Below is the speech given to the students of John Bapst by English faculty member John Brassil at the 2012 Convocation.
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It is a privilege and responsibility to address the academic community of John Bapst Memorial High School this morning.
Travel with me 106 miles southwest of here to Brunswick, and the chilly, cluttered cavern that is the Brassil family basement. In the corner piled behind the oil tank you will find boxes stuffed with stacks of dingy old notebooks. These are the notebooks that I hauled around and filled up with jottings at various times during high school, college, and a couple of different graduate schools. I probably should toss them; they smell musty and can’t be of much interest to anyone. But last weekend, in thinking about today’s remarks, I thumbed through a bunch of them. They share some common features: doodles of ideas for cars, guitars, and hockey uniforms, occasional comments on class discussions, due dates for assignments, and a few observations about the quirks my various teachers. By thumbing through them I came up with two lessons that, 49 years after starting high school, I might pass along in order to help us get this academic year in gear.
The first lesson dates back to my first year of high school–
On November 26, 1963 we were back in school after the assassination and funeral of President John F. Kennedy. Everyone was subdued, even those of us who, like me, were “just” freshmen. In Sister Brendan Marie’s ancient history class, we were burrowing deep into a unit about the roads in Ancient Rome. We sat in alphabetical cross-rows, and, as a “B,” I sat in the middle of the front row. Sister Brendan Marie opened this day’s 45-minute class with the usual stoic serenity; acting as if all our business was bound up in our powder blue history books, as if nothing at all had happened since we last met. Standing straight and strong in her stark white robe and crisp habit, her collar big and starched, she opened her book, as always, with precise care. But some few minutes into that day’s remarks she paused, then stared straight ahead, stark still.
Silent, of course, we waited.
Then Sister Brendan Marie pushed volume into her voice like never before and declared: “History is not always pleasant, and human beings, while capable of great good, are also capable of unspeakable atrocities.” Her stoicism had vanished, her eyes flashed with passionate sadness and an edge of anger. She invited us to speak out our thoughts, and several classmates did. We didn’t resume our march over ancient history until Wednesday.
I’m certain most of us have long ago forgotten most of what Sister Brendan Marie had to say about Roman road building. But I’m just as certain that even though we were “just freshmen,” everyone present in that classroom remembers Sister Brendan Marie’s declaration on that November morning. By raising her voice about an idea forged by her appreciation of history and inviting us to speak, she showed us that raising our voices in response to the world around us mattered. Looking back, I wish I had piped up.
Yes, we still needed to grind our way through that history lesson on Roman roads. And here you are, half a century later, about to begin this year’s grind. But your grind this year will be different if each one of you brings your voice and your passion to your academic work. Care about what there is to know and do, both in and out of school. As students, you are fortunate to have great teachers who are passionate about the work of challenging you to think. So when the business of the classroom calls for response, respond. Take the opportunity to add your voice to the continuing conversation around important ideas of our time. Pipe up.
The second lesson comes from early on during my undergraduate studies–
As some of you are already coming to know, there is never enough time for all that you want or need to do. And eventually, you run out of high school time.
After high school, I arrived in Maine, at Colby College. There, Professor Ed Kenney introduced me to the substance that ought to accompany academic demands. In his classroom, I crossed the border between merely reading literature and thinking about it. Even as he adopted a routine, Professor Kenney demanded thought. He assigned a novel a week, and we met three times each week, 8 AM Monday, 8 AM Wednesday, and 8 AM Friday. Class one: lecture. Class two: half lecture, half Q and A. Class three: ALL Q and A. He asked the questions, you answered. It was “stand on your feet and deliver the goods” pressure. Under pressure, you had to show that you could think about what you read. And my classmates and I learned to connect the dots between the novels and history and art and music and life.
Again, there was routine. There were papers. Lots of papers. But if you typed up a mindless regurgitation of Professor Kenney’s lecture and you would earn nothing more than a C- ; if you wanted to earn an A you had to think for yourself and back it up. You had to be mindful. You had to respect your own mind. After earning a C- on my first paper in his class on 19th century British fiction, I walked in for a writing conference with my teacher. He asked me questions and responded to my answers. He encouraged me to question him and by doing so I learned to question my own thinking. I never wrote a paper worth less than an A- again. Along with many of my classmates, I learned to abandon the tedium that accompanies merely getting the work “done” and in.
Ed Kenney and Sister Brendan Marie were just two of several teachers whose lessons and methods are worth recollecting and recounting. Because of the passion and commitment of my teachers, I learned to pay attention to enough of my teachers enough of the time so that I learned some things I might otherwise have missed. As a result of the work of these teachers, I became less mindless and more mindful.
Anna Quindlen, one of my favorite writers, spoke of the importance of doing our own thinking and our own work:
Each of you is as different as your fingerprints. Why in the world should you march to any lockstep?
The lockstep is easier, but here is why you cannot march to it. Because nothing great or even good ever came of it. When young writers write to me about following in the footsteps of those of us who string together nouns and verbs for a living, I tell them this: every story has already been told. Once you’ve read Anna Karenina, Bleak House, The Sound and the Fury, To Kill a Mockingbird, and A Wrinkle in Time, you understand that there is really no reason to ever write another novel. Except that each writer brings to the table, if she will let herself, something that no one else in the history of time has ever had. And that is herself, her own personality, her own voice. If she is doing Faulkner imitations, she can stay home. If she is giving readers what she thinks they want instead of what she is, she should stop typing.
But if her books reflect her character, who she really is, then she is giving them a new and wonderful gift. Giving it to herself, too….
And that is true of music and art and teaching and medicine.
And that remains true now, during your education here at John Bapst and beyond, if you make it so by your actions. It’s your choice.
Sure, you will see days when your spirit doesn’t rise to the occasion of learning. You will see days when the reading assignments, the annotations, the quizzes, the papers, the rides to school, the interminable practices, dorm living and the rides home pile up and whittle away at your concentration and sap your energy. Your studies are, often, a grind, but that doesn’t mean they’re not worthwhile, for they can nourish your passion and ignite your spirit of exploration.
This year, as you begin, continue, or finish high school, remark upon what goes on here at John Bapst and pipe up. Our school is substantive, and right now it’s number one. You don’t have to keep a notebook but be alert to what you see, what you hear, what you feel. And even though there will never be enough time, take some time, now as well as some years from now, to be mindful of what you learn from, and with, your teachers and your classmates. Start doing so today, and I’m confident that you will enjoy a fantastic year.
Thank you, and have a great day.