Seriously

"in an effort to inspire the students to
take seriously their academics."

Jeanne Sommer’s challenge to us to help her challenge the
new students to take seriously their academics: this is the
CONVERSATION of conversations, pedagogically
—if not disciplinarily. Don’t you agree?

We don’t ask the question with regard to ludic activities
like sport and art; and any devoted disciple in a discipline
needs no challenge to get serious. IT’s beyond the serious
& slack dog distinctions that articulate forced study, of
tuition-driven academics. Industrialized, as they
like to say in the Hamil Complex: Whitherspoon
et al. .

So it’s for the academically un-motivated,
un-stunned student, the one who comes here
like it's grade 13 just like from 10^th to 11^th
– no epiphany or commitment-to- college...
(Yes, damnit: I WILL go to college)
... that Jeanne & all of us would inspire: to take
their academics seriously.

I ask myself: how seriously do I take academics?
from I.E. wer² : to bind, hang on the scale, heavy.
“serious.”

I made a plea once to faculty to quit taking it all so
seriously for crying out loud—white knuckles galore—
and President Ben Holden somewhat undercut my
serious urgency by declaring: “Well, I take my work
seriously, but not my self.”

Gordian Knot & double bind.
Where does the seriousness appropriately fall?

The Courage to Teach
Let Your Life Speak.

Two titles by Parker Palmer that have circulated
round here prior to and after several visits where
he was brought in to help inspire us to take un-
postponed joy in our academics.

Both titles imply some kind of constraint, resistance,
bars, barrier, barricade...


(literally "embarrassmentalism"
to be behind bars)

that pre-vene and prevent unpacking the courage
to let one’s life speak & teach—blocking the reach
that exceeds one’s grasp.

2 sides to the coin

The challenge to inspire students to take seriously
their academics is the flip side of the same coin that
spins us as faculty: a non-unilateral reciprocating
complementary opposing cybernetic systemic SELF-
correcting local food-back sustaining environmental
issue that can only be addressed from both sides of
the coin at more or less once with plenty of room for
margins of error aka rooms for play & a GOOD TIME
is had by all, damnit.

Collaborative Genius: an environment that encourages
failure, doubts clarity, mothers invention & puts IT in play.
Hurts so good. How can I resist engagement?

Any one can improve my terms & images,
for the sake of argument--
or what's a college for?

xxxooo, Sam