Freshman Welcome: Wisdom is Good

Last week I was asked to give the faculty welcome to the class of 2013.  Here is what I said:

I immediately and enthusiastically agreed to give this welcome when Dean Bozzone asked me last week, but by the time I got home, I had achieved a state of panic bordering on sheer, utter terror.  Being the rational, connected, 21st century man that I am, I went to the source of all knowledge—the internet—where I could both express my panic, get some questionable advice, and vent.  My friends on Facebook were quick to offer advice about what my speech should say, and some of that can even be repeated in polite company.  The most pointed advice said, “Don’t talk about sex and drugs and rock n roll,” so, I’m sorry to say, my talk today will have none of those things.
I finally decided that my own experiences as a freshman at the University of California at Berkeley would be a good place to start.  On my first day of one class, the professor actually told us to look at the students sitting on either side, and then said, with a bit too much sadistic pleasure, that both of those students would flunk out before the end of the semester.  He then gave an evil chuckle.  I had heard stories of professors saying this to their classes, but I had assumed they were clichés, but here it was for real, and that proved to be one of the most important things I learned that semester.  I was on my own.
I was also on my own because Berkeley had a notoriously harsh housing market.  Dorms were assigned to the lucky few by lottery and the rest of us had to find a private rental.  Landlords were reluctant to rent to 18 year old males, making things even harder.  As a result, I spent the first two weeks of the semester living in the California Motel, 50 bucks a night, cockroaches at no extra charge, and you can check out any time you like.  Eventually I found a dark, damp basement apartment equipped with a mattress on the floor, a hotplate, and a refrigerator that almost kept things cool; it wasn’t much but it was all mine. 
One day in October of that first year I went to the ASUC store to buy a Coke.  I took it out of the refrigerator, went to the cashier, and handed over my dollar.  When the cashier handed me my 40 cents in change, I said, “Thank you,” and walked out.  I stopped in the door when I realized that those two words were the only ones I had spoken to another human being face to face for two weeks.  My classes were huge—the smallest had over 300 students while the largest squeezed in more than 1000—I lived alone, and I had no one within a 250 mile radius to talk to.  Suddenly I was scared—those crazy people who lived on the streets of Berkeley, asking for spare change and talking to fire hydrants could very well have been college freshmen who just lost it all one day.  I didn’t want to become that.  I wouldn’t know what to say to a fire hydrant.
Later that year, I found one of those books that caught me at the right time and place.  In my American lit class, we had to read Henry David Thoreau’s Walden.  Although I had read pieces of it in high school, the professor made it all feel new.  One passage immediately jumped out at me.  “The mass of men,” Thoreau writes, “lead lives of quiet desperation.”  I stopped at that line and thought.  Quiet desperation summed up my existence quite well.  Thoreau advises fighting against that desperation.  In one passage, Thoreau says that he wants to “live deep and suck out all the marrow,” to experience all that life has.  In another passage, he says most humans are sleepers, never waking and truly living.  We lie there, passive and silent while life rumbles on above us.  Thoreau admits that he has never come across anyone who was truly, fully awake.
Sitting there in my solitary apartment I resolved to wake up, at least a little bit.  Maybe I could get one eye open.  It was, and is, all too easy to stay comfortably asleep, to turn over and pull the covers up around our ears when the light glares too brightly.  I knew I needed to do things that would make me uncomfortable, that would intimidate me, that would make me want to go back to sleep. 
Thoreau, though, is more than the solitary man of our popular imagination.  When he had had enough of living the life of a hermit on the shores of Walden Pond, he would trot over to his good friend’s house.  Ralph Waldo Emerson would greet him, Lydia Emerson would cook him a meal, and he would get a necessary social fix.  This, then, is the big contradiction or tension at the heart of our American culture, and at the heart of your first year in college: solitude versus sociability.  The individual versus the community.  You versus your roommate. Too much solitude will make you agoraphobic, but too much community will make you claustrophobic.  Your job is to find a balance.
Find that balance by using the friendly community, the caring support of SHU as the launch pad to find out who you are and what you believe in.  I saw my academic advisor once in all my time at Berkeley.  You will see your advisor at least twice a week.  You are constantly connected with e-mail, social networks, and texting.  Because you are so immersed in a community, it is easy to think you are awake in Thoreau’s sense.  It is easy to take the classes that seem like they will offer the smoothest path to a good grade.  It is easy to stick with a small group of friends and forget that there is a larger world even within the seemingly tiny confines of SHU. 
Push yourself into a place where you don’t feel quite comfortable.  Take that class that sounds very interesting but also sounds like it might be a lot of hard work.  Force yourself to check out that student group that draws your interest but also feels a little intimidating.  If you find a choice between doing the safe, mundane thing and the thing that takes some initiative and allows you to confront your own fears and insecurities, take the harder option.  These things I’m advising are not guaranteed to land you a high-paying job, and they will not necessarily show up on your transcript.  They will, however, give you the chance to learn something.
Which brings me to my final story of the afternoon.  When I was in grad school at Fordham, I took a very difficult class dealing with Jonathan Swift’s works, and I convinced my friend John that he should also take it.  He resisted, but my superior argument (naming all the women who would be taking the class) won him over.  One evening after class, several of us had retired to an Irish pub in Manhattan fittingly called Swift’s.  John had reached that semi-philosophical, semi-intoxicated state common among graduate students drinking Guinness.  He told me that he was glad I had convinced him to take the class.  He raised his nearly empty pint glass and, looking me in the eye, said, “It’s always better to know something than not know something.  It’s always better to be smart than otherwise.  Wisdom,” he put the glass down, looking for the words that were now failing him.  “Wisdom is good.”
On that note, let me, on behalf of the faculty, warmly welcome you into the community here at Sacred Heart.  Wake up, live deliberately, and remember that wisdom is good.

Comments

[Silvia]

Awesome speech - it made me smile and reflect. Great job!

Also, I couldn't let your only comment be from someone advertising for the lottery. It's like saying "Hey, if this speech didn't engage and excite you for college, cross your fingers and play the Megamillions!"

[Margaret]

I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.

Margaret

http://lotterymegamillions.net