On Being a Freshman at Wabash College
by David Blix ‘70, Faculty Contributor
I was talking over a cup of coffee the other day with some friends about that most mysterious of subjects—how to be a student at Wabash College. One man (a faculty member) produced a list of rules from his pocket and laid it on the table. “These work very well,” he said, running his finger down it. I knew him to be a worthy man and so asked for a copy. Another coffee-drinker (a recent alumnus) opined that there are no rules. “You have to figure it out as you go along,” said he. “I did, and look at me now.” Overhearing us, an earnest statistician at the next table (but from another school) then began to hold forth, regaling us with a trove of obscure pedagogical jargon, and declaring that various studies have shown such and such, and this and that, and one thing and another. “This is all very well and good,” I said. “But what about the students? In particular, what about our newest students, our freshmen? Surely we can give them some advice, rules or no rules. They are the youngest members of our community, and, as Confucius once said—I’m very fond of Confucius, you know—we owe them our highest respect.” At this, a couple of Wabash students joined our table. “What advice would you give, professor?” they asked. “Yes, what advice would you give?” said the others. So I put my mind to it. Here is what I would say—a mixture of advice from students, alumni, faculty, and myself, on how to be a freshman at Wabash College. My verbs are mostly in the imperative mood (“Do” and “Don’t”), for which I ask your kind indulgence. They are merely an interim form of shorthand. My fond hope for the year is more conversations over coffee.
My first bit of advice? Take some time to get to know people of this place. You will inevitably meet people of course (be they students, faculty, or staff) from one day to the next. But also get to know them—and this takes time and imagination. There’s no faster way to get past the deer-in-the-headlights feeling of the first semester (which, by the way, we all have as freshmen). Talk to people. Introduce yourself, not only in your dorm or fraternity, but in class and on the Mall, in the library or in the Bookstore, or at a football game. Enjoy dinner at your freshman-tutorial leader’s house. Go for the weekend to a friend’s house and meet his folks. (I still recall, from my student days, how one of my friends first met my mother, and warmly embraced her as “Mother Blix,” which disconcerted her enormously but which she then came to love.) Tell a funny story. Feel free at first to break the ice with what you did in high school. But don’t overdo it. A little of this goes a long way. Better to find a common area of interest. Above all, listen. Ask questions. Be interested and interesting. Facebook, iPhone, texting, etc. are all excellent (though don’t be Saruman dragged daily and against his will to gaze into the palantir.) Face-to-face is excellent too, if not more so, certainly jokier and more spontaneous, and closer to the hands-on Wabash spirit. Get involved in some campus activities, whether theater, sports, APO, or one of our many clubs. Go to a play, concert, or game. Take part in Chapel Sing, which is surely one of the great events of the year. Fraternities and dorms organize activities, as do the MXI, ISA, and UPS. It’s worth remembering, finally, that some of the people who will be your closest friends by the end of May (if not four years hence) may not actually appear on your radar screen until, say, January.
My second bit of advice follows from the first. Take time to get to know this place. By this I of course mean Wabash College—but also Crawfordsville, Montgomery County, and beyond. Most of you have visited campus before. Still, take some time to explore it. Over the next several months, go into as many buildings as possible. Find the Haenisch Reading Room, or the Goodrich Hall Commons Room (not to be confused with the Goodrich Room), or the lounge in Center Hall (great couch for naps, by the way). What about the nooks in the Lilly Library? Where is Salter Hall or the Eric Dean Gallery or the MXI? Where is Chadwick Court, or Student Health, or the Natatorium? Hither and yon there are computer labs, or IT services, or Student Support Services. Scout them out. Locate the Bachelor office and the WNDY radio station, Kane House and Career Services. Wander through the Arboretum on an autumn day or after a new-fallen snow. And then there are your professors. As you get to know your professors, you’ll also get to know their quirks, and where their offices are and what’s in them, whether Professor Porter’s remarkable toy emporium, or Professor Rosenberg’s video collection, or Professor Leslie Day’s massive archeological tomes. Beyond Wabash, go find the Municipal Golf Course, or St. Bernard’s or St. John’s, or the Patch of Blue Denim, or Turkey Run and Shades. Maybe you’ll even discover the whereabouts of the shadowy region known in these parts as “Balhinch.” Eventually Lafayette will beckon, as will Indianapolis, Bloomington, or Chicago. By all means, go to these cities as time permits (more on that below), and explore the food, entertainments, and social life.
What then? Classes will start soon—and therein lies your main reason for being at this College. The art of being a Wabash man, or at least a large part of it, is learning how to be a Wabash student. As a freshman, you especially learn how to be a beginning student. This can be hard, especially if you were good in high school. But that was then. This is now. Now you start over. If it’s any help, please note that, at its heart, the liberal arts themselves (whether for students or faculty) are always about learning how to be a perpetual beginner—how always to learn new things, how never to lose your sense of adventure, how always, literally, to be a fresh man or woman. So, as a freshman, you actually have a head start.
But how do you do this? Many professors hand out tips or rules for freshmen in the first week, which you’ll want to learn. Here are my seven points, distilled from the wisdom of my students over the years, and my own experience as a teacher.
First, type or write down everything a teacher says. Listen for verbal cues or key words, and flag them. You might be tempted to take notes selectively, thinking you understand a point at the time and will remember it later, or know what’s going to turn out to be important later. Don’t. Write it all down. And please do not ape the student I had several years back who sat through a whole semester’s worth of lectures with his hands literally in his pockets. “Don’t you want to write down what I just said?” I said to him one day, eyebrow raised. “No,” he said.” I’ll get someone else’s notes later.” He yawned. And his subsequent career followed suit, sad to say.
Second, ask questions in or after class. With very few exceptions, most professors welcome all comments and all questions, and are eager to help you out. If you’re in a class with upperclassmen, you might feel self-conscious about asking dumb questions. Again, don’t. Ask away. Freshmen are often the best question-askers in the class, by virtue of their still being fresh men. If you don’t understand a point in a lecture, ask. If you don’t understand an assignment, ask.
Third, study pro-actively and with imagination. Studying is not just re-reading notes passively and by osmosis. Work at it. Mark up the book. Take notes. Doodle. Draw graphs or diagrams. Write out your class notes again. Talk to yourself in the shower (risky but effective). Make flash cards. (I recall a student who once labeled every object in his room in German so he could learn his vocabulary. He nailed it.) Get to know your professors and your advisor. Stop by their offices. If you don’t understand something, or fall behind, talk to them. Don’t hide or run away. We worry more about the student who disappears, not to be seen again until the final, rather than the one who comes to us and honestly asks for help. Above all, learn from your peers. Form study groups. Go to the Writing Center. Go to the Quantitative Skills Centers. If there are student tutors for a class, seek them out. As President White likes to say, your peers will be among your best teachers.
Fourth, review a little bit everyday, in one course or another. You’ll learn better that way. You’ll also be in better shape when you come up for a quiz or exam. Last-minute cramming never works. In the short run, maybe. But not when the end of the semester rolls around, and finals week is upon you.
Fifth, learn to manage your time, or (to use the official moniker), learn time-management. This is not just a matter of battling procrastination. It’s a skill and an art. It’s learning to balance “study time,” “play time,” and “down time.” Study time is time devoted to the foregoing. Play time is time you take with the intention of relaxing body and mind. Music. TV. Movies. Recent iPhone applications. Sports. Leisure reading. Down time (which is different) is fully unintended, non-utilitarian time. No TV. No DVDs. No online entertainments. No scheduled activities. Just hanging out. Conversation. Joking around. Hearing and telling stories. Learning the traditions, tales, and ways of this place. All these times are important. So managing your time means learning how to do each of these well, how much of each of these you personally need, and what times of the day and week are best for each.
Sixth, don’t underestimate how much harder college is than high school, prep school, or home school. Be prepared for a couple of hard knocks at the beginning. A book you don’t understand. An assignment you can’t complete. A couple of bad grades, or grades lower than you’re used to getting. A first paper or lab report slashed to ribbons and bleeding. (Like most incoming freshmen, you probably can’t write—which I mean not as an insult but as a mere statement of fact. Most American high schools teach writing badly.) For most students, there’s probably no way around these knocks. So take them in stride. Learn from them, pick yourself up, and move on. Ernest Hemingway once said the courage is grace under pressure. Be courageous.
Seventh, expect to change. During the course of your freshman year (not to mention your sophomore, junior, and senior years), you’ll meet people who are different from you (different ethnicities or religions or social classes), or ideas that initially strike you as new or strange, or cultures and traditions, or parts of cultures and traditions, that seem alien to you (or “Other,” to use the current academic term). And you will be expected, not only to learn about these, but also to learn from these—which means you will gradually change how you think and feel and act. This is a tall order. You ought not to give up what you currently think or feel or do just because a peer or professor tells you to. But neither should you hang on to it just because it’s comfortable. This is the essence of the liberal-arts experience—not just learning skills, not just acquiring knowledge, but changing your very self. So take some risks. Try what John Stuart Mill once called “different experiments of living.” This is how the “liberal” arts “liberate.”
There you have it, then: my advice for Wabash freshmen at the beginning of the academic year, 2010-11. There is doubtless more that I could say. But you have other things to do, as do I. So let’s leave it at that for now. Welcome to our community. There’s always another cup of coffee later in the year.
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