To Everything there is a Season: Enjoying What Changes, Holding Fast to What Does Not

One of the things I love about working at a university is watching the changing of the seasons. Before the first cool breezes of fall blow in, a new crop of freshmen arrives on campus, and familiar faces from prior years return. We’re getting our bearings by the time green leaves begin to turn gold and scarlet. As temperatures drop, students can be seen bustling along the sidewalks, hurrying to join study groups and get their cram sessions in before final exams. Spring brings a fresh round of classes, and the campus comes to life in full color as trees and flowers awaken. And then there is the bittersweet early summer, when our graduates say goodbye and we send them off with prayers, knowing they’re ready, but also knowing they’ll be missed.

There are the seasons that follow no calendar, but that arrive in a bluster and then fade, much like those in the natural world. Like the rising and setting of the sun, one semester’s hot topic might be another’s old news. There are seasons of technology, for example. I can remember when students started taking notes on tablets and laptops rather than scribbling with pencils in notebooks. Or when cell phones started gracing every palm, and worlds of information became available at the tap of a finger, leaving behind the seasons of digging through the library late at night or spending hours scanning microfiche.

We can still feel the sting of the season of Covid, which has forever changed us. That period is marked by both unthinkable tragedy and by medical and technological advances that helped us persevere and afforded us at least a thread of community to hold onto, bringing to the surface some of the best that humankind has to offer.

Technological advances have ushered us into the season of AI we find ourselves in—bringing with it gifts and problems, allowing more ease in some ways, requiring more scrutiny in others, and begging too many questions to count.

And then there are the seasons of unrest on college campuses—times of outrage, resentment, and disunion, when the common ground seems lost in the distance, and we wonder if we’ll ever find it. Looking through the dusty yearbooks in our archives, it is clear that this sort of season comes around with surprising regularity.

Amidst all of these changes, my thoughts, perhaps ironically, always move toward the things that stay the same.

The core of our work as educators never changes. We—all of us in higher education from the professors to the presidents—are here to impart knowledge. We’re here to open minds and encourage debate, both with others and within ourselves. We have always been in the business of helping students learn what they need to know to pursue their dreams, to prepare for their futures. The way we go about that may evolve, but the ultimate goal remains the same.

Looking out my office window across the lawns now baking in the summer sun, I can see one of our student ambassadors showing a family around, giving a campus tour. The parents are preparing to let their child go, and their child is excited and nervous at the thought of the future—a new season is about to begin for all of them. Across the way, I can see the grounds crew, already looking ahead, making preparations for the next season, when a new class of freshmen will enter the stream and find their home for the next four years. These sights are both new and familiar at once, and I think again about the heart of what we are doing here—what we have always done, what we will always do. Impart knowledge. Watch with wonder as that knowledge turns into wisdom. We will hold on and then we will let go, and then we will begin again the next year and the cycle will continue circling around that which remains the same. And the stirring goodbyes of graduation will once again be overshadowed by the promise of a new beginning.