As mentioned yesterday, I meet individually with each of my students to discuss their future plans. What has surprised me is how many of them are shocked and thoroughly grateful that a faculty member would take the time to do that and really listen, care and discuss them, their lives, concerns, hopes, and dreams.
Many say that in their entire undergraduate experience, I am the only one to reach out to them like this. This really begs us to consider why we are in the university. Many of us have somewhere buried in the detritus of our minds the dream of the collegial university—faculty in scholarly fellowship with each other, grooming the next generations, molding and shaping them into pillars of knowledge to support the lamp of truth as they glide across the stage into the unknown of their futures.
