Best wishes to all the young people of the class of 2008! We are very proud of you.
Today you become grownups. Yet we hope you never really 'grow up' but are always filled with the energy and joy and curiosity of the last four years of your life.
Congratulations!
The History Department will graduate eight majors tomorrow. We're so very proud of each and every one of them. Three young ladies, five gentlemen, all with very bright futures. Four of them are headed to law school in September, one will be starting graduate work in history, one will be pursuing a masters in teaching, one will be on a Fulbright fellowship, and one will be milking cows! OK, maybe not actually milking cows (we just like to tease him about that!) but he does plan to spend some time in Canada, working as an assistant in a veterinary clinic. I'm sure his somewhat unusual post-Wofford job will lead to many adventures and rich experiences.
We will also be saying goodbye to six history minors. While they may not have taken as many classes with us, they have proved their love for history and blended it with other fields of study. We count future businesspeople and lawyers in their ranks, and even a physician. We are proud of them as well, and wish them all the best.
For a very big book!
Dr. Phil Racine's new book has arrived! Gentlemen Merchants: A Charleston Family's Odyssey, 1828-1870 has just been published by the University of Tennessee Press. The work contains the transcribed and annotated correspondence of the Gourdin-Young families. This tremendous undertaking will help scholars better understand the working of the business world in the South during the Antebellum, Civil War, and Reconstruction periods.
And when I say this is a heavy work, I mean it! It's well over 900 pages long!
Please join the entire Wofford History Department in congratulating Dr. Racine on this great accomplishment. We've watched him work to read and write and correct the galley sheets for quite some time now; academic works take years to reach this stage. And while Dr. Racine's copy is literally brand new and not on bookshelves today, you can pre-order yours through amazon.com or the University of Tennessee Press.
I find myself getting very sentimental this time of year, at least in the moments when I'm not completely stressed out or panicked over something. I have to constantly make lists, trying to keep myself on schedule so I won't forget any of the many end-of-semester duties. But I could also make a list of the things that I will miss as the Spring of 2008 comes to a close.
1. The HIS 101 Soundtracks
Having class in the MacMillan Theater was just too much of a temptation. I had to blast some Pirates of the Caribbean and Gettysburg themes through those speakers. Less successful were my attempts to introduce the students to 80s music. I am happy to report, however, that they know who Elvis is. There may be hope for the future.
2. My Goodbye Scarlett Class
Eleven ladies and one gentleman (dubbed the honorary woman, a title he took great pride in!) these students made up one of the best seminar classes I've ever taught. They were a surprisingly interdisciplinary group. While everyone had a deep interest in history and many were history majors, there was a good mix of gender studies, nineteenth century studies, African-American studies, psychology, economics, art and art history, and even biology. For the first time I saw the great potential in the specializations that we've created in the last five years and how they help students approach common topics from many different angles. Wednesday afternoons flew by this Spring, and on our last afternoon together we launched a pirate ship (OK, golf cart!). How many classes can say that?
3. The Kids in The Commons
I like that when I open my door, I usually find students hanging out in our chairs. Now if I could just convince some of them that they should also help load the History candy jar, we'd have it made! Our computer seems to attract students as well---I'm not sure why, I'm pretty sure it's the same as other computers---but again, open the door and there someone is, checking Facebook or e-mail. Those little interactions make the day more pleasant.
4. The Novel Writing Class
Will Fuller get the girl? Will the guerrilla fighters attack Cherub's Song? Will the truth about Violet's mother be revealed? I want to know!!!! I've spent all semester learning about these characters and situations---I have to know how the novels end. And oh how I already miss those classes and the readings and Dr. Trakas' grin and all the things that I've learned about writing fiction. I feel much more connected to young voices. Trust me, I had no idea what a 'wingman' was before this class. Now I do. I feel like it has ended all too soon. (And yes, I did get mine written and I passed the class! I even made cover art for it.)
5. The History Seniors
I really didn't realize how much I was going to miss them until we had the senior party. This bunch has so much life in them. Their good humor is infectious. They tell funny stories, do great faculty impressions, and are excellent dancers. And they're kind and have been good to do the thankless things I have to ask of them, like taking field exams and filling out surveys. I hope that my personal future will be filled with many more seniors, and that I will never forget these 'elite eight' who were the first to graduate while I was Department Chair.
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There are other things I think about on the list as well....walking to lunch with my colleagues, calling public safety when the fence behind the science building is locked AGAIN, Ms. Rita having my favorite flavor of coffee brewing. Of course, so many of these experiences will continue; I don't plan to give up eating or drinking coffee or working at odd hours anytime soon. But I think the Spring of 2008 will stick with me for a long time. There were big changes in my life, many good things happened to me (Thank you, Campus Union, and I know I didn't deserve that recognition!) and I had good health and good friends. Not every day is perfect, not every day is happy, but most of the time I think that I'm pretty darned lucky to be here, in this place, with these people.
I need to grade papers now. Or I'm going to get weepy again and I need to save that for graduation.
For the annual Wofford Terrio, the good ship Queen Anne Rodrick's Revenge, under the command of Captain Tim Schmitz and his first mate Mariel Willenberg, was the terror of the Seven Seas (or at least the driveway in front of Old Main.) The pirate crew took their shore leave as an opportunity to pillage, plunder, and maraud.
Here, like buried treasure, are pictures from the event!
The ship prepares to leave port!
The Captain and his First Mate prepare to do battle.
Pirates swarm the Old Main lawn, looking for plunder!
Who's that Pirate Queen?
The reason all the rum is gone and Wofford has been sacked and pillaged!
Many thanks to all the students who made the Terrio possible, especially those History major and minors and even a few not-history-students-but-really-cool-anyway kids who also helped decorate and loaned out costumes. It was a great way to cap off a crazy last week of school!
I used to be the kind of person who could remember things, never had to make a grocery list or keep a day-planner.
Boy, have things changed. Not only is my brain turning to mush, but it seems like every year there are more and more Wofford activities, especially in the last week of class. Don't get me wrong---I'm not complaining about a week that includes two dinners with the seniors, a lunch with the majors, and a golf cart race, but still I find myself constantly checking the calendar and wondering "am I where I'm supposed to be?" And since I have this new responsibility of keeping up with things for the department, I wonder "have I reminded everyone where they're supposed to be????"
I just keep crossing my fingers that I will show up at all the designated places in the next week and not forget when I'm supposed to give my final exams.
I'm sure the students wouldn't mind if I forgot that last one but I think the Dean might!
I suspect that most Wofford students would be shocked, astounded, frightened and appalled if they knew how many of their professors love to dance.
Our faculty/staff party was on Friday night. It was a lot of fun---good food and good times, with no program! When I saw the DJ set-up, my first thought was 'this is more elaborate than what we had at my prom.' Of course, since the Wofford community is so diverse in taste and in age range, the music master had to shuffle through his library pretty often. We had everything from Chubby Checker to Fergie and Flo Rida, with a little AC/DC and Bee Gees in the middle.
Being a child of the disco era, I was glad to hear some tunes that brought back old times. I was also glad that one person there remembered how to do the hustle, because I had forgotten it!
I won't spill any secrets, but I will say that there are several Wofford couples who could have their own version of Dancing With The Stars and that some departments really know how to cha-cha. I'll freely admit I'm the worst dancer at Wofford, but I don't care---I very rarely get the opportunity to show off just how awful I am, so I was happy to be in the crowd that closed the joint down.
Many thanks to all the people at Wofford who made it possible! Now let's just hope nobody caught any of it on film, because we wouldn't want to end up as Youtube victims.
No, this blog post is not about the fraternities!
I'm constantly amazed at how many real animals (as opposed to party animals) reside on this campus. For example, there's the vast number of residential squirrels. I haven't encountered a tame one yet, but most of them have very little fear of the humans who share their space.
They should, however be worried about the hawk. There may well be more than one hawk, as often as I spot his (or her?) distinctive silhouette overhead. The hawks are the just the biggest of many campus birds; robins and blackbirds and little brown birds (you can tell I'm not a biologist, can't you?) are fluttering all over the place.
And chipmunks! I'd never seen a chipmunk until I moved to South Carolina, and now almost every day I spot one playing under the trees, or making a quick dive for a hiding place. And Disney got it wrong, they do not have red noses.
I still see the occasional cat. Today there was a big black tomcat crashed under a shrub. He looked at me with disdainful green eyes when I tried to get him to come and play with me. He obviously knows the place of humans in the grand scheme of things.
But the creature who delighted me the most was the rabbit. I truly did not expect to see a big brown rabbit here, but there he was in the twilight, one evening last week, wiggling his nose and twitching his ears.
FSU was a pretty barren urban environment, but my junior college campus was blessed with squirrels, birds (especially ducks) and alligators. So Wofford, especially in the springtime, feels ever more like home.
The window of my office looks out onto the campus green. This morning I glanced out the window and---zap---there's a picnic set up! On other days there's a platform for a performance, or chairs for a speach. It happens like magic.
This is all thanks to the hard work of Wofford's Utility Crew. You can spot them with their trucks and golf carts, hauling around chairs and tables, making sure that both outside and inside events have adequate seating and all the accessories we need are in place. They're the men who do a lot of the heavy lifting on campus! It's a job that we're not always aware of because they have it down to a science. They're also the guys that we call on when we're moving from office to office. They hauled all my stuff from Daniel to Old Main to Black Science and back to Old Main and never dropped a thing. (Though I did get teased about my footstool that's shaped like a turtle with a red velvet shell!)
One of the most pleasant aspects of community life at Wofford College is how often we have outside events. We don't just live in our buildings, we live outside too, especially this time of the year. And we wouldn't be so comfortable outside, with places to sit down and tables to put our food on, if it wasn't for the labor of the Utility Crew.
So here's a salute to Darryl Maybin, Tyrone Rice, Jerry Brown, Micthell Humphries, and Converse Draper, who can put Wofford events together and take them apart in the twinkling of an eye; thank you for all that you do! Mr. Humphries said to let everyone know that "Converse makes sure all events run well." That he does---and the entire Utility Crew are Wofford 'All-Stars'!
One of my students requested, weeks ago, that I write a blog post about her. I won't give her full name; I'm trying to protect the guilty. But I think she deserves a write-up for demonstrating how to drive one's instructor nuts!
On Monday, she asked if she could get her last test back. She'd taken it as a make-up because she was sick the week before. I looked around my office trying to find it.
And I couldn't. Papers went flying, books were turned over, shelves were investigated, but no exam. I gave her the grade, but couldn't find the test, and asked for another day to look for it.
Again, I went through all the junk in my office. Still no paper. I checked at home, thinking maybe I had left it there. No test paper to be found!
This morning, I gave my office yet another turning over. Distraught (how could I lose a TEST????) I went into class resolved to offer her a chance to retake it. I was ready to confess my unworthiness in having misplaced her exam. I have never done that before.
And when I said to her, as she entered the classroom, that I still had not found it, she said "Oh, I found it in my book-bag yesterday. I can't remember when I picked it up, but I guess I did. I meant to call you. Sorry."
She owes me for the white hairs she caused!!!! We both laughed about it.
This is probably not the blog post she expected, but it'll give her a bit of history to remember.
