Midweek Musings - August 28, 2024
Advice to New College Students, Hamilton & Foreign Policy, the Beauty of a Chair, Settler Colonialism, High School Football, & Recovering from the Seine
The campus here at Biola University is already buzzing with the energy that comes with a new academic year. Our incoming Torrey Honors College are here a bit earlier than their peers, jumping headlong into their “Torrientation.” And on Friday, the rest of the incoming class of new students will move into their dorms and get ready for the beginning of classes next week. It’s a season full of excitement and hope, even if also mixed with a bit of anxiety and uncertainty.
I’ve been down that road as a parent and as someone in “the business” of higher education. It’s easy to give other parents advice on how to navigate it all, but quite another thing to heed your own advice.
So here, in no particular order, is a distillation of the advice I’ve given students and their families over the years, at two different institutions and in very different times.
First, don’t go home for 40 days.
I’m not sure who cringes more at this one, the parents or the students (I think it’s the parents). And I get it. I’m the parent of a college student, one who’s far from home. But I am more confident than ever that undergraduate students need about six weeks, or roughly 40 days, to stay in one place and be forced to work through a spell of homesickness. It’s part of the process and part of their development as young adults. You’d be surprised at how quickly students can figure out solutions to problems without Mom or Dad there to intervene. And yes, they can even do their own laundry. Stay put and make it to fall break before you go home, whether that’s close by or across the country.
Second, if you have a high school boyfriend or girlfriend, break it off.
I shared this advice one year with a group of new undergrads and remember a mother approaching me immediately after the session. She was clearly distressed and a bit angry at this particular bit of counsel. I don’t remember her objection verbatim, but it was something along the lines of, “Why would you say that? You don’t know my Jimmy and his girlfriend, Sally. They are high school sweethearts and are going to marry one another.”
There was a lot going on behind that conversation, as there always is. Is it possible that your high school significant other is going to be your future spouse? Sure! Is it likely? No, it is not. The statistical likelihood is that you will meet your spouse in college. Of course, that’s not true for everyone and we should rejoice in the varied ways in which God’s good providence plays out in each of his children’s lives.
But here’s what I do know. If you go to college with a girlfriend or boyfriend back home, you’ll enter into your college experience as a divided social creature. You have finite time and energy. And your girlfriend or boyfriend will demand much of it because that’s just how dating relationships work. So you’ll be tugged to make more visits to see them, to spend more time on the phone/FaceTime/texting. You’ll experience undue constraints in how you build friendships with the opposite sex.
Third, prioritize joining a healthy local church.
If you’re a Christian, I can’t think of a more important variable in your overall flourishing in college than this one. Frankly, you can endure a lot of deficiency in other areas of your college years, but it’s impossible for you to flourish in your walk with God in isolation. And your college—even if it’s a Christian college—cannot replace a local church. A lot of that has to do with God’s design. For one, God designed you to live your Christian life within his household. And it’s in the local church where you participate in that life, both in the ordinary everyday ways and in some of the most spiritual and mystical ways (e.g. you share in life together as you are one body in Christ). It’s where you weekly attend to the proclamation of the Word and the celebration of the sacraments or ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. It’s where you engage in the multigenerational life of the people of God, a life that transcends affinity groups, socioeconomic classes, or ethnic identities. The local church is the soil God in which has designed for you to grow into Christian maturity.
Conversely, God’s design means that for all the good qualities of a Christian college or university, they can never take the place of the church. A university like the one I serve needs to support and serve the church, but we are aware that your college years are a short and unusual season that will come to an end. But your life as a local church member? That will be part of you journey of discipleship until you draw a final breath or Christ returns. So don’t expect your campus ministry or college experience to take the place of the church.
Practically speaking, take the first few Sundays of the fall semester and visit a handful of churches. Get there before the service starts and give yourself a few minutes to linger before you rush out. By all means, pay attention to the worship service and all the things that matter in a faithful church. But you’ll also benefit from noticing how people relate to one another. Do they seem happy to be there and thankful to be together? Is there a joyfulness about their gathering? Do they seem eager to welcome others in? Of course, you can’t measure that in a single Sunday, so go more than once. But once you’ve found a place you think you can commit, jump in. Do more than just attend. Become a member. Find ways to serve. Hang out with old people. Allow people into your life.
Fourth, don’t freak out about your major. But do take professors and classes that will challenge you.
The best professors are not the easiest professors. But they are the ones who will most impact your life.
Sit toward the front of the classroom. Arrive early. Take advantage of office hours. Get to know your professor and do your part to help them know you more than just a name or face on their class roster. You’ll find that some of your professors will prove to be some of the most influential mentors and guides you will have during these years. But it’s up to you to seek that out. This all means a shift in the way most students approach their education and classroom experience. High school is, well, different. But when you arrive at your university it’s time to treat your studies like a job (in all the right ways). Be professional. When you email your professors, do so in a professional manner (use a clear subject line, open with “Dear Dr./Prof. So-and-So”). Take responsibility for your decisions and time management, without expecting your professors to accommodate your every request. It’s go time.
Fifth, if possible, take class notes on paper with a pen.
Sounds crazy, right? I might as well suggest that you ask for a good round of leeches from the campus clinic the next time you’re sick or that you churn your own butter. But before you dismiss me as an old crank, let me tell you that this has the potential to significantly transform your learning experience and put you on a much better path to academic success. I’ve seen it countless times as a professor. In fact, years ago I remember a class session (I think it was a World History class), where students were furiously pecking away on their keyboards during my lecture on whatever that week’s topic was, trying to capture every word I spoke. As you should expect in a good lecture, I paused to ask the class a question. Their heads all shot up, and they looked at me in a daze. It seemed I had inconveniently interrupted their work as court stenographers. By the end of that semester, I had determined to make a change. From that time forward, all of my classes (whether undergraduate or master’s level), had a digital ban. I demanded that students use paper and pen. The reason? Unless they knew shorthand, there was no way they could try to record every word I was speaking. Their brains therefore had to shift from functioning as recording devices to actually listen to what I was saying, synthesize it, and then choose what to jot down in their notes to summarize it. There’s even interesting research out there on the physiological realities of learning when our brains and hands have to interact in the act of handwriting. It’s far more conducive to actual learning. I may not have convinced you. In fact, for some students this sounds like I’m insisting they become trapeze artists without a net below. But trust me. Give it a shot. Push through the anxiety that first week. And I suspect you’ll find you actually enjoy class more, you learn the material better, and you will see your grades jump up.
Sixth, lean in to every opportunity but be patient with friendships.
It may be that your roommate will end up being your best friend and you’ll one day be in each other’s wedding parties. But probably not. It’s okay to have different relationships with different dynamics. It’s okay if you and your roommate are friendly with one another, but are not deep friends. And the chances are that the people you think will be your best friends after the first two weeks actually won’t be. You have to find your people, and they have to find you. And that can take a little time. So be patient. Get out of your dorm room. If you commute to campus, spend lots of time there. Say yes to invitations. Most of the time, the picture gets a lot clearer by the end of your first semester.
Retrieving Hamilton
When it comes to foreign policy, Walter Russell Mead is one of those voices you cannot afford to ignore. And his most recent essay at Foreign Affairs is no exception. While a lot of energy has been consumed by Jeffersonian isolationism and Jacksonian nationalist populism, on both the Right and Left, there may be an urgent need for a revival of the foreign and economic policies of Hamilton.
“The Hamiltonian way is not a rigid system or an ideological straitjacket. It is a way of thinking pragmatically about the relationship between the requirements of market capitalism, the demands of domestic politics, and the realities of the international system. It proposes a strong but limited federal government that favors the development of a thriving business sector at home and promotes U.S. security and trade abroad. Domestic policy should be grounded on a sound financial system and a profound but not rigid or doctrinaire embrace of pro-market economics. Foreign policy should be based on a commonsense mixture of balance-of-power politics, commercial interests, and American values.”
He continues:
“Through more than two centuries of sometimes dramatic change, three ideas stood at the heart of the Hamiltonian vision: the centrality of commerce to American society, the importance of a strong national identity and patriotism, and the need for an enlightened realism in foreign affairs. The era after the Cold War, when much of the American establishment sought to transcend the national element of Hamiltonian thought, reflected an unusual and, as it turned out, short-lived period in American history, one in which the construction of a global order appeared to have replaced the more parochial tasks of safeguarding the interests of the American state and American business. The separation of the business agenda from any sense of a national or patriotic goal had profound and sharply negative consequences for the political standing of pro-business politicians and interests in the United States. It also encouraged the rise of antibusiness populism across the political spectrum.”
What Mead thus calls for is for a recovery of a nation-centric foreign policy, one that is hardly isolationist, but that unapologetically prioritizes US commercial interests and honestly recognizes the reality that those may at times be at odds with a broader “post national order.”
There’s a lot to digest in this essay and you really should read it. It raises some fundamental questions about the role of government in our constitutional order and the meaning and value of business. What Mead does so well, invoking Hamilton, is underscore that fostering free enterprise and the flourishing of private business is not only a duty of a democratic government, but it’s also essential to the prosperity of the citizenry.
What Makes a Chair Beautiful?
Chances are you’re familiar with David Rowland’s design work, even if you have never heard his name before. That’s because, as Stephen Humphries points out in this book review for the Christian Science Monitor, Rowland’s most iconic work—the 40/4 chair—has become such a ubiquitous and iconic part of modern life.
“Is it possible to design a revolutionary new chair? David Rowland did. You’ve most likely sat on it.
The industrial designer’s signature chair, the 40/4, is the world’s first compactly stackable chair. You can stack 40 of them at a height of just 4 feet. Singly, they can fill a room. Then they can be packed up into a tiny storage space.
Rowland’s chair debuted in 1964. That year, it won the grand prize at the Triennale di Milano, the annual exhibition mecca for art and design. Since then, the 40/4 has become part of many permanent collections, including at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Musée D’Orsay in Paris. But it’s no museum piece. Many examples of midcentury modern furniture now look very much “of their time.” By contrast, the 40/4 seems timeless. It looks equally at home inside a modern office or at the ancient edifice of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London.”
What especially caught my attention was a reference to Rowland’s reflections on the place of beauty and function in design.
“Rowland opposed style for its own sake. In a 1968 speech titled “The Moral Basis of Design,” delivered to 3,000 people at a Smithsonian exhibition about the history of chairs, he explained that beauty emerges organically from a design that fulfills its purpose.”
Settler Colonialism and Campus Protests
The mantras of decolonization are nothing new in corners of cultural criticism and academia. But the past year has given a visible demonstration of the ideologies underpinning those claims as many campuses have been filled with protests issuing all sorts of demands regarding Israel’s war with Hamas and the supposed obligation of North American universities regarding that conflict.
Over at the Wall Street Journal, Adam Kirsch has a thoughtful article outlining some of the ideological currents of “settler colonialism” and how it is behind these demands. What stands out, in my opinion, is the following paragraph (although the entire article really is worth reading):
“It is no accident that the ideology of settler colonialism is flourishing today at the same time as right-wing populism. Both see our turbulent political moment as an opportunity to permanently change the way Americans think about their country. And as is often the case, the extremes of right and left are united in disparaging the compromises of liberalism, which they see as weakly evasive. In the case of settler colonialism, this means rejecting the understanding of American history that has been mainstream since the mid-20th century—that it is a story of slow progress toward fulfilling the nation’s founding promise of freedom for all.”
A Dominant Football Program Without a Stadium
Chances are you’ve never heard of Saint Joseph’s Preparatory School in Philadelphia. But if you follow Pennsylvania high school football, you most certainly know of the school. Here’s how Philadelphia magazine’s Michael Bradley explains the significance of the school when it comes to high school sports in the Keystone State:
“Since the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association (PIAA) went from four enrollment-based classifications to six in 2016, the Prep has won six state championships in Class 6A (the largest division), including last year’s, and was runner-up the other two times. The school also won Class 4A titles in 2013 and ’14. The Prep has dominated the Philadelphia Catholic League, the 104-year-old athletic confederation of 16 city and suburban Catholic high schools, losing just one PCL game in the past 10 seasons.”
Not only has St. Joe’s Prep dominated the state’s high school football landscape, they’ve also drawn the sons of well-known NFL greats and have sent more than a few of their graduates to play in the league. And, as Bradley points out, other high school programs in the state are rather miffed at what they perceive to be some unfair competitive advantages. But what caught my attention in the article was this:
“The Prep does it, somehow, without a practice field or stadium. The program holds its preseason camp on a field at 11th and Cecil B. Moore and in-season workouts at Temple’s complex. In 2023, the Prep played “home” games at Franklin Field, Conwell-Egan Catholic and Norristown Area High School.”
Let that sink in for a moment. The school has indeed invested heavily in its weight room (it would be the envy of a lot of colleges!). But kudos to school leaders for finding creative ways to pursue excellence without taking on traditional facility costs.
Skip Swimming the Seine
As I’ve noted in previous Musings, the Seine river’s sanitary qualities—or deficiency thereof—garnered quite a bit of attention during the recent Olympic Games in Paris. Now we’re starting to get a bit of clarity on the impact on athletes:
“About 10% of athletes who competed in the triathlon or open water swimming events developed gastroenteritis, compared with about 1% to 3% of athletes in the same events in Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo, Jonathan Finnoff, DO, chief medical officer of the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee (USOPC), told MedPage Today editor-in-chief Jeremy Faust, MD, MS, in an interview.”
If your American pride wasn’t already bolstered, you might be happy to know that US athletes had a lower rate of infection due to some of their own internal protocols and preemptive treatment measures. Huzzah.
Three days of diarrhea, vomiting, and nausea after competing in a triathlon sounds, well, absolutely horrible. So the good news? We can do better than this in 2028, Los Angeles! Let’s pick our beaches carefully. There’s nowhere to go but up…