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theantiyale 3 hours, 32 minutes ago
" wonder and unexplored mystery that drew us here"
I never really appreciated the astonishing treasures Yale offered me until I graduated and left the classroom campus: Companionship with octogenarian scholar Roland Bainton was one of them: http://doctorbainton.blogspot.com/ ; the opportunity to champion with Woodbridge Hall the less fortunate was another http://yalegrad80.blogspot.com/ ; and a third was the opportunity to deflate homophobia in the hearts of 20 million “60 Minutes” viewers with the Divinity School as its puncturer, in 1984 http://aidsatyale.blogspot.com/
Best wishes to the freshmen as they explore this magnificent institution which I torment out of love and awe, not out of bitterness or anger.
Paul D. Keane
M. Div. ‘80
M.A., M.Ed.
LLOYD-THOMAS: Yale without expectations
Yale Daily News
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
We all have
expectations of Yale. High grades, good friends, brilliant professors. Perhaps
we even expect, during our time here, to become a certain person, an ideal
version of ourselves.
Last week I, along
with 1,355 other freshmen, arrived on campus with unbounded expectations. In
the months since our acceptances, we’ve collectively spent thousands of hours
daydreaming, pondering, imagining what Yale might be, setting expectations both
for this place and for ourselves.
I suggest that we
drop these expectations.
Two short weeks in,
we may still be reveling in Yale’s brilliance, in the excitement of shopping
classes, meeting new people and living our lives as near-adults. In these first
weeks, we allow the expectations of life-changing classes, beautiful
friendships and idyllic college life to drift to the backs of our minds, our
internal deadlines still far off in our Yale careers. But as the long, warm
summer days spent playing Frisbee on Old Campus give way to the dark of winter
and long nights spent in Bass, the deadlines for these expectations will come
into sharper focus, drawing nearer and nearer.
Some of us may have
already noticed this. At this point, most of us have probably shopped at least
one bad class. A suitemate may have come back late Saturday night and vomited,
adding cracks to our increasingly fragile perception of Yale as perfect.
Later, our
expectations will shatter and come crashing down around us. Perhaps it will be
after the first failed test, the first moment of pure exhaustion or the first
broken friendship. Regardless of what or when it is, there will come a moment
in which our expectations, which we built so thoroughly through spring and
summer, will cease to be expectations and instead become failures.
It is here that the
real danger lies, because it is precisely at this moment that Yale will cease
to be what it is meant to be, a place of excitement, learning and growth. It is
at this moment that Yale will no longer be something perpetually fresh and
filled with a sense of mystery and wonder and will instead become something
mundane and old — in essence, just another place.
We, the class of
2016, are lucky to be here. There are perhaps thousands of others equally
deserving of our places. But, by some luck of the sorting hat, we wound up
here. And because we are lucky, we have a responsibility to give to and take
from this place all that can be given and all that can be taken. But we cannot
do it if we let unfulfilled expectations transform Yale from the wonder with
which we behold it in the first weeks to just another school or just another
collection of buildings.
Rather, if we dive
into Yale without fear, trepidation or expectations, we might just find that we
will continue to make Yale a place of perpetual thrills for the next four years
because we have nothing to be disappointed by and nothing to lose. We might
never lose the sense of wonder and unexplored mystery that drew us here. Only
then might we give all we have to give and take all Yale has to offer, making
our time here truly worthwhile.
Matthew Lloyd-Thomas is a freshman in Jonathan Edwards
College
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