(dave e)

station wagon day

another semester starts for me tomorrow morning. i haven't got much to add to the other things herders and the like have observed about teaching that first day of class. george and elouise, among others, have had some nice things to say about the mindset of those facing that moment. (sorry no direct trackbacks, but the issue appears more than once).

i visited campus late last week to copy course policies and syllabi, to find the new classrooms and determine the velocity needed to get from one to another in eight minutes. again, among the ford explorers, the sidewalk clutter, the overflowing plastic bookstore bags, and the visible signs of another summer's demise, i was one of the many who think of move-in time in terms of this:

The station wagons arrived at noon, a long shining line that coursed through the west campus. In single file they eased around the orange I-beam sculpture and moved toward the dormitories. The roofs of the station wagons were loaded down with carefully secured suitcases full of light and heavy clothing; with boxes of blankets, boots and shoes, stationery and books, sheets, pillows, quilts; with rolled-up rugs and sleeping bags; with bicycles, skis, rucksacks, English and Western saddles, inflated rafts. As cars slowed to a crawl and stopped, students sprang our and raced to the rear doors to begin removing the objects inside; the stereo sets, radios, personal computers; small refigerators and table ranges; the cartons of phonograph records and cassettes; the hairdryers and styling irons; the tennis rackets, soccer balls, hockey and lacrosse sticks, bows and arrows; the controlled substances, the birth control pills and devices; the junk food still in shopping bags--onion and garlic chips, nacho thins, peanut creme patties, Waffelos and Kabooms, fruit chews and toffee popcorn; the Dum-Dum pops, the Mystic mints.

I've witnessed this spectacle every September for twenty-one years. It is a brilliant event, invariably. The students greet each other with comic cries and gestures of sodden collapse. Their summer has been bloated with criminal pleasures, as always. The parents stand sun-dazed near their automobiles, seeing images of themselves in every direction. The conscientious suntans. The well-made faces and wry looks. They feel a sense of renewal, of communal recognition. The women crisp and alert, in diet trim, knowing people's names. Their husbands content to measure out the time, distant but ungrudging, accomplished in parenthood, something about them suggesting massive insurance coverage. This assembly of station wagons, as much as anything they might do in the course of the year, more than formal liturgies or laws, tells the parents they are a collection of the like-minded and the spiritually akin, a people, a nation.

jack gladney, professor of hitler studies at the college on the hill, said all that, of course, in don delillo's white noise. i think he's a little rough on the parents. the umd moms and dads hardly seem so easily readable. and now, of course, station wagons are bigger and look like trucks. but that's a passage stuck in my early-september head.

last night's comment on my syllabus entry probably wasn't the cheerful confidence booster i need immediately before the semester, but things are otherwise all systems go.

{unecessarily magisterial tone} and so, in the morning, this and this commence. {/unecessarily magisterial tone}

one more thing: umd students in my classes have demonstrated greater intellectual prowess every semester i've taught. i'm looking forward to the very hard work they'll make me do this time around. also a bit frightened. that's a good thing.

Posted by dave at September 2, 2003 2:08 PM | TrackBack