The Bowdoin Orient

Conventional wisdom holds that the middle child always turns out funny.

He or she does not have the aura of the oldest child, whom parents often view as an unparalleled blessing. Middle children don’t receive the adoration that the baby of the family commands. Or worse, that affection was bestowed on them for a short time before being wrenched away by some new infantile prince or princess, inevitably producing a lifetime of sibling rivalry.

Ultimately, in this absolutist world of three-child families, the middle child ends up slightly more neglected.

The "Bowdoin family" has four children—first years, sophomores, juniors and seniors. However, now entering my final year at this school, I have been struck by the particular attention given to the youngest and the eldest. This makes sense, of course.

If you see a terrified person walking around the Bowdoin campus, it’s probably a first year or a senior. The first years have no idea what they’re going to do in this place; the seniors have no idea what they’re going to do once they leave.

Meanwhile, the middle children of the Bowdoin family coast by blissfully, bolstered by years at the College behind and in front of them. In this unconventional family, it pays to be a middle child.

Although every Bowdoin sophomore or junior is most certainly tethered to a path replete with both trials and triumphs (and my years were no exception), I think the College’s manner of engagement with its youngest and oldest students is quite interesting.

Serving as bookends to my first week back, convocation and the mandatory senior-class Career Planning Center (CPC) meeting revealed a lot about the administration’s approach to educating its youngest and oldest children—the newly-arrived and the soon-to-leave.

At convocation, President Mills riffed eloquently on the preparedness of liberal arts students to enter a world where the entrepreneurial spirit and the ability to innovate are indispensable survival skills. He told an auditorium, filled mainly with first years, that their Bowdoin education would be an indispensable asset in the real world, that they would have the necessary depth and flexibility. In other words, the liberal arts model is not defunct. Bowdoin students will be more ready than most.

A week later, the senior class settled into the still-warm seats of Pickard Theater and had one message drilled into their anxious heads: if you do the right things, you will get a job.

And then they told us how. Despite a few cheesy metaphors and a very awkward claim that our patronage of the CPC is somehow free (did Bowdoin do away with tuition?), our career coaches did a very credible job. They debunked a bunch of myths, told us about deadline clusters for different employers, and got us on our way toward getting paid.

They assured us that we are ready for whatever comes next.

As you can see, both events struck a very similar tone: preparedness. President Mills and Tim Diehl, director of Bowdoin’s Career Planning Center, wanted to make the point that Bowdoin students will be or have already been properly ‘equipped.’

Now, this approach to education at Bowdoin is likely the most responsible and has certainly paid its dividends.

In an endearingly candid moment during his speech, President Mills reflected that Bowdoin had taken a chance on him, a corporate lawyer, when he was named president.

And although Mills acknowledged that the jury is still nominally out, the decision has been sumptuously rewarded. All we have to do is look around to find evidence of this: a stunning and frequently renovated campus, brilliant faculty, and engaged students.

President Mills and the CPC were right on. There is no glory in demanding utter isolation for the liberal arts or the academy in general.

To refuse to think of preparation would do a huge disservice to Bowdoin graduates. Moreover, Bowdoin is made better when its students and faculty reflect the world’s stunning diversity.

And such a connection is only possible when Bowdoin’s administration makes the commitment to engage us—through service, artistic exhibition, and even job preparedness.

The only smudge on this pretty picture was well identified in Professor Jorunn Buckley’s convocation lecture, "Using Your Culture."

In an unusually colorful speech, Professor Buckley talked about the fluidity of one’s self-conception at Bowdoin—that who we are and how we present ourselves is really up for grabs.

Her questions about self-revolution centered around the whimsical and the hilarious, not on the useful.

And what first year could argue against Buckley’s rhetoric? Who would demand grave seriousness in the face of the poetry, mystery, and joy of recognizing the mutability of it all? Culture, social standing, and all the rest.

As I’m sure he’d tell you, President Mills was laughing. Hard.

It probably is the job of the Bowdoin administration to remind us to hold ourselves accountable.

It’s important that we don’t retreat into disconnection and some kind of decadent solipsism.

But it’s also vital that we, students and even faculty, remember our job: to be irreverent sometimes. To take convocation and turn it into an unparalleled, comedic tour de force. It’s really bleak to always think about usefulness or the next step.

So even if Bowdoin should be preparing us for a changing world, there’s no shame in relishing the privilege of being here—whether you’re new, old, or in the middle.