make time) for when I'm surviving the school year.
This year, most of that list won't get done. I'm pretty sure I'm not going to make a run to the county landfill after cleaning out my garage. I don't know if I'll bother calling the plumber to get that dang toilet in the guest bathroom fixed so the handle doesn't always have to be lifted manually after flushing. That light above my kitchen sink window, that works but is jiggled just far enough out of position to keep it from turning on? That still might be running dark this winter. Unless all of that junk mail stacking up in my office finds away to shred itself, I suspect it's going to look remarkably like it does now when the first day of school rolls around.
Usually any one of these things being left unattended would give me more than enough reason to beat up on myself. I'd be thinking, "Two and a half months of wide open days, and you couldn't set aside enough time to just take care of these things? Even though they bother you so much and really wouldn't take a lot of effort to get done, you just blew them off? Again? Still?!"
But that won't be this year.
This year I'll be able to start school knowing that, for the first time in several years, I went from start to finish and completed the entire draft of a brand new book. I'm not there yet, but I'm close enough to see the finish line. In fact, I could almost predict the date I'll be finished.
This won't be just some NaNoWriMo "write as fast as you can like your hair is on fire" month-long sprint to be able to claim 50,000 incoherent words in the last days of November; this will be a real, actual, honest to God BOOK. A beginning, middle, and end with all the parts in between connected together. Characters that are more than just paper doll place holders with names. A story that I feel has good chances of people wanting to read it and enjoying it after they have, because I feel happy about it.
It's been a struggle to get here. After years of ping-ponging back and forth between two other viable manuscripts with my agent to mold them into their best possible selves, I had no doubts that my skill as an editor was benefitting from tons and tons of practice. But writing again? Bringing something of this magnitude into being from nothing but a list of ideas I thought were cool? It's been a long time. I tried it last year and failed spectacularly, to the degree I legitimately began wondering if I even remembered how to start.
Well, it turns out I did remember. And the relief that comes with that remembering is palpable.
So those chores I never completed?
Any wandering day trips I didn't take?
The way my eyes feel permanently blurred over by evening?
The books I didn't get to read, or the TV shows I didn't have time to binge?
The hundreds of hours spent in my kitchen, looking outside as dozens of sunny days passed me by?
Totally worth it.
