My altering self-examination for the past fifteen years has been obviously challenging, uncompromising, unrelenting, sometimes cutting, certainly penetrating, truly releasing, ultimately redemptive and freeing. Strange as it sounds, as I searched for and discovered my own vices, I searched for and discovered the virtues in others. It always comes back to the same thing: go deep enough and there is a hard bedrock of truth. It has been a journey from solely focusing on scholarly competence and reputation in my discipline to an expanded vision that includes teaching in a way of being attentive to the contours of student lives being lived and seeing both the marvelous and sacred in each of them. The practice of teaching must be full of generosity and empty of ego. Ability, knowledge, authenticity, even intentions, unless tempered by empathy and caring, aren’t enough. Caring about, or loving, each student is what gives value to whatever it is we do in and out of the classroom. In a fast-paced, complicated, and ever more demanding academic culture it is easy to become self-absorbed and consumed with our own problems involved in pursuing our careers, acquiring reputation, and attaining tenure. However, there is one place, professionally, where we should put our self-centered concerns aside, find the time for, and profoundly touch our deep humanity. That place is where students dwell.

As I recently told some academics, the fact that the greatest surprise among the overwhelming majority of students is the surprise that occurs when a professor cares about them as human beings reveals how many of us academics commit the ultimate sin of academia. That sin is the one of inadvertence, of not being attentive, not being truly alert, not being quite awake to those in the classroom with us. It is the sin of missing the breathless moment of life and not living with acute awareness, unremitting empathy, unconditional caring, and boundless love.

To avoid committing that sin, so many of us say, with the best of caring intentions, that we want to motivate students. If truth be told, we can’t!! So, we shouldn’t waste our time asking, “How can I motivate students?” Now, on the other hand, if we want to create an environment in which students are afforded the chance to motivate themselves, that we can do!! Then, we should ask, “How can I create the conditions in a classroom within which students will motivate themselves?” “How can I help students help themselves to change self-defeating patterns of irresponsible and even unethical and immoral behavior as they stagger through the stresses and pressures of their academic and personal lives?” “How can I help each student feel welcomed in the classroom?” “How can I help each student shed her or his feelings of aloneness in the classroom?” “What conditions do I have to create for each student so that she or he will have the opportunity to focus and persevere and strive without short-circuiting her or his physical, emotional, spiritual, and moral well-being with self-induced anxiety, corner-cutting, and outright cheating?” “How do I help a student instill in her- and himself confidence, ignite passion, encourage more risk-taking and accepting of failure, and expanding the areas–beyond written papers, tests, and preformed discussions–in which she or he may achieve and be successful?”

Mind you, these are questions that are easy to ask. They are questions that are not easy to answer. These are questions whose answers are still harder to live, for it is the nature of those in authority to assert authority. Too many academics, ignoring the conclusions of Carl Rogers and Edward Deci and Teresa Amabile, if we know who they are and are familiar with their work, think we can “do” something to a student. That is, we can motivate or we can teach. And, too many of us believe we can do it by the pressure of enticement or threat, and control. We crack down, impose stringent discipline, lure and entice with bonuses, make students buckle down, threaten, and force students to behave through reward and punish with grades. Extra credit here, a point taken off a grade there. It doesn’t work. We know it doesn’t work. We lament that it doesn’t work. And yet, we don’t really wonder why that easy, tough, and reassuring answer of cracking the whip or icing the cake doesn’t work. Usually, our response is to play the blame game rather than the responsibility game: “Students today are irresponsible.” “Students today aren’t committed or dedicated.” “Students today just don’t…….” In fact, if we look closely we’d see that rigid authority exercise displayed in the offering of the carrot or the wielding of the the stick more often than not worsens rather than lessens the problems.

The problems as I see them are three fold. First, disbelief is the wind that blows out your candle. You have to believe there is something of the marvelous and sacred in each student. You’ll prepare the flower bed, plant seed, and nurture them only when you believe flowers can bloom. Second, it is not about what you do, but how you do it. There are no magic words. If you want convince a student to motivate her- or himself, motivate yourself. Students will believe what they see, not what they hear. That is, action, living your words, is the only expression students will listen to. If you set out to cheer, encourage, or inspire as many students as you could to help them help themselves strive for their unique potential rather than merely transmit information motivate yourself to be cheerful, supporting, encouraging, and caring. Good gestures mean so much and cost so little that there is no excuse for not giving them away more often. A compliment, a bit of advice, a cheerful hello or a warm smile can start a chain reaction that lights up hitherto darkened lives like a Broadway neon sign. Niceness can change lives, yours and theirs. To love and to live that love is the real magic. Third, it is not so much getting a student to choose between “have to” and “want to” as it is how to get them to choose to merge the two “to” into one.

The solution to these three problems is really, then, a matter of how to transform forced reluctant and fearful compliance into volunteered dedicated and excited commitment. You have to let students learn in a way so that they are in charge of their intellectual, emotional, spiritual, and moral growth. Students will more likely be more motivated and successful when they understand and accept and apply their own unique strengths and overcome their weaknesses. That’s a tough solution, though. It’s really tough to put into action. I’ve found that so many, us and the students alike, are afraid of losing something known and comfortable and safe by changing than we are motivated by the risky, unknown, and yet potential advantages of changing. Yet, it’s so crucial to begin. Things happen and opportunities appear most often when we’re moving, not when we’re standing still.

Let me give you a clue how to start putting that answer into action. As I told a few people recently, there is so much of the homelessness in each of us, much less in each student. And our awareness, empathy, seeing, and listening creates a sanctuary for those aimless and drifting parts. Students’ definition of success, what they really are seeking is not solely focused on getting the grade though they themselves think it is. It’s far more than that, and both they and we kid ourselves if we think it’s not. That is why, as far as students are concerned, their most meaningful, memorable and lasting experiences almost exclusively occur outside the classroom. That’s why their lasting memories of their college experiences seldom have anything to do with the classroom material or experience. Whether they know it or not, they reveal in their journals almost to the person that achievement and success, what they are seeking, really seeking, is an understanding that is defined by having good friends, positive family relations, being noticed, being heard, receiving kindness, being cared about, being appreciated, being well-regarded, being loved, being respected. They seek self-approval, self-respect, physical and mental well-being, spiritual contentment, self-actualization, and an overall sense of meaning to their lives. In other words, they want a satisfying, meaningful, rewarding, and significant life, not just a grade or an honor or making a living.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

My cancer was and still is like a pencil sharpener. It has honed my awareness of myself, this moment, others, and things around me. It has made me realize more than ever that the sin of everything I do in my personal and professional life is that of inadvertence, not being alert, not quite awake. It is the sin of missing each moment of life. It is the sin of not unwrapping the present that the present offers: to live with unremitting awareness and intense gratitude. It’s the commission of that omission–not to do something empowering, something joyful, something positive, something meaningful, something creative and imaginative, and something valuable each moment–that causes anyone to grow old, atrophy, and diminish the passionate fires. It’s an awareness so acute that I have little or no time for fear, agony, resentment, and resignation. Awareness is my best friend. It permits me to go anywhere I chose. It transforms every challenge from forboding and forbidding into welcoming and allowing. It allows me to speak with my own voice, think with my own mind, create with my own imagination, and act according to my own vision. It shows me that I am the solution to any problems I face and the answer to any questions I pose. It keeps me young, alert, adroit, and vibrant. It sets me in motion and does allow me merely to go through the motions. It insists I live my words rather than merely be satisfied with uttering them. It inspires me to keep on making changes in my life, do more for myself, be truer to myself, and do more for others. My cancer always reminds me of my need for a “just to….” place, an introspective personal time and secluded place for quiet refueling of my inner fires, for reviewing and renewing my personal and professional values, needs, and priorities. In fact, we each need to learn that we would all do well to take personal quiet time and make use of life review. I assure you that such a time and place improves your mood and vigor, increases your energy, heightens your desire to take care of yourself, as well as better stacks the deck in favor of better physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health. In other words, it is my private and public litany that I will not, I simply swear I will not, go quietly into the still night. That is what keeps me in the race during the entire race.

Talking about races, as I enter my 40th year here at Valdosta State people incessantly have been asking when I plan to retire or why haven’t I already retired. It’s almost the opening sentence of every conversation. I don’t get annoyed. No, I chuckle. My universal answers are either “Retire to what?” or “Why retire when I’m enjoying myself” or “Because I’m having so much fun!” I sometimes think people ask me this question because they unfairly believe everything exciting happens between the ages of 18 and 40. After that, it’s all about thinking about stopping work and retiring. Well, those who have not particularly liked the classroom or see it as holding them back look forward to the day they can leave it all behind. They’re staid before their physical years and middle-aged in their youth. Retirement, for them, has already been decided on. Me? I’m not a dawdler of either the past or the future. As an historian, I can assure you we do with the past what we like. We each handcraft the world ago. “In my day” were the “good ole days” only because we have chosen to forget the bad days; we have decided in self-protection not to weave in the tears, hurts, deprivations, missed chances, missteps, and lost loves into the fabric of our memories. As for the future, it makes for good musing. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to dwell on the ignominies that have crept up on me and the possible physical assaults that might appear. I think we dwell on them too much. Maybe it’s fear. Maybe it’s denial. Whatever it is, my cancer has brought to home that truth that I don’t know which will be the spring when I won’t be here to walk the pre-dawn streets or stroll through my garden or meditate by my koi pond. So, while my body may not be as capable, my spirit is as cocky and youthful as ever. It’s a sagging spirit, not a sagging body, that’s the critical determinant of where each of us is and will be. To be sure, the flesh may be announcing its limits and I take it almost as a personal affront, but the spirit is not. I have no choice about getting older, but I can refuse to get old. I have observed in my sixty-five years on this Earth that being old and spiritually decrepit is a decision. I have observed that some people become old long before their time and simply decide to take to their beds and retire long before they start collecting their retirement. It all has to do with temperament, the nature of the individual. So, each day I give myself the spiritual equivalent of Botox and the plastic surgeon’s knife. I put myself in an empowering place. I savor each moment; I experience and enjoy and live it out each day. For me, teaching is more playing than paying. It lines my soul more than my pockets. It does my spirit more good than does retiring. It’s true my future is shrinking and my past is expanding. When that inevitable day comes, and it’s far closer than I want to admit, it will be as if a large piece of me fell crashing away like a huge chunk of a glacier’s edge.

And so, I’m beginning to see this state of my career, as it inevitably approaches the finish line, as something of a race. No, I’m not talking about the proverbial dehumanizing and enslaving rat race. Just a race at a track meet. It was easy to start out my career strong. Everyone begins a career at the crack of the starting gun with a youthful vibrancy filled an energetic and starry-eyed enthusiasm. But, I think the real achievement of any career comes to those who can also finish strong. It’s not the runner who leads at the starting line who wins; it’s the runner who, on the final turn, stays determined, digs deep, finds that something extra, picks up the pace, and sprints home.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

It was not a very happy Mother’s Day in the Schmier house this past Sunday. My Susan was especially sullen and sad. It was the first Mother’s Day without her elderly mother with whom she was close. Her mother has mercifully died nearly two weeks ago after four and a half grueling, pain-filled months filled with five hospital stays, three falls, a broken tailbone, nine broken ribs, cracked pelvis and pubis bones, and three bouts with severe pneumonia, all aggravated by severe osteoporosis, advancing Alzheimer’s, and end stage COPD.

We had come back from the out-of-town funeral last Wednesday morning. We landed in Atlanta and were driving home when I called the department office at the University to tell them I’d have to “mush” for the rest of the week and get final grades in by the following Monday, a week past the deadline, as I had arranged while I was taking care of funeral arrangements and preparing to head out of town.

The way you’d hear it, the students were angrily storming the Bastille enmasse. In the scheme of things, it sounded so petty to me. I was in no mood to deal with such apparent administrative triviality. “Well, they’ll just have to wait. I’m here, but I’m not here yet. I’ll get them in when I get them in.” Shortly after I hit Valdosta, I made a few phone calls. I discovered that it was more the bean counters in the student finance office, and a very, very few vocal and anxious students who were annoyed and “demanding” than anyone else. “First take care of yourself and your wife, and start getting your life back in order,” comforted Louis Levy, my VPAA “I shamed a few people when they complained…..Get them in when you can,” the ever helpful Chuck Hudson, the Registrar, quietly said to me. “Just take it easy. How can I help you?” asked Paul Riggs, my supportive department head.

In one conversation, after months of incessant and consuming care-taking I snapped like a sudden shift of clashing continental plates. I lost if for a second and lashed out with a few invective statements about the students in both annoyance and disappointment. But Chuck put me quickly back in my place and reminded me that I didn’t really mean it. “That’s not the Louis Schmier I know who loves the students.”

He was right. I was just physically and emotionally tired and drained. It was no excuse. I felt small. I felt even smaller when I opened my mailbox and read a message sent by an eighteen year old, first year student before I had sent out my message. “Hey, Dr. Schmier. I saw I got an NR on my transcript for the class. I found out that it meant ‘no report.’ Something wrong, Louis? I hope it isn’t your wife’s mother. But, I think it is. You told us on the last day of class that they had rushed her to the hospital. I thought of what you said that day, thanking us for helping you get through what you had been going through all semester. I felt so uplifted by the fact you respected us enough to share with us the pain and sadness and fear and burden you were having throughout the semester. I’ll try to help once more. You once told me that when I’m down, I should look up. Now, you have to do it. I want you to know that you and your family are in my thoughts and prayers and as you always told us, smile because the sun is shining above the clouds.”

So, I wrote an explaining and apologetic letter to the students in all four classes, hoping some of them would still be on the internet. I told them that I hadn’t entered the final grades because of the death of Susan’s mother. I explained that after her mother had been rushed to the hospital for the fifth time in six weeks, the doctor, for the first time, had advised us against going on our month-long trip to China. I e-mailed my sons. They and their families quickly came in from San Francisco and Nashville for the weekend to say what might be their goodbyes. She began to slip on Monday. She died the night of the following Tuesday. Then, quickly we were off to Detroit for the funeral and the traditional week-long mourning period. Needless to say, I told them, I couldn’t make the deadline for handing in final grades. I ended the message with “Please bear with me.”

In response to that e-mail, came an outpouring of sympathy and support. Not one disgruntled voice did I hear. “You were there for me. Now it’s my turn to be there for you and your family. You be with them.” “I lost my mother in 2000. So, continue to comfort your wife and keep her as your first priority. The grades can wait.” “Your family is top priority. Grades aren’t.” “Take care of yourself and your wife first. Take care of the grades later.” “No rush. ‘Family comes first.’ I heard you tell that to others in the class when they had personal ‘stuff’ coming down. Now I’m telling you the same thing.” “I’m here if you ever need to talk just as you talked and helped me through my ugly stage.” “I talked with a lot of people and they’re more worried about your wife and her health than not knowing their grades.” “You and your wife are in my thoughts and prayers.” “I’ve given a small donation to my church in your wife’s name.” On and on and on it went. I took the beauty of each comforting word and let them all fill me. I let them open my squirrel cage and I took myself to a better and peaceful place.

And these are from supposed “students today are not like….” students. What a lesson they taught me. I read somewhere this statement: “There is so much good in the worst of us and there is so much bad in the best of us, it hardly becomes any of us to talk about the rest of us.” That is what happens when we start looking and focusing on the negatives. When we focus on the negative, negative things start to happen to us. We feel like we’re restless in discomfort. If we recognize only the negative in students, we start to see the negatives in ourselves. But, what would happen if we looked for, saw, heard out for, listened to the positives. Things would begin to happen in positive and wonderful ways where suddenly we feel like we’re resting in the comfort. And, as we recognize the positive in students, we would start to recognize the positive in ourselves. Why? It’s really so simple. We will find what we are looking for. As you look for the positive or negative things and you see positive or negative things your life will become more positive or more negative. It’s simply a matter of choice.

So, I learned my lesson once again: let go of the fantasy, perfect student and embrace the flesh-and-blood person with all her and his flaws; look beyond the outward clay and you’ll find the jewels within.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–