Staying
Do you have a default song? When there’s no song stuck in my head from the music I’ve been listening to lately, there’s one which usually comes up which I haven’t heard aloud for years. It’s a song one of my brothers’ college band played in 2002 or so. The chorus is:
Would you relive your life
the same way? Would you make sure
you haven’t missed a thing?
Because there’s nothing worse
than being ashamed of all the things
you’ve done today, and I want to make sure
I don’t end that way.
This is a time of year when graduates get so much advice on “the next step” and the “real world” and “life beyond the pinecone curtain.” Then there are those of us still working on this step, in the pre-world, still arranging our furniture to match the curtains. We are temporally floating between the inspirational spur of freshman seminar and the barrage of post-grad advice and self-searching which we’ll get next year or the next or next.
I guess I just want to say, to you and me who’ve still got time to serve, that we can start living now a way we’d want to relive. I guess I’m just saying, make sure you haven’t missed a thing.
A Beginner’s Guide to Whitworth
I figured that some future Pirates might peruse the forum before matriculating here in the fall (who am I kidding, current pirates don’t read this, I just don’t feel like studying for my Spanish final), so I am going to dole out some advice for all those youngins.
This one’s for the fellas. If you came here to knock down random drunk college slutties like you see on MTV’s spring break, you came to the wrong place. Don’t worry, it’s not too late to get into WSU, they will take just about anyone at anytime, like a WSU sorority girl. HI-YO! But what Whitworth girls lack in drunken sluttiness they more than make up for in some things that seem much less important when you are two Old English 40’s deep, substance and class.
Some people prefer eating alone to eating with strangers. For the first two weeks it is acceptable to sit next to people you don’t know and introduce yourself. Everyone is trying to meet new people and expand their horizons. But after that grace period, if you see someone eating alone, don’t think you need to rescue them from their loneliness. Some, like me, would rather forgo the meaningless pleasantries (“What’s your major?”) and just eat. I met so many biology and business majors in Saga the first week that I never spoke to again. All that time talking could have been better spent eating.
During finals week, late night meals are free. I did not learn this until my third semester at Whitworth. Since this discovery, I have been utilizing, nay, abusing this amazing offer. You should too.
Core 250 is not that hard. I have yet to take 350, and I am not required to take 150, but 250 is not that difficult. Show up for lectures, take notes, and you will do fine.
Don’t drive from class to class. My roommate sophomore year drove his car from parking lot to parking lot between classes. This campus is small, that is completely unnecessary, don’t be a douche.
The days of the bicycle free trade agreement are gone. There was a time when you could leave your bike unlocked, and someone might borrow it and bring it back. You could just hop on any unlocked bike and take it to the HUB as long as you brought it back. The rash of bike thefts in the fall put an end to that. Lock up your bike.
There are two parties every weekend. I like to refer to them as the “business major” party, and the “peace studies major” party. Not everyone at the former is a business major and likewise for the latter, those are just names I gave them based on stereotypes. The BM parties are populated with athletes and beer pong and Top 40 music. PSM parties are populated by hippies, indie kids, dancing, and the same three USE and Peter Bjorn and John songs ad nauseum. Both are fun, choose wisely.
Printing in the library is free, but don’t abuse it. Don’t print out three copies of your 16 slide PowerPoint on one side. That is ridiculous. I have seen it happen.
Whitworth professors are very friendly, if you need help, just ask.
If you are not Christian, you can still go to Whitworth. There are plenty of us heathens running around.
Don’t drink in the dorms. I say this not because I have a moral objection to it, but because it’s just not fun. If you go to UW or WSU, everyone else in the dorms is drinking too, it’s fun. If you are drinking in your dorm at Whitworth, chances are it is just you and your roommate, not so fun.
Master the faux swipe. Yes I am condoning sneaking into Saga. If you don’t have an unlimited meal plan, and there is no one standing at the till, just wave your wallet over the sensor. Booya, free lunch.
Spokane water tastes like doodoo. Bring your nalgene to saga and fill up at the drink station, or buy a Britta filter. Unless you like the taste of lead. It didn’t bother Nero.
Don’t skip night class. That is like skipping a whole week of class. I skipped one night class this semester and my grade took a hit it never really recovered from. 140 point quiz, ouch. Day classes, go nuts, you are paying to go here, if you feel like skipping, skip. You only need to maintain a 2.0 to keep your scholarship.
If you are living in a dorm, you already know that you won’t have cable. If you are a sports fan, invest in a Slingbox. Its 100-200 dollars, you hook it up to your cable and internet at home, and you can watch your home cable on your computer. It is great. I would not have made it through baseball season without it last year.
Participate in traditiation. Tear up your “cool card.” It is the best way to make friends fast and if you let yourself be a goober and have fun, you will remember traditiation for the rest of your life. You don’t want to miss out on Mock Rock.
I hope this helps. You have made a great decision in coming to Whitworth, and remember, Gonzaga is your mortal enemy.
The Half-Hearted Dénouement
Hold tight. This post is going to get a bit LiveJournaly. It’ll be a bit frantic and disorganized — free-association combined with hackneyed philosophy observations, like a mix of James Joyce and freshman poetry.
That’s okay, I feel I’ve earned it. Everyone gets one rambling regurgitation-of-angst post. This is mine.
As my e-mail Inbox cheerfully informs me every morning, the sand in the college hourglass is rapidly draining. The bony finger of Real Life silently beckons, and then points at a crumbling gravestone: Here lies the college experience of Daniel Walters.
It’s like being the captain perched on the prow as the Dawn Treader slowly tips over the edge of the world. You helplessly grip the wheel with white knuckles, and meet the approaching blackness with a set jaw.
This is the end, my friend. Such a dire — or at least dramatic — situation is bound to produce a certain pathological emotional state.
Generally, my official position on emotions is that they are pesky constantly buzzing gnats — biting, draining parasites — that distract from the important stuff, the work of logic and steel! Emotions are things to be sequestered away, hidden in the cupboard under the stairs when company’s over.
For this post, however, I’ve decided to highlight my irrationality instead of hiding it. For posterity. So some Whitworth Grad twenty years from now will do a Google search on “Graduation Anxiety” and come to this page and be able to say, “I’m going through almost exactly what that guy is. Except I’m not nearly as whiny.”
This is a blurred snapshot of the mental muddle of a graduating Senior — neurotic, sardonic and slightly psychotic.
At its most simple my senior angst goes by the name ennui – a French word created to describe the Eeyore-like resigned apathy, a mixture of boredom and annoyance that arises during the last gasps of the Senior year. Others refer to it by its more colloquial name: “Senioritis” (literally “infection of the Senior). After The Whitworthian printed its last issue it began to take a titanic act of raw willpower to rip myself out of bed every morning.
But it’s more complicated than that.
It’s a paradox of complete listless apathy and pure wide-eyed panic.
It’s the experience of every emotion, but, yet — somehow — none of them.
The landscape of my mind is a free-for-all battleground of hundreds of different fears and feelings clanging and clashing against dozens of epiphanies, hopes, hang-ups, and neuroses. One moment Swaggering Confidence seems to have the upperhand, but then it’s swiftly flanked on two fronts by Insecurity and Uncertainty. And there’s an airstrike of Nostalgia from the south, followed by the boom-bam of the Student Loan Stress Artillery firing mortars from the east.
Oh, and there’s Finals. Remember those?
Blogger-Professors. Blofessors? Proggers?
Update: Fixed some links.
Update: Note – jmcpherson.blogspot.com is, apparently, not the blog you’re looking for.
In a previous post, I mentioned I’d like to see a Whitworth Forum-type blog for professors.
While something as coordinated as the Forum hasn’t yet happened, there are at least a few professors who’ve begun to join the blogwagon. Perhaps the most promising is professor of journalism Jim Mcpherson’s media and politics blog, called, creatively, “James McPherson’s Media and Politics Blog.” The blog’s just starting out, so there’s no telling how it will evolve or whether McPherson will be able to maintain his rate of posting. But for now, there’s an impressive amount of depth and analysis to comb over.
Blogging professors aren’t new. Some of the most popular blogs on the Internet, including Instapundit and the Volokh Conspiracy come from law profs. McPherson’s blog, in particular, deals with religion, media, and politics, three of the most popular topics on the Web. Depending on how lucky he gets with links, and how willing he is to “pimp” pivotal posts on other blogs, it just may become a Web site of moderate popularity.
Blogging professors don’t only help the institution gain prestige — and the respect of other institutions — it allows conversation with students on academic matters to continue outside the four walls of the classroom. A good blog stirs conversation, incites debate, and informs an audience.
Much the same way college should.
Classes I learned something from.
It’s easy to slip by in many Whitworth classes without learning a bit of information. By the time we reach college, we’ve perfected the art of slacking, getting by with a hodgepodge of Cliff Notes, test-taking skills and bribing the teacher. But some in some classes, despite our best efforts, we actually end up learning something. Here’s some classes where I came away with more than just a title on my transcript:
Marxism: Marxism is the academic equivalent of the team in the sports movie that gets absolutely crushed, until the end of the movie where it finds the strength it never knew it had and rises up to defeat Team Evil and win the pennant. For most of the class, I learned minimal information. But then came studying for the final test, where we had to speak eloquently on a Marxist thinker for two minutes. Here was the catch, we wouldn’t know *which* Marxist thinker it was before the test. We had to be able to wax poetical on all twenty thinkers. With that roaring fire lit under my belly, I dove so deep into Marxist thought that for a few days, I was Marxism.
Looking back, it seems the test was just a devious scheme of Yoder’s to trick us into learning the material. Sneaky, that guy.
I also learned that many things I’d “learned” in other classes was wrong. For example, everyone believes that Hegel’s dialectic can be reduced to “thesis” “antithesis” and “synthesis” except, well, Hegel.
Medieval Russia: History classes that deal with a large amount of time usually try to teach so much material that I learn none of it. The advantage with early Russia? Information is so comparatively scarce that there’s not much to teach. We spend a lot of time mucking about in primary sources, which in the end is the best way to learn history. Corliss Slack’s classes usually don’t specialize in the recitation of chronologies, but they do help communicate the *flavor* of historiography. In Medieval Russia, however, there’s plenty of both. True, I can’t list off the Seven Changes Vladimir I enacted in Russia, but I can tell you the general ebb and flow of the Russian state — and the controversy in the historical community over exactly what that entails.
Theories of Human Communication: Thi-Comm for short, I learned far more in Theories of Human Communication than in Interpersonal communication. First, the textbook, Communication Communication Communication rocked. Rather than simply saying “This is how it communication works”, Communication Communication Communication says “here’s a theory on how communication works” and even more importantly “here’s why people disagree with that theory.” The notion that experts disagree on sociological and psychological concepts is downright revolutionary for Whitworth’s typical pedagogical methods.
Of course, it helps that the class is taught by Ron Pyle. Pyle isn’t the smartest prof, or the funniest, or most charismatic. But he just may be the best teacher at, well, teaching. He threads in analogies and examples into his explanations artfully enough for even college students can understand. The fact that “Coordinated Management of Meaning” is useful in the everyday (even if only students like Michael Vander Giessen references it in everyday conversation, and I do mean *everyday*) makes it worth learning. Not to mention realizing that “let’s make meaning together” is a great pickup line.
Core 250: Some students like to complain that the course called “Western Civilization” doesn’t talk much about, say, “Eastern Civilization.” But what Core 250 does is hand students a basic intellectual arsenal to work with. These are the thinkers regularly referenced by philosophical and psychological thinkers. Core 250 teaches you almost all the language of higher ed, the jargon and buzzwords of theology, philosophy, psychology, and epist0-freakin’-mology . All in a single class. And somehow, whether because of the infamous tests or simply Forrest Baird’s lecture style, I remember almost everything today. Except for Saarte and Kierkegaard. Whoever they are.
(On an unrelated note, the Forum just reached 1000 comments. Congratulations, commenteers)
Dorm Rankings
In case your curious, here’s the best dorms on campus, ranked in descending order. So you know, the three dorms I’ve lived in are Warren, Duvall, and Arend.
1. Warren Hall. Perfect sized halls for strong unity. Large enough that almost everyone can find a niche. Best designed dorm lounges on campus, make for ideal, relaxing prime times. Warren Guys win Mock Rock almost every year. Up to three ASWU events in the top 5 (Warren Peace, Bachelor Auction, sometimes Assassin Nation.) And two words: Third West.
2. Baldwin “BJ” Jenkins: This is the iconic Freshmen dorm. Friendships forged in the BJ kiln last a long time. And archetypally, the residents are crazy, creative, and, occasionally, catastrophic. They are “carpe diem” in residence hall form. They are a booming, rumbling, occasionally aggravating presence at Mock Rock. BJ isn’t just a dorm. It’s a lifestyle.
Until this year, I may have put it at number one, but this years BJ crop — prankless, quiet and in bed by 11:00 — was a major disappointment.
3. Arend Hall: There’s a reason I decided to live in Arend my final year. It’s as close to the HUB as you can get, it’s a near perfect size, and goes off the ideal “hall” structure instead of an icky “pod” or “suite” style. The fact that the men of Carlson hall are willing to publish near-naked pictures of themselves shows just how much … uh… community they have. So why didn’t this dorm win? The little things. Obnoxious fire alarms. A high table that makes lounging at Prime time difficult. Wildly Fluxuating temperatures. And having “Green with Envy” as their ASWU event. Lame.
4. McMillan “Mac the Knife” Hall: This dorm is an populated by a mix of guys, men, and dudes. That’s both the largest negative and leads to the strongest positive aspects of the dorm. Mac is only matched by BJ in the dorm spirit department, and they had the only symbol that actually carried over: The ubiquitous smiley face. Their ASWU event, the Haunted House, is one of the best on campus. While both sides of the Mac-BJ rivalry brought passion to the front lines, Mac always had the more creative pranks. And while many dorms have an awesome secret mechanical room, Mac has a whole series of Labyrinthian tunnels. Mac is the one dorm with memorable, classic architecture.
Lastly, from what I’ve hear, 2nd Mac is one of the few halls comparable to Warren Third West in the category of awesomeness.
5. Stewart. I subscribe to the contention that the crappier the physical details of the dorm, the better the actual dorm unity. Stewart may be the crappiest looking dorm on campus — it’s interior decoration is part prison, part locker room, and every once in a while the very sewage system itself comes bubbling up out of the ground itself to protest it. But all this sub-par physicality means residents find their satisfaction in eachother, rather than isolating themselves in their rooms. Stewart is the one “suite” style dorm that actually has unity. That’s impressive.
6. The Village. If it wasn’t for Scott Donnell this dorm — or collection of dorms — may be much further down the list. During my freshmen year, the Village was literally a punchline. It was synonymous with “lousy community-less dorm.” But in what I feel was Donnell’s greatest moment in his four year term at Whitworth, he came into Village tradition with a barrage of Rhetoric about how The Village was the best, it had always been the best, and would always continue to be the best. It was a lie of course, but The Village believing the myth somehow made it true. For one perfect year, the Village was united. They rocked Traditiation, waving a giant flag, singing Newsies, and coming together — Power Rangers style — as one powerful SuperDorm. It was tragic, then, that the construction of Duvall destroyed two Village dorms, and split up the other Village dorms during Traditiation like a Solomon’s Maternity Test. If we were judging the Village in 2005-2006 it may have made the Top 4. But even now, vestiges of that perfect year remain. There’s power still left in the paint-peeling walls of The Village. For a few years more.
7. Ballard. Ballard is, uh, nice dorm? It’s an inverse of McMillan in almost every way. Where McMillan is a dorm that defines Whitworth, Ballard slips through the cracks, and swirls down the memory hole. It’s pretty unremarkable. While Ballard doesn’t seem necessarily aggressively lousy, but it rarely makes itself known. Even the “Nunnery” nickname has been slowly ebbing away in favor of a simply generic all-female dorm. Blah.
To be fair, I’ve never lived in Ballard.
8. Duvall. See “Towel racks, inability to stick to wall.” See “Showers, cold.” See, “Bathrooms, lack of janitorial assistance.”
Boppell. Duvall. One more lousy dorm and Whitworth will have struck out. Consider Duvall a Noble — if failed — Experiment. Yet, when you actually look at the structure and design of the dorm, it’s as if everything was customized to harm unity. If you have a Pod full of fun people, you’ll sequester you’ll self away with those people and have a passable time. If, however, you don’t have a certain chemistry with the other few rooms in your pod, you’re pretty much sunk.
Worse, the lounges are sprawling and there’s like, seventeen of them. Instead of guiding the residents of a dorm to one central lounge like Arend or Warren, Duvall spreads them out in dozens of little clusters. Duvall hall is one of the few dorms that always seems empty, that always seems dead.
Duvall has its apologists, but their defensives are quickly dismissed by detractors.
9. Schumacher. I’m convinced this dorm phases in and out of existence. For most of my time at Whitworth, I don’t remember that there is, in fact, a dorm called Schumacher. It’s residents seem to like it. But they like it in relative secrecy.
10. Boppell. Has all the charm and unique character of a Best Western, but without the continental breakfast. Dorm unity is non-existent. If somebody actually comes out of their room it’s an odd occurrence, like the Hayley-Bopp Comet. And the final nail in the dismal coffin? You have to clean your own bathrooms.
B-Rob’s last gleaming
Bill Robinson’s contract expires next year. Does this mean “B-rob” as everyone — including pre-frosh and probably Pope — seems to call him, is at the precipice of retirement?
Not necessarily.
From how I read it, Bill Robinson’s popular enough that if he decides he wants another couple years at the wheel of the good ship Whitworth he an have it.
The bigger question is if Bill Robinson is the best match for Whitworth for the next couple of years — or rather, whether Whitworth in the next couple of years would be the best match for Bill Robinson.
First let’s get out of the way some of the requisite accolades for Robinson’s tenure. His bent for personal interaction, his infamous charisma, and his near-photographic memory mean Robinson will join Warren and Lindaman in the pantheon of Great Whitworth Presidents.
But as Whitworth grows in both size and debt, so does a looming question: Will Bill Robinson’s skills be as useful in the Whitworth of Tomorrow?
As the campus grows so does the long list of names Robinson tries to memorize. One of Robinson’s oft-discussed advantages is his ability to walk up to a freshman, flash his perfect smile and say, “Hey, Robbie. How’s your business major and theology minor going? Heard you had a bit of trouble with your Core 150 test. If you want to stop by my office we could study.”
He’s like an Alan Jacob omniscent e-mail that cares. But pretty soon –arguably even now –he’s not going to be able to do that. They’ll just be too many names.
An even bigger difference in the presidents role comes in an E-mail from Robinson discussing his role:
In some respects, I think Whitworth has entered an era in which it would benefit from a presidency that is even more involved in resource development than I have been. I will definitely tilt more in that direction if I continue in this work.
I may be oversimplifying, but to me “resource development” sounds like fancy-talk for “fundraising.” “Tilt more in that direction” sounds like like fancy-talk for “Bill Robinson will be spending even more time traveling cross-country to attempt to woo prospective donors.”
Bummer.
Part of me almost thinks it would be best for Bill to take the Bill Watterson/UK Office route and retire early, at the top of his game.
While Robinson might be great at selling the greatness of Whitworth University — he’s certainly polished and slick — that’s not his specialty. Robinson’s forte is the way he can slip, comfortably and chameleon-like, into the parlance of any social situation. He’s casual with students. He’s formal and professional with trustees. He’s friendly in one-on-one situations, and firm and confidant when speaking in front of an audience. He can help calm controversies and lead rabidly-oppositional groups into a kind of tenuous ceasefire.
But he can’t really do any of that while fundraising.
Yes, we need fundraising badly. But Bill Robinson seems wasted in that role. If we need a president to fundraise, it seems better to find the best darn fundraiser in the land and higher him.
Maybe Bill Robinson is still the best possible president we could have. But Whitworth has changed enough that I don’t think Bill Robinson’s strengths are as useful as they once were.
What do you think? Should Bill Robinson pull an FDR and continue in a fourth term of his presidency, even as Whitworth changes radically in the next few years? Or should he step down at what may be the near-height of his reign?
Major Pluses and Minuses
Okay, writing a little about the Westminster lounge and faculty in response to Corey’s list has encouraged me to post a little list of my own: a list of my favorite things about my majors. I’m hoping you’ll also share what you like about your major(s), and then we can all bask in how much we love Whitworth. (Seriously, there’s a lot of negativity in talk about Whitworth, which is sometimes necessary, but there’s also a lot to appreciate.)
These are numbered not out of preference or priority, but for convenience.
Major: English
The good:
1. Faculty. Not only is this department peopled by legends, but the internal relations among professors are amazing. In the [70’s?] when, for financial reasons, Whitworth had to cut one faculty position from each of several departments, the English professors got creative. Knowing that the position would be restored once finances were better, the English professors chose to take turns in taking a one-year leave. I think Vic Bobb even took more than his share of the blow, because he could make enough money freelancing, and other professors had bigger families, etc., to worry about.
2.Westminster. Sure, the desks in 206 can’t fit an 8½x11 sheet of paper. Sure, the upstairs women’s restroom is about 4’x4’, and the downstairs one is creepy to the max. But the building has character. And more importantly: couches. And computers, and a printer, and English majors, and the Fortunado closet. What more could you want? Read more
Top Ten List Commemoration #10b
You only thought I was done.
A few days ago I said it was time for us seniors to be prepared to enter the world, but not to leave Whitworth behind. Though this school has been great to all of us, everything could use a bit of improvement every year. Sure, some of you want to point out the discrimination policies and the lack of environmental awareness and such. But really, we’ve covered those. What about the little problems? What about the smaller, feel-good upgrades? Who’s going to step out and advocate for those? I am, darn it. And I’m starting here. My final list in my semester long series is the Top Ten Future Improvements for Whitworth. And I swear to you, I am totally serious.
Whitworth Forum: The next generation.
*cough* Come here, son. I have something to tell you.
Yes? Yes, father? Tell me!
I’m… graduating. *cough, cough*
No! Don’t say that! You still have a chance, the doctor says that if you manage to somehow pull through and fail Comm Ethics, you’ll be able to live another year at Whitworth.
No. *hack* It’s… too late for me. Everyone must eventually… graduate. It’s the human way. It’s just… my time now.
Just get a Big Three, Father! That’ll save you for sure!
No! *round of coughing and hacking* I must graduate. I’m sorry. But… I have something… to give you.
Your extra rounds of blue tape?
Hah! No, I will take my Blue tape to my grave. I want to give you the… Whitworth Forum?
The what?
—-
As most of you know, I, like the ill-fated characters in Saved By The Bell, am graduating.
Since I don’t want this Web site to turn into Whitworth Forum: The Real Life years, I’m planning on not writing after graduation. Oh, occasionally I may write a post or throw in a nonsensical here and there. But I definately won’t be an Administrator. Such is the reality of the college experience. You’ve basically got a four year limit; once that’s done, you’ve moved onto bigger and less expensive things.
More than half of our writers (and all three of our main administrators, myself, Kyle Pflug, and Nathan Harrison) are graduating.
But I don’t want the Forum to go perish with us. I truly believe that the Forum has been a good thing for the campus. We’ve discussed issues that wouldn’t have been discussed elsewhere. We’ve come to mutual understandings. We’ve complained about Core 350.
Yet, the Forum has also been but a fraction of what it could be. I envision dozens and dozens of regular writers. I envision in-depth stories and personal accounts of events on campus. I envision the forum becoming a source for breaking news and surprising revelations.
Eventually, I want the Forum to become, not necessarily a competitor, but a counterpart to The Whitworthian. It’s not good for a community to have only one news source. The Whitworthian misses things. The Forum should help fill those holes.
So here’s the deal. The forum needs a Next Generation. We need a three or four Forum administrators willing to write semi-regularly and, even more importantly, advertise the forum for future readers and writers.