Hugo Schwyzer

Last week, I posted about hazing and women’s sports teams; a longer version of that post is now up at Inside Higher Education.  Some folks there don’t buy my insistence that while the degrading sort of hazing we saw at Northwestern and elsewhere is indefensible, certain kinds of challenging initiation rituals can be enormously positive in the lives of college students.  Anyhow, put your comments over there.

Today is my 39th birthday.  I think it was Jack Benny who always joked about being 39 over and over again; perhaps I ought to say "Today I turn 39 for the first time!"  I won’t do much to celebrate today; I got up at 4:30AM to go to boxing class and I’ll be on campus until almost 9:00 tonight, teaching four classes over the course of the day.  But I know that at the end of it all, I’ll be heading home to my beloved wife and beloved chinchilla, and all will be well.

Turning 39 also marks the beginning of my fortieth year of life (as my family reminded me this weekend several times.)   Today I can say that I am enormously grateful to be enjoying the process of getting older! Yes, I am keenly aware that my body has changed a great deal in my thirties.  I’ve gained weight (though I was a bit too skinny anyway a decade ago).  I’ve got loads of wrinkles, with more and more appearing almost monthly.  I do lots of running outdoors in wind and sun, and even the best protection can’t protect my face against the elements.  My skin is starting to look, well, weathered.  (I go to the dermatologist regularly, and she burns tiny basal cell cancers off my face, chest, and back on every visit.)  I’ve also noticed that my eyesight is going; I wonder if I’m going to need bifocals soon.

Looking through the roster of professors in the social sciences division here at Pasadena City College, I notice that almost half of our full-time faculty have less seniority than I.  Until recently, I was the "baby" of the department — but now I have a number of colleagues who are considerably younger than myself.  I find myself turning into one of the "old fogies" who sits in division meetings and talk about administrators and professors long since retired, all while newer hires listen with patient smiles on their faces. 

It goes without saying that I am now much older than my students.  When I came here, I was 26 — young, passionate, insecure, idealistic.  I was hungry to make a difference, but also hungry for validation from those who were only just my juniors.  Today, I am old enough to be the father of most of "my kids."  That changes how I see them, of course!  In just the last year or two, strongly paternal feelings have crept into my teaching and mentoring — feelings that certainly didn’t exist a decade or so ago.  Back then, I wanted to be the "young, hot, cool" professor.  I milked that image for all it was worth for a long time!  Now, I’m not so young, not so hot, and far less interested in being cool. 

I’m much more patient now.  Though I confess I can still get a little snappy with students (if you text-message in my class, my wrath will not be entirely concealed), I’m far less mercurial and volcanic than I was in my earlier teaching days.   Rude, lazy, and unimaginative students (one always has a few) make me less angry than they used to.  I don’t take their failures and their poor manners as personal affronts any more.  It’s not that I’ve ceased to care about their lives, however.  Indeed, I find that as I grow older, I am far more able to care than I ever was. 

Frankly, in my first few years of teaching, the question I always asked myself was "What do they think of me?" (Thank God "rate my professors" didn’t exist back in the early to mid-90s!)  Today, the question I ask myself is "What more can I do to help them learn?"  I’ve become less focused on my delivery, as it were, and far more focused on my students’ reception of what it is that I’m saying. I’m not as loud as I was a decade ago, and I’m far less likely to climb on tables (something I did with great regularity in the 1990s).  Back then, I was as much a performer as a teacher; my eagerness for attention frequently trumping my commitment to cover the syllabus effectively.

Getting older is not without its tribulations.  Watching my parents struggle with health crises (something my family is dealing with now) has been tremendously painful.   In my family, my generation is now "sandwiched" between small children who cry out for our care and our parents who, increasingly, are leaning upon us for many different kinds of support.  That’s bittersweet, and indeed, often more bitter than sweet. 

But all things considered, I’m thrilled to be the age I am.  The phrase "I feel comfortable in my skin" is overused, but I can’t help but say it a lot these days because it’s so right.  As I’ve shared on this blog, in my youth (which lasted well into my twenties) I didn’t love my flesh. I struggled with a serious eating disorder and exercise addiction; I was a self-mutilator who landed in the hospital many a time; I went through three brief and unhappy marriages and three painful divorces in remarkable succession.  Yes, a religious conversion did turn my life around.   So too did finding the woman who is now my wife.   And heck, thousands of dollars worth of therapy didn’t hurt!  I worked hard for the peace I have now.  But that peace is also a function of the aging process. 

Yes, the wrinkles have come.   Yes, the pounds have come.   Yes, the eyesight has weakened and the muscles take longer to recover from a brutal run.  But, but, but — with all of these things has also come peace and self-acceptance and an infinitely greater capacity to love myself and, as a result, to love others more boldly and effectively.  I love standing on the precipice of 40, learning, as men my age should,

to close softly
The doors to rooms (I) will not be
Coming back to.

(Donald Justice, Men at Forty)

I’ve closed so many doors these past few years.  And so many others have opened up as a consequence.