Endings, beginnings and the in-between

It’s over now. The school year, that is. The last two weeks have been a whirlwind, full of demands of all sorts: not just final projects, exams and all the other work you’d think of, but meetings (it seems like every committee you’re on always wants to have one more meeting) and celebrations and all sorts of everything. Right when you think you can steal away a few minutes to take care of something, another request pops up. It’s a game of whack-a-mole. 

A couple Fridays back, it included some mood whiplash. At mid-day, we gathered in the sports arena for a catered, somewhat casual shindig to honor employees and give out various awards for service. It was a chance to put serious stuff aside for a couple hours and be with colleagues and not worry about much for a bit, and it was welcome. But a couple hours later, many of us were over in the chapel for a memorial service. A colleague who had worked at the college for about as long as I had, and was someone that pretty much all of us had worked with, died last month. It was something of a shock when it happened, and she was well-loved, so a lot of us were there. 

I’ve had to attend too many of these the last three years: by my count, there’s been two professors, one senior staff member, and then the college’s president before this latest loss. Some of them I knew better than others, some of them I worked longer with, and even if I wasn’t that close with them I still cared about them. They were not only part of this place where I work, but just the fact they were there gave you a feeling of stability. You might have a lot of stuff on your mind, but the fact they were there meant you didn’t have to think that much about some things. Then, suddenly, they’re not there. Yes, retirement or relocation might have taken them out of the picture at some point, but death is so final. There’s no ability to call them up for advice, no possibility that you might have the happiness of bumping into them somewhere. It becomes another reminder that the older you get, the more you really know you’re on your own.

For that matter, just being in the chapel any more stirs emotions. A lot of things have changed on our campus, but in many ways that chapel is exactly as it was when I started at the college 25 years ago. I think my first visit was during opening convocation in August 2001; me, a freshly-minted Ph.D. bringing up the rear of the procession, a mildly-scared kid trying to make sense of this strange tradition and learn the customs of my new trade. A couple weeks after that, we had the formal inauguration ceremony for the college’s president. It was a truly big deal and a happy day. It was a new era for the college. It was September 7, 2001. 

Six days later I came back to a much stiller chapel. The campus pastor had opened the sanctuary for prayer and contemplation. The candles were burning and the lights were dimmed. There was only silence, broken by people coming or going. Many of us were sitting alone, still overwhelmed and trying to make sense of what had happened, appalled by what we’d seen, no idea that the days and weeks and years to come might as well be out of another world entirely. 

Those and a thousand other memories come back to me any time I’m in that chapel, and when I’m there 25 years seem like both an eternity and only yesterday. I see the faces and feel the presence of colleagues who were here only moments ago, it seems like, but are now elsewhere, be it at other institutions or in a world removed from ours. I remember students who have gone off to the wider world, out doing great things. I think about how much I’ve changed since that opening convocation a quarter-century ago, wondering what happened to the vaguely optimistic kid I was then, and where the world-weary senior faculty member I am now came from. Time marches on, and time stands still, and as a jillion memories crowd my mind there’s an ache for which I can’t find the words. The place is constant but so many of the people have changed, and yet I remain. 

I don’t know how much longer I have there. My plan has long been to call teaching a career in my 30th year and then find some new hill to climb while I’m still able. But, as each of these memorial services has reminded me, that may not be my call. It’s completely possible that sooner rather than later I could be the subject of a memorial service (although, to be honest, it’d be much more appropriate to do my memorial service like a Dean Martin Celebrity Roast, and I’d ask for it if someone hadn’t beaten me to the concept). 

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On the other end of the spectrum, today brought Spring Commencement. For the students and their families, it’s a happy day. For colleagues, it’s something we’re expected to attend, but we’re usually happy to be there to see our graduates off into their next chapter. 

For me, though, it was a lot of work. Two years ago, I was elected as one of two Faculty Marshals. That means I’ve been at the front of the processional with the big fancy stick (the mace, it’s called, and unfortunately I haven’t had a chance to use it like Dr. Morris Bishop once did) leading the faculty in and out of ceremonies and stuff like that. There are also other parts of the job: until we made the students wear their hoods before going up stage, I helped put the hoods on each graduate on stage. I might be asked to escort someone to the stage to be honored. Faculty marshals are also usually seated up on the stage as part of the platform party, so we have to look reasonably dignified and behave throughout. (Which for me is a challenge, but I’m getting ahead of myself.)

You might think it’s all a lot of show, and like any performance, it looks that way from the audience. What you don’t see is that any event like this takes a lot of coordination, and it takes a lot of people to do their jobs correctly. If a faculty marshal screws something up, it can throw a wrench into the works. Most folks – including my colleagues who have never served in the position, and to be fair I didn’t know it either until I was elected – don’t realize that we’re issued scripts that outline in fine detail what happens, who does what and when, and all the other stuff. Anything as serious and prestigious as an academic ceremony will leave nothing to chance. For commencement ceremonies, we not only have the scripts, but we also have a rehearsal the day before: we practice our places and roles, the students practice coming up to the stage and going through the motions, and we generally try to get the bugs out so everybody knows what to expect and it won’t take forever the next day.

All this is challenging enough for a single ceremony. That had been the original plan. We had hoped to hold one big ceremony at the football field, which gives plenty of room for students’ families and for other guests, and it’s a picturesque venue. The wild card, however, is the weather. It’s early May in South Carolina. The first year we tried it, the sun was out. Before we knew it, we were broiling. The folks in the stands didn’t like it, but all of us in our regalia…it was brutal. The next year was less intense, but still sporty. Last year, it was bad on rehearsal day, but we caught a break with some cloud cover that kept the temperatures down.

This year, though, the forecast said “no.” With about three days to go, we had to go to the back-up plan: two ceremonies, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, inside the sports arena. I hate to think about the logistics that went into suddenly moving things into the arena, all the set-up and everything else, let alone how much hair must have suddenly turned gray in making it happen, but it was done so well that you’d never have thought it was planned for anywhere else. 

And it also meant that my workload went up, with that much more to prepare for: two rehearsals on Friday, then two ceremonies on Saturday. There’s a lot to coordinate, a lot to make sure I get right, and no margin for error. Fortunately, not only were the scripts for the ceremonies very helpful, but my fellow faculty marshal, who has served so long that he’s kind of a permanent faculty marshal, has something akin to a sixth sense when it comes to these things. He knows when and how to cue you, has a talent for explaining exactly what you need to do, and it just works beautifully and means you have that much less to worry about. 

Friday’s rehearsal felt at times like herding kittens. The graduates-to-be come in, a mix of various emotions, and there’s kind of a loosey-goosey feel to everything. Mistakes get made, cues get missed, there’s the challenge of getting everyone in order and making sure names and hometowns are correct for the announcer. My job was relatively simple: stand at the entrance ramp to the platform and look official, but be ready to pitch in if anything unexpected happened. Other than that, there wasn’t much I had to do. I spent a good bit of time standing there yesterday, being goofy in between stretches of boredom, and being just a little bit nervous about what was to come. It went reasonably well, though, and then I went home. 

Today was the big show. I was there, probably too early, but it let me get my affairs in order and gave me some time to eat something that could carry me through until lunch. About 9 a.m., I went over and checked in, got briefed on anything that had changed, helped the other faculty marshal go through the student line and make sure everybody had their regalia in order. Then it was time to go over to the faculty waiting area to get my colleagues in order. By this point, it was really obvious that moving the ceremonies inside was a good idea. We thought we might have a hole in the weather that would let us continue our tradition of the “tunnel” – forming lines on either side of the entrance and applauding the graduates on the way in – but right when we departed for the arena just before 10 a.m., the weather started to come back. I called an audible and led the faculty into the lobby, and we instead applauded the students as they filed past.

As for the ceremonies themselves, they mostly went without incident, at least on our end of things. It is surreal enough to be on stage at one of these things, knowing everybody’s watching. But when you know that directly in front of you are the academic dean and the chair of the college’s board of trustees, you also know you have to be on your best behavior. Fortunately, I (mostly) remembered to do that. Both services went well, and I mostly stood guard at the ramp, except for a moment in the afternoon ceremony when I had to sprint to the other side of the stage to make sure a student with a walking cane could get some assistance on the way down. It was an awkward moment, but a problem needed to be solved in a hurry, so protocol be damned.

Splitting up the ceremonies kept them reasonably short – about an hour and 30 minutes each – and it meant I could go back to my office and have lunch in between the two, then take care of a little housekeeping before shutting the office down for the summer. Much as I’d have rather been elsewhere on a Saturday, and as frustrated as I can get with some of the frillery of what we do, it wasn’t a bad bit of work. The main thing that I’m dealing with now is that all that standing isn’t as easy as when I was younger, and I’m paying for it. That, and two days of planning and preparing and fretting and doing, means that I’m just plain tired, and I’ve rewarded my hard work with some Tylenol PM tonight. 

In the second ceremony, I tried to take it all in and remember the moment, for I’m likely to never see a graduation from the stage ever again. It’ll be time for faculty elections in August, and I’m not seeking re-election as faculty marshal. A colleague I like very much had this position before me, and although it’s been an honor and I’ve kind of enjoyed it, it’s not mine to keep. It’s time for another colleague to have a turn, and I’ll again go sit with my colleagues in the audience, where I can trade wisecracks with them out of earshot of the VIPs. 

But all that’s for much later. Right now, the academic year is done, my regalia is hidden away on its hanger in the corner of my office, and there’s adventure to be had the next three months. I’m ready for it.