February 13, 2023: Convocation Address
Welcome to Middlebury. It is my pleasure, on behalf of the faculty, staff, trustees, and your fellow Middlebury students, to extend a warm welcome to you, the Class of 2026.5
I want to warmly welcome you as Febs—that special class of people who arrive in winter. Febs are bright newcomers to our community who bring all their light and energy to the darker days. That’s why we welcome you with candles—they are a reminder of who you are.
There’s also something about winter that brings us down to the bare bones—we see the beautiful skeletons of things. We hear the sparser songs that exist underneath the songs of summer. You’ve heard the saying “I know it in my bones.” Maybe you’ve even said it yourself. The poet Mark Strand invites us to think about winter as a kind of listening—“listening to the tunes our bones play.”
Here’s how he puts it in “Lines for Winter,” a poem I like to share with Middlebury’s Febs:
Tell yourself
as it gets cold and gray falls from the air
that you will go on
walking, hearing
the same tune no matter where
you find yourself—
inside the dome of dark
or under the cracking white
of the moon’s gaze in a valley of snow.
Tonight, as it gets cold
tell yourself
what you know which is nothing
but the tune your bones play
as you keep going. And you will be able
for once to lie down under the small fire
of winter stars …
As you have waited for your Feb journey to begin, you have envisioned what Middlebury would be like. And you have envisioned it powerfully. You have listened to the tune your bones play and found this place.
You may even have envisioned that, once you arrived, on a snowy Vermont night, you would lie down and gaze at the small fire of wintry stars. And now you have landed here, in this space. I hope it looks and feels the same way you imagined it.
And even though you did everything right to get here, perhaps you are still wondering what you’ve gotten yourself into. You might be looking left, and looking right. You may be thinking, “I just met an environmentalist who started a nonprofit who plays two varsity sports and is an opera singer and speaks three languages. Do I really belong here? And what is worse, they were really nice about it.”
That’s definitely a Middlebury experience.
As your president, I am going to ask you, if you are feeling this way, whether you choose to be distracted by comparison, or get on with the glorious business of being who you are. Sitting here in the pews in the chapel, you are the same person we admitted at the end of your high school career. We admitted you, the person who envisioned Middlebury and who has come here to realize your vision. To be inspired by the fires of winter stars.
So, what does it mean to follow the tunes your bones play, now that you are here? First and foremost, it means being aware of all the opportunity that is around you and keeping yourself healthy at the same time.
At Middlebury, you will have a wealth of people to support you in that effort: our residential life staff, your Compass mentors, the faculty who teach you in first-year seminars, librarians, coaches, faculty who teach you in your other courses, people whom you happen to meet on campus.
And they will help you listen to that tune that is yours alone, and in doing so, develop wisdom. You see, at Middlebury, we are going to ask you not just to become smart, but to become wise.
Make no mistake: at Middlebury, you will be all about using your smarts, your intellect. You will be challenged to master material more than you ever have before. And there will be days when you will feel that meeting such an intellectual challenge is enough. But once you have done that, we will not simply let you rest on those laurels. Intellect is not wisdom. At Middlebury we will challenge you to take the next step after being smart, which is to understand the role of that knowledge in the world, how it has shaped human hearts and minds over centuries, and how it continues to do so.
Just ask Cheko Francis Mkocheko. He’s a Feb just like you—in fact, he just graduated last week. As a student, Cheko created an online educational program for elementary schoolchildren from Githurai, which is a low-income area near Nairobi, Kenya. Cheko’s program focuses on giving these children the opportunity to work on project-based learning with university students from around the world as mentors. His project is helping students learn new skills and satisfy their curiosities amid a challenging learning environment.
At Middlebury, we will also ask you to pay attention, to be mindful, and to reflect on the purposes of your own education. Mindfulness is part of being aware of what you are doing—not just following a well-traveled route or a rote course of study. Some people call this “slow learning.” We call it “better learning.” Just ask Oliver Buzzard, another Feb. At Middlebury, Oliver’s journey began with an Introduction to Dance class, which led them to become a double major in dance and Spanish. Oliver grew into choreography as well, performing at the American College Dance Association and with the Middlebury Dance Company, and they created site-specific dance investigations in places like Big Sur and Santa Fe—persevering even when COVID restricted their opportunities to perform.
At Middlebury we will challenge you to think of the wisdom you gain here as more valuable than gold or silver. Those reminders mean that, if you get a great internship or a fabulous high-paying job when you graduate, and you think you have accomplished what you need to, then you will not be wise. And we will not have done our job as educators. If we have done our job well, then you will see that true wisdom is found in seeking a deeper and richer life, not one that focuses entirely on material ends. Just ask the students who volunteer to work at the Middlebury College organic farm, known as the Knoll. The Knoll doesn’t grow crops to make a profit, but rather to deepen a sense of place, and to create a source of local food for Middlebury College and the town. This kind of wisdom gives the staff and students at the Knoll the resilience to try different agricultural experiments and different kinds of shelters for plants and people. All of that work has been happening there for almost 20 years.
At Middlebury we will also challenge you to be receptive to others’ points of view. That, too, is a great quality of wisdom, and a real skill, and when you learn it, you will know the value of others’ arguments and become willing to respect them. At Middlebury, we view arguments as moments where people are thinking their best thoughts together. If you are willing to be open to others’ arguments, you will have the support of others around you because they know you are willing to listen to them. That, too, will help us become a better community together—a community of people who know how to listen, and to talk, to one another. Last year, we received an anonymous 25-million-dollar programming grant—the largest such grant in our history—to establish the Davis Collaborative in Conflict Transformation. In our first eight months, this grant has allowed us, among other things, to train over 80 undergraduate students in conflict transformation skills, including restorative practices. We launched a Conflict Transformation Skills course for this past J-term that had over 70 students enrolled. We have also funded faculty to research food scarcity and conflict in Cyprus and Turkey; global models of labor arbitration; North Korea and strategic empathy; and water rights and conflict transformation.
A final note about what you will learn here at Middlebury: being wise means being able to bounce back, and perhaps even bounce differently. What do we mean by this? Resilience is a word we probably heard all too often during the disruptions caused by the COVID pandemic—ones which you have lived through courageously. You are able to bounce back when you know your own shape and know that you can find it again. You will have the courage to learn and make mistakes and find your shape again after the worst thing that could happen happens. You will find that shape, in body, mind, and spirit, so that you can create your own path.
The poet Mark Strand reminds us about finding our own shape in winter, always listening to the tune your bones play.
you will go on
walking, hearing
the same tune no matter where
you find yourself—
inside the dome of dark
or under the cracking white
of the moon’s gaze in a valley of snow.
So, I challenge you: do not dwell in distraction, but instead, get on with the glorious business of being who you are. You envisioned Middlebury, and now you are here. You have arrived, bringing us light and laughter. And we will support you as you follow the tune your bones play. We will help you become wise. We will help you go on walking, no matter where you find yourself—
inside the dome of dark
or under the cracking white
of the moon’s gaze in a valley of snow.
Welcome, Febs. Welcome to Midd.