The last few weeks of any college semester are manic and chaotic, exciting and emotional, and this spring has been no different. Amidst the rush to finish courses and calculate final grades, I have been toasting students at award ceremonies and banquets, cheering our baseball and lacrosse and softball teams across the playoffs, attending the senior recitals of our students in the performing arts, and saying “yes” to any student who stops by my office to offer a farewell hug. Indeed, some of the best moments of being a professor are right now.
That said, in the days leading to commencement, when all but the seniors have packed up and started summer break, the hallways outside my office are quieter, surrounded by empty classrooms. All that is left to do is don caps and gowns and utter a word that might lose its importance for how many times we will say it: congratulations.
Amongst the pomp and circumstance that encompasses graduation rituals, we toss the word “congratulations” around like confetti, but it is a word that does an awful lot of work for us. For the Class of 2025, it acknowledges what it was like to leave behind a pandemic high school experience and tentatively wade into the waters of a post-pandemic (if there even is such a thing) college campus. It represents papers and exams and juggling class schedules and rehearsals and practices and games and club meetings and constant notifications from Blackboard and Brightspace. And, for me, it recognizes that because of all of that, I am about to miss you. A lot.
One of the best parts of being a professor is learning — not just from the thousands of pages that we read to get our degrees, or the thousands more we read to create our classes, but from you, the students. The questions you ask, the challenges you issue, the talents you demonstrate — inside the classroom and, perhaps more importantly, outside the classroom — remind me, just about every day, why I do what I do. If someone asks what I love about campus life, I never — ever — say it’s the committee meetings or the deadlines. Because it’s you. It’s watching you evolve from your very first semester, sometimes brash, sometimes timid, into someone who has found and developed their passion, grown, and gained clarity about their space in the world. But just when I feel like I’ve finally gotten to know you, when I look at you with such pride as you present your findings in front of a classroom, nary a shake in your voice, or read an introduction to one of your papers that effortlessly states an argument and how you are going to prove it, or come to my office for advisement with your class schedule completely and competently hammered out, no need for me to even be there, it’s time for you to go.
That’s how it works. It’s the deal we make with each other. But that doesn’t make it easy.
So, go — be bold, ask the questions, find the answers. Think. Listen. Disagree. Care. And know that I will be cheering you on from my office, where you can still and always find me. Because, in the words of Taylor Swift (I mean, you knew that was coming, right?), “the future’s bright — dazzling.”
Go get it.
Amy Bass is professor of sport studies and chair of the division of social science and communication at Manhattanville University. Bass is the author of ONE GOAL: A COACH, A TEAM, AND THE GAME THAT BROUGHT A DIVDED TOWN TOGETHER, among other titles. In 2012, she won an Emmy for her work with NBC Olympic Sports on the London Olympic Games.
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