And They Are Thanking ME.
In anticipation of Dylan’s college life beginning, I received an email from the school. It said:
Thank you for encouraging and supporting your student in the decision to attend Belmont University. We are grateful for your trust in our faculty and staff to provide an academically challenging education that empowers your student and others to engage and transform the world with disciplined intelligence, compassion, courage and faith.
I breezed through the paragraph, then went back and read it again. And again. And again. In spite of my newly recognized OCD, I wasn’t re-reading because I didn’t understand it. I was re-reading because I think the second line is one of the best written sentences I have ever read in my life.
They are grateful for my trust. That alone was enough to make me feel warm and fuzzy toward them.
But what am I trusting faculty and staff to do? I am trusting them to provide a challenging education that empowers my son – and his soon-to-be friends – to transform the world. My son is going to change the world! There is hope! The obscene dollars we are pumping into his education are going to be not only worthwhile, but they are going to allow him to do what we always knew he could do! He and his friends are going to transform the world!
But how? How, you wonder, can that be done? How are they going to learn how to change the world in only four years? It seems impossible! But no… it’s not. They are going to use disciplined intelligence – not just plain intelligence, but a disciplined, more productive kind! And in case that turns out to be insufficient, they will add compassion – the stuff of the angels – and courage – the stuff of heroes.
And if all of that won’t do it, then there will be faith, without which nothing could ever change – not the world, not education, not the college, not my son.
We’re going to have some faith that this beautiful, positive transformation will happen.
And they are thanking me.
Often, I am sarcastic in tone, and I usually detest professionally presented emails. But in this case, I am totally not sarcastic. In fact, I think I am in love with this college and, especially, the person who wrote that note.
Whoever that might be.