Hope for the Future

“Cut your hair, you look like a girl.” “Your music is just noise, it’ll make you deaf.” “You have it easy nowadays, we had to work for everything.” This is what I, and many others of my generation, used to hear quite frequently from the older generation, including our parents. Thus, I find it amusing to read all the criticism of the Millennials, especially when coming from my generation. You would think we would know better. However, judging from my students I have a little more confidence in this generation than some (except their music, it’s terrible nowadays, just noise). The students at our college come from wide variety of backgrounds. They range from extremely poor first generation students from homes of former coal miners to cosmopolitan middle class kids from urban suburbs. Thus, we range from the underprepared students who struggle to put two words together on paper, to the overprivileged brats complete with helicopter parents. Somehow, most of them overcome the various barriers. Most students I just see for a semester or two and they move on. They don’t complain, they get their work done (usually at the last minute), they do learn something, and sometimes I learn something from them. There are the failures: the student who does no work and yet is puzzled why he failed, the student whose family issues pull her repeatedly out of school until she has to drop, and the student who just will never get it. I have learned to let them go. Then there are those who stand out. When I sit and think about it I have met a remarkable number of outstanding young people in my career. The best of them, at least the ones who catch my attention, have several attributes in common. Generally, they will seek out faculty in our offices to talk and ask questions. They are good writers and creative thinkers, and are often witty or caustic in class. Where some faculty may find disrespect, I appreciate an outstanding mind expressing itself. Be warned, if you get a critical mass of these good students in the classroom you will very likely lose control, but will be rewarded with enthusiasm and with the pleasure of watching bright students blossom. Although my relationship with the cross country runners as coach was different than that with my history majors, I still mentored and supported them beyond coaching running. These were amazing young people too, though perhaps I have a bias towards runners. Even the average students among them developed a work ethic and integrity from the discipline of long-distance running. Some overachieved in both running and school. For just one example, there is the former runner who came from an extremely poor family living in a trailer in a “holler.” He was overweight and undereducated coming into college. During his time here he turned himself into one of our best runners, and into a brilliant scientist. He is now working on his Ph.D. We have run a couple of marathons together. I am honored to call him friend. Delightfully, I remain in contact with a number of the outstanding students since graduation. I follow them through jobs and grad school, through life achievements, and through failure and disaster. I try to be there, still. From time to time we even might meet when one is back in town, and have lunch or a beer, and reconnect in person. I think our future is in pretty good hands.