I’ve been in school for 67 years. You know, I can’t really remember a time I wasn’t in school. Some of my memories, especially of my first grade teacher, Mrs. Sachel, are not pleasant. She beat my knuckles until they bled to stop me from writing with my “satanic” left hand. Then, after I screwed up my pre-med major in college and played musical majors, there was my college mentor, Dr. Birdsal Vault. It was solely because of him that I got my M.A. and Ph.D., ultimately wound up where I am and being who I am. And soon, on Dec 1, it will be my last day in school when I do closure in my classes for the last time.
In my teens I lived at home while I worked my way through college. At the age of 21, I left New York and headed south for Chapel Hill to acquired my Ph.D. I was not the first in the family to go to college. My father and two of his brothers, sons of immigrants, got law degrees during the depression. But, after a few futile years, dad, to support his family, took down his shingle and went into my mother’s family high end antique business. I don’t think he ever got over it. While my mother never finished high school, she was an avid reader, and I grew up in a home filled with newspapers, books, and magazines. I think dad missed the intellectual world because he always reading such magazines as Time, Colliers, Life, Look, Newsweek, National Geographic. He was a masterful problem perceiver and problem solver. He had a penetrating mind that wrapped about a problem like a vise. We always had discussions around the dinner table about what I had learned in school that day. Our discussions always led to a “let’s get the books.” The plates and tableware would be cleared, the books spread out, and the meal went cold. There was a running joke in the Schmier household that my mother never cooked a hot dinner. On Sundays, we avidly watched educational TV shows together.
As an aside, one more important thing before I go on. He showed me, even when I did not want to be shown, how to take the intellectual world into the manual world. To him, every problem was an opportunity and possibility. He not only had that working-it-out penetrating mind, he had those practical and applying, what I call, “golden hands.” There was nothing effete about dad. And, he combined them so he could easily switch the color of his collars as circumstances demanded. We tore down car engines, did plumping and electrical and stone work, remodeled, painted, built, plastered, wall papered, tiled, gardened, repaired, cemented, plastered, and goodness knows what else. I don’t remember a repairman stepping foot in our house. I got my fix-it-up ability from him so that I was and still am as adept with a screwdriver and hammer as I came to be with a pen, typewriter, and now keyboard. More important, I got an appreciation for those who work with their hands and understand how they, too, also work with their minds; that the architect is useless without the steelworker, brick mason, glazier, plumber, electrician, carpenter, air conditioner man, and a host of blue collar workers.
Back to school. Maybe it was because of what he modeled that I ultimately and easily fit into the academic culture though I never prided myself as or was a good student. As a young boy, outside the demands of institutionalized schooling, I always educated myself. I studied and learned a great deal on my own that had nothing to do with formal schooling. I remember keeping a notebook of typed passages from the encyclopedia. I learned more about writing by entering essay contests held by the United States Naval Institute then I did in English class. I cut my reading and thinking teeth on all the Landmark history books, as well as the entire Hardy Boys series. I read every issue of the United Naval Institute Naval Magazine and every World War II book published by the Institute. And, I read every title on the Ballentine and Ace paperback World War II list. I not only read, but studied and learned. At one point, for example, I knew all the names of all the battles and of all the commanders in all those battles of all the countries, European and Pacific, involved in World War II. I knew the names of every naval ship, every one, in every World War II navy and the battles in which each fought, as well as where and how each was damaged or lost. None of it was useful in school, but that didn’t stop me. I would go to the used book stores around 14th street in New York and spend my allowance and other earnings gobbling up books on World War II, all of which I recently donated to the University library or gave to colleagues. But, I also loved reading biographies. And, I read voraciously anything about science.
Looking back on those days of my early teens, I was learning to love learning about something I loved: everything. And, I learned, although I didn’t know it at the time, that because I had so much desire, I really didn’t need that much discipline. Now, I avidly read three newspapers each day; National Geographic, Discover, Spirituality And Health, and Time are always lying around the house or in the computer, and I read them from cover to cover; I’m always touching base with the HBR and a host of other sites that help me to be empathetic to others; shelves in den, study, and bedroom are crammed with books–as well as with collected objects d’ art. And, the computer never lies idle or sleeps. I guess I’ll soon get into e-books.
In formal schooling all that was different. I was not a very good student. I think in formal schooling studying was and is still “war;” filled with anxiety, not enjoyment; with test taking and grade getting, not learning; with scowling, not smiling; and it is synonomous with stressful tediousness and pain. It’s defined by arduous self-discipline and doing something when you’d rather be doing something else. That is why discipline in the form of organization and time management is an imposed necessity. It’s not the difficulty of the material or the course load, it’s the fact that it’s so often purposeless and funless, so serious and heavy. Time in school is almost like serving time; it is not an enjoyable experience. There’s so very seldom any foundation laid for those cliches of “lifelong learning” or the “joy of learning.” If truth be told, my personal lifelong joy of learning came from my home, not from any educational institution. And, in a fit of truth, the enjoying college experience far more often than not occurs outside the classroom.
Personally, I’d go nuts if I didn’t have a period during the day, whether is in the pre-dawn hours of surfing the computer or the late afternoons with wine and cheese, when I just learn about things. For me, studying and learning, having something of the world revealed to me, always expanding my world, is an essential satisfying and fulfilling intellectual and spiritual practice in every sense of those words. That is why I do everything I can to introduce into all classes an climate of serious, meaningful, purposeful, relevant fun. And though, in many ways I was not close with my father, I and the students do owe him that.
What got me on this kick is not just my impending retirement; it’s learning from a recent article that in their etymology “school” and “scholar” mean “leisure,” “taking a break,” “pause.” Today, they are anything but that. That is, serious fun, meaningful enjoyment. I really wish more people, faculty and students in particular, would discover the joys of studying and learning in and of themselves rather than merely as a means for resume-, tenure-, promotion-, grade-getting. I wish we would help students understand, even understand it ourselves, how they are the bedrock of living and not just a way to earn a living or acquiring renown. I wish everyone could see how they are the formula for what I call “intelligence with emotion” and “emotion with intelligence.” They sure make for a broader, richer, more vibrant, more vital, more enjoyable, less myopic, happier, more relaxed, more meaningful, more independent, more dynamic, more wondering and wonderful, stronger, less judgmental, more loving, less arrogant and self-righteous, kindlier, less hurtful, more open, more accepting, more confident, more respectful, more joyful, more interesting, more respectful, more understanding, and even a more secure living. I think they are the doors to curiosity, questioning, reflecting, change, growth, and transformation. They are the grounding foundation of fulfillment, satisfaction, purpose, meaning, and significance. My relationship to studying and learning is a passion; it is an investment in loving and living; it is a practice in which I can lose myself and find myself and be myself all at the same time.
One last word. While my initial reaction to this reluctant retirement was sadness, disappointment, regret, and even more than a touch of anger, I’ve decided to live my own words, to make the choice to enjoy what is to come my way and give life all I’ve got. I know from experience that when I enjoy what I do each and every day I am open to all sorts of possibilities; that I can only show my immense respect for life by truly enjoying each precious moment; that as long as I richly live life I won’t really grow old. I will age, but growing old will only happen when I stop living. So, I’ll see to it that I enjoy who I am and where I am and with whom I am. And though, finally, I’ll be formally out of school, I won’t atrophy mentally, spiritually, physically, emotionally, socially, or any other “-lly.” I won’t stop schooling myself; I will not stop discovering things; I will not stop my adventures; I will not stop questing; I will not stop traveling to places inside myself; I won’t stop enjoying myself; I will not cease being thoughtful; and I will not lose my place and feel out of place. As my Susie wisely assuringly said, I couldn’t stop even if I wanted to.
Louis