A Portrait Soon to Come to Life
by David Hoffman
This is a story of a distant place, and memory, and time.
25 years ago tonight, I stood in a hall full of photographs come to life. I was a senior in college, serving as Student Body President of UCLA, and the people around me were the others who had held the same office through the long decades. Their portraits lined the walls of the President's office. Each stood for a year, of work and friendships, of meetings and conversations and arguments into the night. Their presence at that gathering, a once-in-a-very-long-while chance to share stories, made visible something I had only sensed: that here was something enduring, a living story to which I had linked my own. Forever.
Very shortly I will travel to UCLA for another nighttime gathering of the Student Body Presidents, and I'm going to have the special privilege of spending the morning and afternoon speaking with members of the current student government. I've been thinking a lot about what I have to share with them. In one sense I'm a visitor from the past, bearing living memories of ancient history. In another sense I'm an ambassador from the distant future, who has lived years beyond graduation that the students can now only imagine. But I'm also a stranger, a portrait on the wall, totally disconnected from their everyday reality. The deeper thoughts I have to share, these vast quarter-century musings, seem too weighty for a mere conversation.
But if I can find a way, there are some things I'd like to communicate ...
Co-Create UMBC is a blog for and about UMBC, written by David Hoffman and Craig Berger from the Office of Student Life. Join the Co-Create UMBC group on MyUMBC. Like Co-Create UMBC on Facebook. And follow David and Craig on Twitter.
This is a story of a distant place, and memory, and time.
25 years ago tonight, I stood in a hall full of photographs come to life. I was a senior in college, serving as Student Body President of UCLA, and the people around me were the others who had held the same office through the long decades. Their portraits lined the walls of the President's office. Each stood for a year, of work and friendships, of meetings and conversations and arguments into the night. Their presence at that gathering, a once-in-a-very-long-while chance to share stories, made visible something I had only sensed: that here was something enduring, a living story to which I had linked my own. Forever.
Very shortly I will travel to UCLA for another nighttime gathering of the Student Body Presidents, and I'm going to have the special privilege of spending the morning and afternoon speaking with members of the current student government. I've been thinking a lot about what I have to share with them. In one sense I'm a visitor from the past, bearing living memories of ancient history. In another sense I'm an ambassador from the distant future, who has lived years beyond graduation that the students can now only imagine. But I'm also a stranger, a portrait on the wall, totally disconnected from their everyday reality. The deeper thoughts I have to share, these vast quarter-century musings, seem too weighty for a mere conversation.
But if I can find a way, there are some things I'd like to communicate ...
- I used to imagine that the adults around me had gone through some mid-life personality reboot that totally separated them from their younger selves (and caused them to drive more slowly, and care about money and housekeeping). I've never experienced such a reboot. I've learned a great deal, understand situations better and make different choices, but my college experience is still alive for me, and my younger self still sees through my eyes. College is real life, and you are experiencing a part of your forever self.
- What changes a lot after college is that situations and habits tend to become sticky, in the sense that they evolve more slowly. The pressure you feel right now about choosing a major or planning for a job or graduate school turns into a kind of gravitational pull, pinning you wherever you land. Nobody calls "time" at the end of every semester and moves you to a new schedule and new classes. The kind of self-motivation you can experience and develop in college student organizations becomes a crucial life skill if you want to continue growing and blazing your own trail.
- Maybe your experience in student government, or in some other community that matters to you, is like mine: You identify with the group almost as a living thing of which you are a part. Its history is your history. And maybe you know, in the back of your mind, that one day you too will pass into history. Your chance to make a difference is time-limited, and therefore poignant and powerful. Embrace this knowledge! It is what makes you alive, makes you real. You will have many years, later, never to regret having been truly present and given your all while you could.
- A related thought: For the gathering 25 years ago, we tracked RSVPs using Post-It notes on the glass in front of the presidents' photographs; blue for attending, pink for not, yellow for no response, white for deceased. By the time we were done, the Post-Its formed a clear pattern: nearly all blues and pinks in front of the photos from roughly the 1940s onward; then a mix of yellows and whites from the 1930s; and before that, back to first president in 1919, a sea of white notes. 25 years later, the RSVP list shows that the sea of white has surged ahead, and some of the presidents who attended that long-ago gathering have passed away. No president who served prior to 1944 is yet alive. While I hope it is many, many years distant, your own white note is on its way. So seize the day.
 |
| The newest of the display cases, showing the most recent presidents (My photo is in the top row, fourth from the left) |
 |
| November 12, 1987 |
Tags:
Posted: November 12, 2012, 7:23 PM