The longer I’m at Valpo, the more I’ve come to appreciate the rituals that bookend our academic year. (Twenty year-old me would not have predicted this.) I enjoy donning those odd, medieval robes, hood, and tam to line up and process down the magnificently long aisle of the Chapel in August, organ music swelling the usually thick, humid air as we welcome new students and the return of the academic calendar’s cycle. This year the cool weather granted us all a reprieve at Convocation–merciful when you’re attired in a polyester and velvet concoction.
As much as I appreciate the Convocation’s music, addresses, and honors of scholarship and service, though, my favorite part of the ceremony is its closing–when we file out singing to form two multi-colored lines curving out from the Chapel and campanile toward the West Lawn. As Valpo’s new students emerge from the narthex, faculty and staff break into applause, cheering and clapping them through our path and into their shared journeys here. It’s a powerful moment of community and welcome, establishing that we are joined together in our pursuit of knowledge, service, faith, and wisdom.
It’s also joyful.
Indeed, Arts & Sciences Associate Dean Richard Severe and Dean Bagel Johnson offered a boisterous example this year of radical welcome. Dr. Severe exuberantly high-fived every single student passing his way, insisting on celebration and gathering the rest of us in his wake. Dr. Johnson called out (as only he could), “Welcome! You’re all wonderful human beings…but do go to class!” His bellowed, good-natured advice drew grins and nods as students filed past.
After all, rituals–even well-meaning ones–can quickly tip into feeling artificial or, at worse, silly. To participate fully you need to feel something of the meaning and power that fueled the ritual in the first place. This might be especially challenging for students new to Valpo. It probably seems a little awkward to recite an honor code en masse, to witness a procession of strangely robed professors, and to subsequently pass through their ranks–sometimes painfully slowly because the students ahead of you are bottlenecked so you have to pause, self-consciously wondering if you should make small talk with those waiting around you. The only way such a ceremony “works” at all is for those of us not new to its rhythms to whole-heartedly lead the way and, in so doing, to reinforce the communal bonds these rituals perform.
Drs. Johnson and Severe did that for me that late Tuesday afternoon. I know their high-fives and shouts weren’t intended for me, but their ebullience also buoyed my spirits, reminding me of what makes Valpo the remarkable place that it is. It’s the people, the relationships, the community…the way we show up for one another doing a strange, hard, beautiful thing: formative education. Such insistent showing up is a gift in this place we share, even and perhaps especially when it isn’t easy.
A communal mindset is always crucial, but I believe it’s especially so in spaces of education and formation. In these spaces we’re more consciously attuned to how we purposefully engage in a process of becoming. In reality, this happens throughout our entire lives, but it feels more palpable in the transition years and threshold moments of college. Our decisions can loom critically, implying the false logic of an “either/or” and paralyzing us with uncertainty. That, at least, was how it felt to me two decades ago as an undergraduate and how I sometimes hear this period described by current students. I remember thinking that my college self needed to determine everything right in that moment, because this was my chance to jump-start the rest of my life. (No pressure, right?) And even if I knew, intellectually, that this wasn’t wholly true, it certainly felt true at the time.
With all this in mind, how do we ground ourselves in the larger arc of our still-evolving stories? How do we engage deeply in the education and discernment that might very well help guide our decisions, while not rushing and assuming that every choice must fix us on some path?
I would suggest that we need reminders to slow down and take our time, to savor the relationships of our community and the ways these bonds form and strengthen us. I observed an unwitting reminder of this while walking campus a few weeks ago with my colleague and friend Kat Peters. On the north side of campus, tucked behind Alumni Hall and the adjacent parking ramp, I noticed one of the new “Grounded” branding flags. “Grounded in Calling,” it proclaimed, scrolled out just above a 20 mile-per-hour speed limit sign. I began to chuckle to myself, but then it dawned on me that this was actually a fairly apt juxtaposition. 
Discerning our purpose–discerning to what we are called in life–cannot be pursued at breakneck speed or even a hurried rush. Rather, it requires our deliberate slowing down, pacing ourselves to pay attention to our experiences, our contexts, and the rich community around us. That community can reflect truth back to us, helping to guide us on our way and perhaps offering a jolt of good humor to spur us onward.
As we begin a new academic year, I am grateful for the many people who shape and re-form our community anew at Valpo–those who have been here many years as well as those who’ve just joined us. In the coming weeks, the Division of Calling & Spiritual Life wants to begin recognizing and lifting up people who distinctly promote belonging and community on our campus. Be on the lookout for more information, and thank you for your contributions to shared journeys and collective goods.
–Dr. Anna Stewart, Director of the Institute for Leadership and Service (ILAS)