Hydrants, frittatas and timekeeping
10/13/2006
You've heard the metaphor of trying to take a sip of water out of a gushing fire hydrant. What's happening at Dominican?
That.
But it's good, it's good, it's all good. Two moments.
We put all 360 or so new freshmen plus their Freshman Seminar professors plus a bunch of other folks in a room recently and they got to hear from Hugh Page, dean of the first-year college at Notre Dame. He talked about Ellison's Invisible Man, the common text in all those seminars, but also gave some stirring advice for undergraduate students. I'll share some of that in a moment.
Our own Core Curriculum Director William George set the perfect tone, however, when he asked the students: "How many teachers would you guess we have at Dominican in the Rosary College of Arts and Sciences?" Various numbers were suggested, but of course it was a trick question. Bill said this and he said it right:
"Dominican has many more teachers than that—really great teachers, teachers who will give you all the time in the world. Many of them live in the library, and many of them also live on-line. Their names run from A to Z: From Abelard and Aristotle to Zeno and Zarathustra, and numerous names in between: Albert the Great and Albert Einstein, Socrates and Sophocles, Thomas Aquinas and Catherine of Siena, Charles Dickens and Emily Dickenson, Chinua Achebe and Cyprian Ekwensi, Martin Luther and Martin Luther King, Moses and Jesus and the Prophet Muhammed, Maimonides and Maya Angelou, William Shakespeare and William Carlos Williams, James Baldwin and James Cone, T.S. Eliot and Ralph Ellison—and of course many, many more. I hope that during your days at Dominican, and long after, you will take time to meet and converse with these great teachers, and others I have not named. I promise you—they will never turn you away."
Then we heard from Dr. Page. Here were some of his best ideas, ones I hope our students—all students and prospective students, really—will take to heart:
I pointed out a Village Voice article about Norma's restaurant in New York that features a caviar-laced frittata (basically a glorified omelet) for a mere $1,000. The article quoted the restaurant's manager as saying that when somebody orders this item "we have a bell we ring and we make an announcement to the whole dining room. Some people clap." For what, the article wondered. Indeed.
Enough already. We'd gotten together to recognize women and men who are investing in something more: in the future of these young people we're hoping to educate at Dominican. We are about helping them to discern their own best gifts as thinkers and learners so that they can give away this education—to the world. They are in fact gifted givers and the best we can hope our students will do with this university is, precisely, internalize it and then give it away.
I think I said some other stuff but I threw out my notes, or maybe they got lost in the flood. But before I get back to that hydrant, I really must say that our own student Monica Prus of course said it all much better when she pointed out that what these brilliant donors really gave her was not money, but time. Time to fill not with another part-time job, but rather instead with reading, thinking, enjoying her friends, having dinner with her family, taking a walk and taking stock. They gave her the gift of time, and Monica's a far better timekeeper now even without a Gianni Vive Sulman watch that doesn't even come with a winder.
You've heard the metaphor of trying to take a sip of water out of a gushing fire hydrant. What's happening at Dominican?
That.
But it's good, it's good, it's all good. Two moments.
We put all 360 or so new freshmen plus their Freshman Seminar professors plus a bunch of other folks in a room recently and they got to hear from Hugh Page, dean of the first-year college at Notre Dame. He talked about Ellison's Invisible Man, the common text in all those seminars, but also gave some stirring advice for undergraduate students. I'll share some of that in a moment.
Our own Core Curriculum Director William George set the perfect tone, however, when he asked the students: "How many teachers would you guess we have at Dominican in the Rosary College of Arts and Sciences?" Various numbers were suggested, but of course it was a trick question. Bill said this and he said it right:
"Dominican has many more teachers than that—really great teachers, teachers who will give you all the time in the world. Many of them live in the library, and many of them also live on-line. Their names run from A to Z: From Abelard and Aristotle to Zeno and Zarathustra, and numerous names in between: Albert the Great and Albert Einstein, Socrates and Sophocles, Thomas Aquinas and Catherine of Siena, Charles Dickens and Emily Dickenson, Chinua Achebe and Cyprian Ekwensi, Martin Luther and Martin Luther King, Moses and Jesus and the Prophet Muhammed, Maimonides and Maya Angelou, William Shakespeare and William Carlos Williams, James Baldwin and James Cone, T.S. Eliot and Ralph Ellison—and of course many, many more. I hope that during your days at Dominican, and long after, you will take time to meet and converse with these great teachers, and others I have not named. I promise you—they will never turn you away."
Then we heard from Dr. Page. Here were some of his best ideas, ones I hope our students—all students and prospective students, really—will take to heart:
- Be adventurous in the way you learn. Attend as many special events outside of class as you can.
- Learn and remember something new each day, and learn it deeply, viscerally.
- Keep a journal to record your reflections on this deep learning.
- Find a time for silence every day, since silence is the soil from which insight grows.
- Build a personal library of books that move you.
- Make time for prayers of thanks for your teachers and friends.
- Strive in all you do to be a well-read, multilingual, compassionate and humble person of conscience.
- Make a four-year educational plan based on your intellectual passions and vocational objectives, and write a review of your progress at the end of each semester. Share that review with your advisor—or anybody else who will listen.
- A second moment. We put in a room a bunch of our current students who are recipients of endowed scholarships, along with the people responsible for providing those scholarships. It was about acknowledging generosity and investing in the future. They asked me to say a few words.
I pointed out a Village Voice article about Norma's restaurant in New York that features a caviar-laced frittata (basically a glorified omelet) for a mere $1,000. The article quoted the restaurant's manager as saying that when somebody orders this item "we have a bell we ring and we make an announcement to the whole dining room. Some people clap." For what, the article wondered. Indeed.
Enough already. We'd gotten together to recognize women and men who are investing in something more: in the future of these young people we're hoping to educate at Dominican. We are about helping them to discern their own best gifts as thinkers and learners so that they can give away this education—to the world. They are in fact gifted givers and the best we can hope our students will do with this university is, precisely, internalize it and then give it away.
I think I said some other stuff but I threw out my notes, or maybe they got lost in the flood. But before I get back to that hydrant, I really must say that our own student Monica Prus of course said it all much better when she pointed out that what these brilliant donors really gave her was not money, but time. Time to fill not with another part-time job, but rather instead with reading, thinking, enjoying her friends, having dinner with her family, taking a walk and taking stock. They gave her the gift of time, and Monica's a far better timekeeper now even without a Gianni Vive Sulman watch that doesn't even come with a winder.
