The final hours of summer are upon us. I had a meeting at Alabama Monday, and a class there Thursday. I have a workshop to attend at Samford that afternoon. We’re jumping right into the fall.
You forget how much you appreciate the summers when adulthood turns you into a 40 hour a week, 50 or more weeks a year person. That happened to me. Summer wasn’t a time to be off, but rather a time to work some more. So it was just more time. It was time out of time, which is what summer is, for children, but only different.
Two years ago when I returned to campus professionally I looked forward to the summer. All that happened during those three months was marriage, a promotion, a move and the busiest nine hours of my graduate school career. It didn’t feel especially like summer. Which was fine. I’d been used to that for years. Long years, in fact. It has been 20 summers since I’ve had either no classes or no job.
And so this summer, I’ve looked forward to it for some long time. All we did was go to Europe, buy a house and move. I did the tiniest bit of research, the smallest bit of work and otherwise enjoyed the summer. And got spoiled by it.
Now we return to reality. I have class and work and they are wonderful and I’m blessed that this is my career and my daily experience, truly. (But wanting a little more summer is only natural, right?) Next summer — not that I’m looking that far ahead — I’ll be finishing my dissertation. I’m guessing that won’t feel like much of a break, but this one has had a very nice feel.
One of those many signs of the return of campus obligations is the dreadful Beloit list. This was, once upon a time, a more entertaining collection. It is aimed at professors, to try and give them some humor and insight into the cultural positioning of incoming freshmen. I suppose it also makes some professors feel old. It also stretches the bonds of credulity:
9. Had it remained operational, the villainous computer HAL could be their college classmate this fall, but they have a better chance of running into Miley Cyrus’s folks on Parents’ Weekend.
12. Clint Eastwood is better known as a sensitive director than as Dirty Harry.
65. They first met Michelangelo when he was just a computer virus.
72. One way or another, “It’s the economy, stupid” and always has been.
9. But probably not, since Hal was a robot. In space. And also because the Cyrus family is only going to one campus this fall. Odds are it isn’t yours, no matter what that girl in freshman bio said about seeing Hannah Montana in the quad.
12. This presupposes that every student stays away from cable television and has no fathers, grandfathers or other family members with a predisposition to westerns.
65. Is just insulting, really.
72. A humanities professor is tied to this list, but he should have spoken with his political science colleagues. Surely they speak here of Clinton, but in reality it has forever, and shall always be, about the economy.
The list also stretches the boundaries of chronology:
1. Few in the class know how to write in cursive.
19. They never twisted the coiled handset wire aimlessly around their wrists while chatting on the phone.
28. They’ve never recognized that pointing to their wrists was a request for the time of day.
1. I know that they are teaching to the test at elementary and grade schools now, but surely there is an itinerant English teacher who insisted they could pull off a cursive lowercase F if need be.
19. Really? The timing of these just looks at things like market penetration of wireless and cell phones, but doesn’t consider the ubiquity of former tools. Some people still even have these phones, which mean the class of 2020, even, will know that plastic, rubbery feel.
28. I’m testing this on my students and will let you know the results.
Others are there to indulge the righteousness of the professoriate:
21. Woody Allen, whose heart has wanted what it wanted, has always been with Soon-Yi Previn.
41. American companies have always done business in Vietnam.
42. Potato has always ended in an “e” in New Jersey per vice presidential edict.
21. While I’m betting the wrist gesture still works, I’m certain Woody Allen is far removed from the students’ minds, to say nothing of Soon-Yi. But he’s important to some film prof.
41. Because the political nuance must be attended.
42. That Dan Quayle sure was dumb.
Now let us do the math. By comparison of years, the Beloit Mindset list — had it existed when I was a freshman, would have referenced something Walter Mondale did in office. None of us would have understood the reference, either. Which is the point of the list, I suppose.
Usually, this is a better instrument of enlightenment, of whoa and wow. Perhaps, though, we’ve reached a point where the changes over the course of a generation are less earth shaking. Maybe we’ve reached the post of post-modernity. For example, “The historic bridge at Mostar in Bosnia has always been a copy” isn’t keeping kids up nights. Today’s students, their peers nor their peers likely sit to reflect on annus horribilis.
“Nirvana is on the classic oldies station.” But, then, REM was creeping onto the classic rock station when I was in undergrad. And “The dominance of television news by the three networks passed while they were still in their cribs.”
Have I told you the story of last year’s freshmen? I did a presentation with this picture:
I asked “Who knows who this man is?”
Nothing.
Crickets.
The man had been off the air for only five years.
See the entire Beloit list here. Enjoy more cogent thoughts on the subject from the always impressive James Lileks.
Elsewhere I used today productively. I struggled with and tried three different ways to build the websites The Yankee wanted. She had one lapse on her a while back and since her classes are starting these things must be restored. I experimented, about a month ago, actually, with the WordPress MU platform. I have a small handful of photo blogs I’m running off of MU. I figured it out in an hour or two.
And so, naturally, when I settled in to do this for her I found that WordPress has incorporated the MU into their basic platform now. Somehow the changes and how to make it work escaped me. We came up with a workaround, however. This was my afternoon. I tinkered with code and listened to hours of TiVoed television. Lovely afternoon.
Tomorrow you’ll see the beginning of the 1939 World’s Fair project. You can hardly wait.
Tomorrow I’ll get a hair cut. I can hardly wait.
