Advice to Advisors Advising

2 Environmentalisms

I. The one reflected in facultytalk response to Gary Hawkins:
his concern over Advising Load: call that the
Common Sense .

II. And here's The OTHER one: Uncommon,
but familiar: & with it's own tradition.

"Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for
an instructor as youth, for it has not profited
so much as it has lost.

One may almost doubt if the wisest man has
learned anything of absolute value by living.

Practically, the old have no very important
advice to give the young, their own experience
has been so partial, and their lives have been
such miserable failures, for private reasons,
as they must believe;

and it may be that they have some faith
left which belies that experience, and they
are only less young than they were.

I have lived some thirty years on this planet,
and I have yet to hear the first syllable of
valuable or even earnest advice from
my seniors." Henry David Thoreau

I include this quote in my First Day Handout
for FYSeminarians ("Liberal Art" aka "Stupid Club")

Also: inevitably part of my Transcendental
Romantics "course":

"Thy goodness must have an edge to it, else
it is none," says Emerson, and "the doctrine of
Hatred must be preached as counter to the
doctrine of Love when that pules and whines."
["Self Reliance."]

Another pair of bumper stickers for inside the
I lids--every blink, a reminder & reassurance: :

"If a Fool persist in his ways, he becomes wise"
and
"The Road of Excess leads to the Palace of Wisdom.
(Wm Blake)

This is Eng.Major (liberal art) kind of talk, insight,
advisce: & may not be generalizable across across
the curriculum where more intense local parental food
feeding & nurture is desirable and probably necessary
as part of our specific cultural expectations (make up
for size and prominence in terms of care and
personal attention.)

Consider: a difference between liberal arts (vocational
training, practical guild instrumental guidance) and
Liberal Art.--life-long x-treme sport.

Incommensurate: but easy to collapse, conflate,
and confuse the two values and
matronize the whole deal..

2 kinds of TALK (liberal arts/Liberal Art)
but maybe only 1 kind of WALK.

Might be worth arguing.

xxxooo, Rush Limbo