Movin' on

All the immature people, where do they all come from?

Many aspects of dorm and college life will not be missed following my graduation next week. Getting fleeced at every opportunity by a university already bilking me (mostly my parents) out of 40 grand a year. Living in a miserably decrepit building that university has no interest in renovating or upgrading. Spending more than $11 to eat recycled, canned, unrecognizable slop while the "Dining Capital of the North Shore" beckons just a block away.

But I think what I'll miss least is the people.

That's not to say I won't miss anyone. Certainly I'll miss the charming and lovely Colleen, who sadly is two grades behind me despite only being 10 months my junior. And, there are lots of other friends and friendly faces I'll be leaving behind. A ragtag group of friends (who should know who they are). Annette, who greets me with a smile every day as she cleans my dorm. Ross, ever-relaxing on the job and a PARC institution. The cashiers and cooks at Norris. My mailroom crew in the library. Ben, the hard-working, always-gregarious library janitor who never fails to talk my ear off about the Cubs and how they' ll be out of first place in a day or two. These people I'll remember warmly, with a certain amount of longing. They're the people who made Northwestern seem inviting, feel like home ... or at least like Cheers.

But there's a whole other crowd of folks I'll reflect upon only with contemptuous pity. All the people who didn't exactly make college an entirely welcoming experience, or who at least shook my faith in my own generation. What's really sad, is that they're my peers. Or, rather, at least they're about the same age, in roughly the same grade as me. They're the people who drive me up a wall because of their immaturity.

This is not to say that I'm not the pot, calling the kettle black. I have my share of immaturity. I still like to act somewhere less than my age at times (though I wonder, really, whether it's truly such immature behavior for a guy in college), and certainly I used to be incredibly immature, like way back when I started university. But, the one thing I know I've got going for me, that I can't say about many of my peers (or at least it's not manifest in them), is that I've grown up, matured, become wiser. It wasn't an easy process, and I've certain been through my own personal purgatory to get this far, but can say with complete confidence that I'm a better person for it.

Perhaps this is because I don't dwell on the past quite the same way other people do. I think about the past a lot, especially as a historian, but I think my training as a historian -- and, I must say through gnashed teeth, all those years of studying literature in high school -- have equipped me well to observe my own life.

(Remarkable how the greatest teachers, the professors I admire most and will always think of fondly, are the scant few who taught me how to think, not what to think. Such a valuable tool for life, not to mention for my future career as an academic, yet one that I feel so many people never develop.)

I think most people believe empathy is a gift, that people who are able to understand where others are coming from and to not make value-laden judgments were simply born with a predisposition for that. Probably I used to feel that way myself. But what I've really learned in college, and what's become most dramatically evident this last year, is that empathy is a cultivated attribute, not a natural aptitude.

I recall exactly the moment where this began to become crystal clear for me. Back in February, as I was outlining my thesis, I was struggling to come up with a core argument, with the thesis of my thesis. Constantly tempted to simply say one side or the other was right, I sought out the professional advice of the sage Guy Ortolano, PARC's assistant master, a fifth-year graduate student in history and the best adviser I've ever known. His advice, short and sweet, was not to judge, to simply explain why each side came to feel the way they did and base my argument on that. Such a seemingly simple notion, but one so valuable. My thesis benefitted immeasurably from this advice, and in turn, I gained a lot personally from it.

So, maybe I simply have the advantage of experience (and perhaps age) in reaching some level of emotional maturity. I just wish more people developed this skill. Frankly, it'd go a long way toward solving many of the world's ills. If nothing else, it might at least keep people from acting so pissy at each other all the time.