confirm: baraboo
MASTER’S PIECES
Hello’s and goodbye’s are my theme tonight. Hello to our new Dean, Sarah Mahurin. She promises to be a lively addition to the place indeed – I won’t repeat all the good things you heard in the dining hall or that you’ve already read in the message we sent around earlier to the entire college.
And goodbye, in a Notes & News sense, to my friend and colleague, John Loge. He’ll still be answering your questions and offering up what advice he can until June 30. But I wanted to take a moment to pay testimony to his decades of dedication to this essential weekly bulletin, which will be our last of this year and last of his time as Dean.
Some of you already know that many of the other deans at Yale have relied for years on OUR Dean’s magnificent radar for what students need to know every week. I write my little bit on the TD event happenings; Dean has covered the rest of your life with an extraordinary wealth of information about opportunities, deadlines, notices, protocols – the absolute nitty gritty of life here at Yale.
This work takes a relentless eye for detail, editing for compression, a wide radar for student life and a continuing care that you get the information you need. Recognizing this long labor of love is not even to mention Dean’s weekly reflection on nature and life, something I am going to miss as much as you will.
I don’t know how to thank Dean for the labor that, entirely on his own initiative, he has put into Notes & News week in and week out for so many years. I can only say: “confirm: baraboo.” Goodbye to this year’s edition, and to Dean’s incomparable run as its caring, inimitable editor.
Have a fantastic summer break. We will keep the light on for you.
Master Brenzel
ACADEMICS
The official final examination schedule The official final examination schedule and list of assigned classrooms for Spring 2014 are available online at:
http://www.yale.edu/sfas/registrar/exams.htm
Postponement of Final Examinations: The residential college dean (and only the residential college dean) may postpone an examination (ordinarily to September) only for certain reasons: if a student has three examinations scheduled within four time slots, whether or not each of these slots has an examination group number assigned to it (the 7 PM slot is included in this calculation); if a student has three examinations scheduled during the first two days of the final examination period; if a student has an incapacitating illness, family emergency (or another matter of comparable moment), or for the observance of religious holy days (See YCPS, page 52- 53.) Advice: Before the examination takes place, see me if you think any of these reasons apply to you (in case you misunderstand, for instance, the rules about postponing an examination and are not eligible to do so). Reminder: An examination cannot be postponed on account of travel arrangements or mis-arrangements.
FRESHMEN
Reminder: Select an adviser for your sophomore year. If you have difficulty finding a faculty member with whom to discuss your courses for next year, I will be happy to suggest choices. If you have not done so already, hand in the sophomore adviser form signed by your sophomore adviser and you before you leave campus. The form can be printed from http://sophomore.yalecollege.yale.edu/selecting-adviser and by clicking “Sophomore Year Adviser Form.”
SOPHOMORES
[Sophomore Website: http://sophomore.yalecollege.yale.edu/]
Reminder: A consultation with your sophomore adviser or another faculty member to discuss a tentative program of study for your junior and senior years. This consultation is mandatory. If you have not already handed in the completed form to my office with the adviser’s signature to confirm you had a conversation, do so before you leave campus. The part of your form on which your record your tentative plans you should keep for your reference. The form is available at the sophomore web site http://sophomore.yalecollege.yale.edu/ I am happy to talk to you about your questions or concerns about this mandatory consultation.
NOTES
I do not think I can express any better the sentiments I once felt and wrote in NOTES near the end of our academic year; therefore, repeating myself, slightly altered:
I walked on the beach once at this time of year, a long beach. I started in the middle, walked to one end, back to the other end, and then back to the middle. It was a simply beautiful day. The water was calm and blue, even for Long Island Sound. I walked along the high tide line among the stones and broken shells as the children collected and stuffed their pockets as children do, as if there were nothing else in the world better to do.
Like us, I thought, at the high tide line of our year that, like the beach, seemed so distant and long a prospect from our viewpoint last September. Like the children we, too, have filled our pockets as we have gone along. And once we empty them at home, what we collected along the way seems so inadequately to show a year at Yale. A full pocket, no matter how large, cannot hold a year of being together and doing all we have done. As some say, “You had to have been there.”
And we were and we are. That and this are the show. The beach at its end does not seem enough beach, even as at first view it seemed so far. Collecting stones and shells belie our efforts to gather it all in. No list can capture what it has meant to be here this year; words and images, too, are partial. No matter. A day at the beach and a year at Yale must suffice. It’s about being, I think, which is about trying on the new, about trusting the natural course of things, about believing in ourselves and others, about taking a long walk on the day we rise to and go out from.
As I walked, I had my eye out for a wishing stone, which is a smooth dark stone with a ring of white around it. Finding one is about looking and about luck. Although no stone showed itself that day, I was not disappointed. Why should I be? Finding what I hoped to find was not my single reason for going out to see and to be. Another time, perhaps. Looking was sufficient. The day itself was sufficient. Being was sufficient. And wishing stone or not, in hand or not, I saw what I saw and I did what I did. And you, likewise, this year.
When I got home, I emptied my pockets onto my dining room table. I spread them out so that I could view them at a glance. I looked at each, one by one. I stepped back and viewed them all at once, together on the table. I recalled where I had been and what I had seen. I know that one day (and this one year) matters more and makes more sense than any pockets can hold and more than I can show and tell. It was a year of bad luck and sadness. It was a year that required of us patience, courage, and hope. It was a year of happy moments and joyful occasions. Public and private. Trust will reveal to us the sense of it, in time.
See you around the courtyard of memory,
Dean Loge
PS Examinations are a test of your knowledge and not of your personal worth.