Reflections on Graduating from College
Ted L. Estess
© 2008
Autographed: 2008 April 28th
Read: 2008 June 23rd and days following, episodically, some at the dinner table.
Reviewed: 2008 December 4th
Each year Ted Estess, dean of the Honors College at University of Houston (Chair of the Honors Department when I was there) speaks at an Honors gathering during graduation season. I attended at least one of these talks myself, it would have been in 1985 when I graduated, and so I was aware of Dr. EstessÕs wit and poise at the podium. At some point thereafter, someone suggested to him that he should publish his speeches, inasmuch as he had written them down and delivered from written text anyway. This book is the result.
Last December, in fact, fifty-two weeks ago tomorrow, Dr. Estess was in town on what turned out to be kind of a farewell tour pending his imminent retirement coinciding with a change of administration at the university. UH Honors students who had ended up in the Los Angeles area were invited to meet him at a restaurant in Westwood, (and he picked up the tab!). Sometime after I made a donation in support of some HonorÕs event that I could, of course, not attend, and I think this book was a premium for that donation, and an excellent premium at that.
The essays are not dated or connected with any particular year, except by the context of events which some might know. Each does have a title. I read through wondering if the speech I had heard in 1985 and had a vague remembrance of would be one of the entries. It was not. This collection starts after I was done and gone.
These essays all show a high degree of education. Dr. Estess relates much from his past, from his current personal life and those of others, and from his knowledge of literature. Some are quite somber. At least three of them had me in tears. As I was reading this during JohnÕs last summer before going to college himself; we read several of them at the dinner table as a bridge for him from high school to college.
For instance, ÒYou Are AcceptedÓ is the story of a student, presumably from the addressed class, who was accepted into the Honors College by mistake. His letter, intended for the rejected pile, ended up in the accepted pile. In EstessÕs imagination, the student, and his parents, are quite surprised by this eventuality, but the student decides to seize the opportunity and make the best he can possibly make of it. And now, here they are at graduation, all of them have made it, one of them selected by mistake, and no one will ever know which one.
ItÕs probably an Estess-generated fable, come to think of it, but it gives the flavor of, Òyou never know what opportunity youÕve had by luck or accident and you have to make the most of whatever happens, good or bad.Ó
In another, an honorÕs student has died from cystic fibrosis. He might have lived into his 30s and had dreamed of using his training and intelligence to fight his own condition through research, but he didnÕt make it. The story goes through the grueling detail of the studentÕs daily life in spite of which he succeeded, as long as he lived.
Indeed, it wasnÕt one student but two who had died that year. Another, who would have been a sophomore, took a medical leave hoping for a lung transplant but unfortunately did not return.
And who, really, has a different story. We all die before we are finished at some age. We all live to struggle another day only by the grace and mercy of God.
Often Estess talks to the parents, with whom he identifies firsthand, being a parent himself, and having had parents, as have we all. The parents of college students are in a special travail. Their children, not ready by their standards, have left home to make it on their own. They go off and struggle, outside of the parentÕs protection and influence, and succeed in the end, much to everyoneÕs delight and some surprise. Estess has a visceral feel for just how short a mere four years is and he clearly misses each student as they move on into their next worlds, whether thatÕs graduate or professional school, work, interim adventure (on the east coast of Africa for example) or whatever. This comes through in his autograph:
To Courtney Duncan.
I am grateful that you and I share in the tradition of the Honors College together. IÕm proud to count you as a product – Be Well, Ted Estess 4.28.08.
As is true through much of the work done in the HonorÕs College, some of the quotations are gems, as is this citation from ÒThe Soul of Wit,Ó a poem of Wislawa Szymborska. This summarizes in a few words the essential difficulty of life itself.
Nothing Twice
Nothing can ever happen twice.
In consequence, the sorry fact is
that we arrive here improvised
and we leave without the chance to practice.
Even if there is no one dumber,
[even] if you are the planetÕs biggest dunce,
you canÕt repeat the class in summer:
this course is only offered once.
The final speech is not from a graduation but a eulogy for Dr. Ross Lence, an HonorÕs professor who died early. Dr. Lence was not yet in the program when I was there and I did not know him but he reminded me of professors that I had. For example, ÒA[n] Honors student received her first paper back only to read, ÔYoung Lady, you obviously can write. Now you need something to say.ÕÓ
Indeed, we all need something to say and, in this small collection of only a hundred pages, fifteen pieces (including the introductory tribute to Dr. Monroe who encouraged Estess to publish) Dr. Estess shows that he not only knows how to write and how to speak but that he both has much to say and knows how to say it. Referring to the core material in the Honors curriculum, Dr. Estess dedicates:
To Honors College graduates:
They enliven the world,
bestow laughter,
give reason to hope,
and deepen our grasp of the human situation.
Ah yes, the Human SituationÉ.