Madison and Time

The last couple of days were spent going down to Madison WI and touring the campus with my oldest son and wife. Lots of memories flood back to my brain as I walk State Street and the campus, as the first time that I was down there was my Sophomore year of HS for state speech tournament. The town seemed unbelievably big to someone coming from a farm near a town of 2K with a HS class of 140, and the University seemed completely beyond conception to a person whose Father had graduated 8th grade and Mother had done a two year teachers college. I was awed.

I made two further trips there in HS, one for speech and one for a few days at a state 4-H event. Both still real adventures. My view of college was “something you do to enable you to get a better job”, something that I never really saw the error in until years after taking my current job. What you believe about life is as least as important as the abilities that you may or may not have. I believed Madison was beyond my capabilities, and therefore it was.

Things are different now. With over a quarter century at a large company with many personal and business trips to many cities and a few other countries, Madison has shrunk quite a bit, but it is still a big school. The college kids have gotten A LOT younger, but it is still a very impressive University and it is high on my son’s list of hopes, along with getting into Naval ROTC. So many bittersweet feelings to see someone you love so deeply on the doorstep of adult life with all the opportunity, challenge, risk, decisions, competition, promise, dreams, unknowns and determination sweeping them onward. It is the way that things are meant to be, and there is so little more that a parent can do beyond love and prayers. There are a lot of special times in parenthood, but this one seems especially poignant.

The truth that no matter what the discussions, books, movies, or thoughts we think, we only live a single life is a sense that floods over me at a lot of occasions. We can plan for and envision the future, we can talk or read of how others experience events, but the reality of living them is often quite different. While I might wish that the school for the first to leave the nest was closer still than 3+ hours away, there is nothing else to wish for than the best that gives his life what he desires. There is lots of drama to be worked out in the next year.

In a bigger picture I was struck by the energy and optimism of a major US University in the face of the daily pessimism that the MSM provides. When I first went down there in ’72 the culture was still the radical “tear down the country” view at a university where they had bombed the math building in ’70. We walked by that building and the tour guide mentioned the bombing and pointed to the difference in the bricks on the building, they purposely didn’t match the color.

It is a much quieter place than it was in the ‘70s, and the focus is on academics and sports, and quietly (with parents around) that it is “the #1 party school”. The single reference to politics during all the presentations was to the effect that, yes the school is politically active, and maybe liberal (MAYBE?), but it also has the 2nd largest number of Young Republicans of any US campus. The students doing the talking to prospective students were certainly talking about cooping, interning, and getting job offers from major US corporations … not marching down State Street.