91B0FBB4-04A9-D5D7-16F0F3976AA697ED
C9A22247-E776-B892-2D807E7555171534
I join President Tobin in welcoming you to a new academic year. The openingconvocation is a celebration of ingathering, the reunion of faculty andstudents in anticipation of our renewed efforts to teach and learn, ouraffirmation of the enterprise of liberal education. It is customary on suchoccasions to reflect on the goals and purposes of liberal education, and Iwould like to speak of one aspect of college that has come over the years to besomething I especially treasure, and that is college as the occasion for makingmemories.

The poet William Wordsworth believed in the importance of having memories thatsustain one in adulthood. In The Prelude, he writes:

There are in our existence spots of time

Which with distinct preeminence retain

A fructifying virtue, whence, depressed

By trivial occupations and the round

Of ordinary intercourse, our minds--

Especially the imaginative power--

Are nourished and invisibly repaired . . .

Wordsworth held that the round of life contains its own vicissitudes: each ofus will inevitably encounter disappointment, failure, troubles of body andheart, our mortality; the eking out of a living with its own portions ofroutine and boredom. What sustains us through difficult periods, what healsthe hurts done to mind and spirit, what gives us hope amid darkness thattomorrow the light will dawn, are "spots of time," memories of achievement,when we persevered and won through, memories of intense joy and satisfaction,even memories of loss and dashed hopes, so long as they are accompanied by theattendant realization that we survived tragedies that at the time seemedoverwhelming and permanent.

For you students, Wordsworth's challenge is to cultivate memories, build up astore of images and feelings when you are in your youth and vigor, when life isjust blossoming and possibilities seem endless, so that the warmth and vitalityof what you have achieved and surmounted can sustain you in future days,.College will be for many of you, as it was for me, four years where the rate ofchange in intellectual and personal growth was greater than at any comparableperiod. As a friend of mine has written about college:

. . . [Each] year will be a mixed bag. You will make new friends; learn newand intriguing things; find that you excel at subjects that you may not haveknown existed. Some of you will make the Dean's list. Some of you will fallin love. But for some of you this year will contain some of the loneliesttimes of your life. Most of you will have to face the challenge of what to dowith a course that just bores you. . . . you'll have some days when you are sotired you can hardly think. You'll confront hard moral choices about whetherto cheat or to drive while intoxicated or laugh at racist or sexist jokes orabout how to live out your sexuality. Some of you will be fearful that if yousay what you really think in class, you'll look dumb or will be disliked byothers around you; you'll have to choose whether to hide or to speak. Some ofyou . . . will run into a course that you just cannot figure out and you'llfeel like failures.

Hamilton College is an arena where you can rehearse your lives, where you canbuild up memories of successful interludes with the guidance and support offaculty and staff who know how difficult intellectual and personal challengescan be and yet believe in you--even when you can't believe in yourself--andbelieve in your capacity to develop ways of tenaciously flourishing as astudent and as a person. Strive to inscribe memories that you'll always beproud to claim.

And what of us, the faculty? We can best foster our students' attentiveness toconsolidating their stock of spots of time if we take as guides the moments inour own lives that most infected us with the love of learning. Each of us hasstories to cherish: here are two of mine. I was a pre-med major until mysophomore year, when I bombed organic chemistry and saw the aspiration of yearsturn to ashes. I had been impelled by a vision of what I wanted to be, and forweeks I drifted, not knowing what I should study. At that juncture, a wiseadvisor told me, "Stop trying to decide what to study by figuring out what youwant to be professionally. What subjects give you joy? Study them, and trustthat your vocation will take care of itself." What gives you joy? Inanswering that, I found my life as a literary scholar and a teacher. "Whatgives you joy?" That in turn is a fundamental question I've learned to ask mystudents.

And second, in my senior year, I did a thesis with a faculty member who held mytutorial at his house. I would arrive on a Tuesday afternoon, he would have apot of tea ready, and we would discuss and revise. Toward the end of the year,with the thesis finished and submitted, we continued to meet to read Chauceraloud. Years later, I visited Professor Alfred. He scarce remembered me, butthose winter afternoons in his kitchen, the light slanting through the windows,with books and tea and his soft voice, those were spots of time for me, and anexperience I have tried in various ways to give in turn to my students.

I believe that the spots of time we accumulate constitute the poetry of ourlives and, in

Help us provide an accessible education, offer innovative resources and programs, and foster intellectual exploration.

Site Search