All the Alumni

Last Thursday morning at 2:30, I flailed my hand at my screeching phone, turned on my bedside lamp, and sat up on the edge of the bed.  It was time to get up to go to the MSPA Fall Workshop.

After fairly large applications of caffeine and a hot shower, I was awake enough to find my way to town and to campus, pulling into my familiar parking spot in an eerily empty lot.  My phone was already sending me Remind notifications from my eager staffers who were on campus and looking for me.

Since it was Homecoming week, mischief had been afoot in the community, and as we were waiting for our bus to arrive in front of the building, two police cars pulled up to make sure we weren't a problem.  We talked to the officers briefly; it turned out one of them was a former student of mine.

This was to be a recurring theme....

The eight of us boarded the bus, and we headed out for the three-and-a-half hour trip north to the University of Mississippi campus.  The students had brought blankets and pillows, and I think they were all asleep before we ever got to the highway.  I popped in headphones, and Bob Dylan and I dozed as the miles slipped away.

When we got to Ole Miss, we were driving through campus looking for the place where the workshop was being held, and before the bus had even parked, I saw another of my former students walking down the sidewalk heading to class.  We circled around, and I got to talk with her.

We got into the workshop, and after the first session, we had boxed lunches in the famous Grove.  My phone buzzed, and yet another of my formers was headed to see us after her classes.  She and I walked through the bookstore and had a good visit before our schedules separated us again.

As much as I got paper-sponsor-wise at the conference, part of my enjoyment of the day was in seeing all those former students in their different phases of life:  undergrad, grad school, and active career.  It was a great reminder of where those students on the bus with me were headed soon.

Those encounters are rejuvenating, too, because sometimes the struggle to overcome the "thousand natural shocks that [education] is heir to" obscures those fabulous futures.  As they say in so many cliched sports situations, "eye on the prize."  There are victories.  Press on.