For most people, springtime signals rebirth and new beginnings. But for an English professor, these months offer something else entirely.
By Jay Parini
Illustration by Alicia Buelow
It’s spring in the academic village, with blossoming fruit trees, and once again my thoughts turn to summer. I think of those long, delicious months when, without the telephone ringing and student papers sitting on my desk ungraded, without faculty meetings and office hours, without classes to prepare, I’m free again to work exclusively on my own writing.
My e-mails will dwindle to communications with a few good friends. Some mornings, I might even sleep in.
But spring also brings with it a small feeling of dread. As fruit trees blossom, and lawn mowers drone outside the open windows of my classroom, I begin to anticipate the end of a school year, with the many losses that inevitably attend that event, marked so vividly by the graduation ceremony, when half a dozen kids I had really come to like, even love, wave to me from the platform as they proceed into their adult life, diplomas in hand. I’m aware that one or two from each class will remain friends forever, but I know as well that there will be many—the majority of those whom I genuinely considered friends—who won’t. It’s not their fault, I tell myself. They will get busy. Soon spouses and children will lay claim to their attention. I’m just a passing figure in their lives; they know this, and I know it. It’s not as bad as it sounds, given the demands I feel myself toward spouse and family, toward a circle of friends that has widened decade by decade. There is only so much attention to go around.
I begin to feel this little dread coming on in April, when the spring snows begin to thaw. Huge piles of the stuff grow wet at the edges, melting slowly, so that by the middle of the month there are puddles everywhere, and I have for the first time to wear my waders to the campus. Mud season brings with it a certain sloppiness of feeling as well.
I start to anticipate wrapping things up in each course, turning over in my head potential exam questions and topics for final papers. I make frantic phone calls to students working on senior projects, reminding them that their revisions are almost due, and that the end is near. It’s at this point that I begin to mark the seniors as people who will soon pass from my life, probably forever.
Saying goodbye to favorite students is a difficult thing. You meet them as freshmen, with their innocent gazes and acne-blotched skin; they look like high school kids, and their eagerness during the first few weeks of class is always touching. Soon enough, they become old hands, learning the shortcuts to a good paper, learning how to skim, and so forth. They acquire boyfriends and girlfriends, and their confidence seems to swell. This is gratifying, but there is some loss in that, as well. It can be difficult to regain their attention.
In the spring of their senior year, many students become vulnerable again. I spend hours talking to them about their futures. Should they go into publishing? Can they earn a living as a writer? Is it possible to write on the side and work a job like, say, investment banking? I’ve become an old hand at answering the routine questions frankly, giving out encouragement without creating a false sense of security. It’s not easy to find a job you will like, I tell them; but such jobs do exist. Be adventurous. Follow your bliss, as Joseph Campbell put it. But don’t go bankrupt in the process. Always keep alternative careers in mind. Don’t be fussy. If location means a lot to you, start there. And so forth. Everyone who has taught in a college knows the drill.
Endings are gloomy, and one cannot avoid this truth, even while looking for the brighter side. “In my end is my beginning,” T.S. Eliot wrote, paraphrasing a French proverb. Indeed, one is reminded again and again by graduation speakers about the root meaning of commencement. Okay, we get it. Students are going out into life, making a transition. This is certainly true, and would anyone prefer it otherwise?
I’m aware that my role in some graduates’ lives is often not over. The number of them who stay in touch after graduation always surprises me. For quite a few years, many will require letters of recommendation and career advice. As a creative writing teacher, I expect to see poems and novels in draft for a long time after an especially gifted student has formally left my tutelage.
In some happy cases, I find their published books in my mailbox, and it’s thrilling. I also know that each year a number of them will return on alumni weekends and look me up, sometimes with a 17-year-old child in tow who wants a tour of the College. Very occasionally, I encounter a former student in the streets of Manhattan or Boston, though sometimes I don’t recognize them in business attire, having gotten used to their unisexual sweatshirts, jeans, and sneakers. There is some comfort in the fact that a handful of former students become friends forever, staying in regular touch.
Walking away from graduation, I experience that grand old thing: mixed emotions. I’m certainly glad that my seniors made it, that they are going into the world. Their happiness is evident as family and loved ones surround them, kissing them and patting their backs. I’m suddenly just an appendage, an interloper, without a function in their lives. They may see me blinking at the periphery, then introduce me to their grandparents and parents, lovers and siblings. “This is Professor Parini,” they say, awkwardly. “He was my adviser.” Hands are shaken, and I withdraw. They have more on their mind than my feelings, and I have things to do myself. The summer beckons, and I’m suddenly desperate for it to begin.
Jay Parini is the D.E. Axinn Professor of English and Creative Writing at Middlebury and the author of more than 15 books of prose and poetry.