Author: Ken Anselment

The not so fine line between irony and sarcasm

Lawrence gets a lot of compliments from students, parents, and counselors on the tone we use in our communications with them: it’s friendly, thoughtful, and sprinkled with humor and wit.

Just like Lawrence.

You probably know one of the first rules of email: you don’t get to use facial expressions or vocal inflection to add context to your words, so your words and intentions had better be pretty clear.

So when an email rolled out of here yesterday with the subject line “Don’t apply to Lawrence,” well… it didn’t really sound like Lawrence. It adopted what seemed like an ironic tone (the one where you say the opposite of what you mean for humor or emphasis), but came off as sarcastic (a more negative, off-putting form of irony).

This email really could have used a face, a voice, and some wildly gesticulating hands to get its point across, which, when it was first conceived many months ago, it was going to have–because it was part of a very loose script for a video that, at least in concept, could have been spot-on with its irony.

Alas, it was just words on a screen queued up in an email (without the accompanying video, which was never produced, much less included in the email), and then forgotten about… until it went out to some of our most interested (and interesting) students yesterday.

And for that, we’re sorry, and embarrassed… and hopeful that those students and their parents didn’t take us literally, because, well, of course we want them to apply; they’re interested and interesting students.

Since we are an educational institution, we will share a couple of lessons here. (Woohoo, lessons at our expense!)*

Lesson one is for all other colleges who email prospective students (when I last checked, that would be all other colleges): don’t queue up emails for a timed delivery if they don’t have all the right pieces in place.

Lesson two. Refer to lesson one.

*Stage direction for “Woohoo, lessons at our expense!”: force a smile, speak overly enthusiastically, add ironic thumbs-up.

Our new students are here!

Yesterday, September 10, we welcomed our newest class of students to Lawrence. For those of us in the admissions and financial aid offices who have worked with these students and their families for months (or even years), we get to experience a joy that might be on par with having our birthdays and favorite holidays all rolled into one event, because seeing the whole class together at the same time is like waking up to find 450 individual presents all waiting for us.

Today, the students all sat for their class photo on the southward-facing steps of Lawrence Memorial Chapel. This photo is always a blast, because it’s usually taken at 11:30 in the morning, and, if the weather is cooperating, like it did today, everyone is squinting right into the sun, like this:

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If you look closely in the photo, you’ll notice that our new president, Mark Burstein, has joined his class of new Lawrentians for the photo. (Hint: he’s the fella in the tie behind the purple banner.)

Last night was our New Student Convocation. One of our traditions at this event is that the dean of admissions and financial aid (i.e., the guy writing this post) gets to introduce the class to itself. Below are some highlights about the class, which I shared with them and their families last night. You will see that they are, indeed, a nifty bunch.

OK, now I’ll turn my attention on our reason for being here… which is you. Let me tell you a little bit about yourselves:

The 400 or so of you who are first-year students represent one of the largest freshman classes in Lawrence University history. You have come to us from nearly 300 high schools and home schools. Worth noting is that 260 of you are the only ones from your school, which makes you the majority. So get out there and start meeting each other.

17 of you are transfer students who have come to us from colleges as near as the University of Wisconsin right here in the Fox Valley and as far away as Bronx Community College.

In addition to our degree-seeking freshmen and transfers who become Lawrentians today, 25 of you will be with us for just this year as part of visiting exchange programs in China, Spain, the Russian Federation, and Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan. We are happy that you are all here.

…

You hail from 30 states and 25 countries.

Our largest contingent—about a quarter of you—comes from our home state of Wisconsin. The next largest groups come from Illinois, Minnesota, California, New York, Colorado, Michigan, and Washington state.

About 10% of you have a parent, sibling, or some other relative who attended (or is currently attending) Lawrence. Some of you have several generations of Lawrentians in your family! That’s pretty exciting.

But here’s another exciting thing: about 10% of you are the first ones in your family to go to college.

A handful of you are so-called “non-traditional students,” in that you are either married, have children or graduated from high school a number of years ago.

…

You new Lawrentians have had an impressive array of experiences.

Some of you have overcome extraordinary health challenges, and the fact that you’re with us today as new college students is… well, the term “miraculous” is often overused, but not so in this case.

One of you has been educating Boston-area youth about food, farming, and hunger through a service-learning group you led.

One of you played the unwitting role of guinea pig in our new online deposit system when you tried, failed, tried, failed and finally succeeded in paying your deposit to attend Lawrence this fall.

One of you dazzled me and hundreds of other parents at the Einstein Middle School honors night last May with your saxophone solo on Pure Imagination from Willie Wonka.

One of you is a mother of three children between the ages of 7 and 11. Please allow me to introduce you to a room full of potential babysitters. [Note: This student sought me out later to tell me how her kids feel famous now!]

One of you shared with your Lawrence admission counselor that you knew the Lawrence University Honor Code word for word. And because we trusted you, we didn’t make you recite it.

One of you volunteers on a mushroom farm, and is particularly enamored with a glow-in-the-dark mushroom which you described as “cool but poisonous,” so you are trying to find ways to turn it into a jack-o-lantern or a night light.

One of you, a dedicated swimmer, would drive nearly two hours each way five times a week to train.

One of you created the Nerd Club at your high school, so that students who don’t feel they fit in elsewhere would have a club to join.

One of you founded a Dead Poets Society at your school in Amman, Jordan—so you could go beyond what you learned in class and even create your own works.

One of you is a world-class pentathlete (that’s fencing, swimming, show jumping, and a biathlon of pistol shooting and cross country running). You represented Team USA in Hungary and competed against athletes from 30 different countries.

One of you in this class of new Lawrentians happens to be the 16th president of Lawrence University.

It’s a great group of students, and they will do well here.

(P.S.: I look forward to seeing many of them at the Lawrence University football game vs. Lake Forest Saturday night.)

So… about that Common Application launch on August 1

Common App screenshot

Today is the big day, launch day of the brand-new Common Application for 2014. It’s a launch that promises to create a better user experience for students applying to the more than 500 member colleges (including Lawrence) that use it.

Like so many product launches before it—including the infamous live-TV event where Bill Gates experienced the blue screen of death during his own presentation—today’s launch of the new Common App has been going less smoothly than I suspect our friends at Common App (or their hundreds of clients and thousands of college applicants) would like.

For example, if you search for “Lawrence” on the home screen, Lawrence University does not return in the results (even though our fellow Lawrences, Sarah and Saint, do).

Keep in mind that this is day one of a new way of applying to colleges using the Common Application.

Day two will be better.

And day seven will be even better than that.

Until then, we will Keep Calm and Avoid Employing Overused Internet Memes.

 

The Common Application essay prompts for 2014 are here!

Lawrence University is an exclusive user of the Common Application. The newly overhauled version of the “Common App” for the 2014 academic year goes live on August 1, 2013, but the Common App board has already released the new essay prompts. If you want to start thinking about the prompts, and maybe even drafting some early versions of your essay, here is what you’ll find on August 1:

Instructions. The essay demonstrates your ability to write clearly and concisely on a selected topic and helps you distinguish yourself in your own voice. What do you want the readers of your application to know about you apart from courses, grades, and test scores? Choose the option that best helps you answer that question and write an essay of no more than 650 words, using the prompt to inspire and structure your response. Remember: 650 words is your limit, not your goal. Use the full range if you need it, but don’t feel obligated to do so. (The application won’t accept a response shorter than 250 words.)

  • Some students have a background or story that is so central to their identity that they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.
  • Recount an incident or time when you experienced failure. How did it affect you, and what lessons did you learn?
  • Reflect on a time when you challenged a belief or idea. What prompted you to act? Would you make the same decision again?
  • Describe a place or environment where you are perfectly content. What do you do or experience there, and why is it meaningful to you?
  • Discuss an accomplishment or event, formal or informal, that marked your transition from childhood to adulthood within your culture, community, or family.

I think I just strained my neck…

…sudden 180-degree turns will sometimes have that effect.

For the past few years, we have been led to believe—whether it was in news stories or even in presidential State of the Union addresses—that higher education’s purpose was (or should be) vocational: colleges should train its students how to do something, preparing them to be Useful Citizens (in other words, “quickly deployed and employed”). Disciplines like business, science, engineering, technology—you know, practical things—were offered as the pavers on the path to prosperity.

The corollary was that the liberal arts and sciences, which don’t necessarily train you how to do a particular job, are a luxury, and, therefore, a risky investment. In some cases, government reinforced that message in alarming ways, as we saw in Florida’s recent proposal to create financial incentives to study those practical things (and, as a result, create disincentives to study the arts, humanities, and social sciences).

Which brings us to a completely different piece of news that ran in the June 18 New York Times (and the cause of that neck strain—which, for the record, may be one of the more pleasant neck strains we could have experienced). Perhaps that anti-liberal arts mindset may have been a bit short-sighted:

Humanities Committee Sounds an Alarm

A new national corps of “master teachers” trained in the humanities and social sciences and increased support for research in “endangered” liberal arts subjects are among the recommendations of a major report to be delivered on Capitol Hill on Wednesday.

The report comes amid concern about low humanities enrollments and worries that the Obama administration’s emphasis on science education risks diminishing a huge source of the nation’s intellectual strength. Requested by a bipartisan group of legislators and scheduled to be distributed to every member of Congress, it is intended as a rallying cry against the entrenched idea that the humanities and social sciences are luxuries that employment-minded students can ill afford.

People talk about the humanities and social sciences “as if they are a waste of time,” said Richard H. Brodhead, the president of Duke University and a co-chairman of the commission that produced the report. “But this facile negativism forgets that many of the country’s most successful and creative people had exactly this kind of education.”  Read more…

Bias alert: the report was published by the Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Commission on the Humanities, which may have a bit of a vested interest in the outcome of the report. You can see the list of committee members here. It’s a wild mashup of several dozen people from the arts, higher education, private enterprise, and government. (The CEO of Boeing and Yo-Yo Ma at a table together? Yes please.)

On the other hand, the study was requested in 2011 by a bipartisan group of legislators that included Senators Lamar Alexander (R-Tennessee) and Mark Warner (D-Virginia), and Representatives Tom Petri (R-Wisconsin) and David Price (D-North Carolina), who were advocating for increases in research and teaching in the humanities and sciences—and looking for reasons to support that research with government and other agencies’ investments.

Regardless of the source or the origins of the report, this news is welcome to those of us in higher education who have been arguing that it is not an either/or world, but a both/and world: we need the liberal arts just as much as we need business and science and engineering and technology. In fact, they work together quite nicely. Creativity, innovation, collaboration, drawing meaning and understanding across apparently disparate disciplines—this is the playground of the liberal arts and sciences. Some of our greatest innovators and leaders have been liberal arts and sciences majors. As the sidebar in the New York Times piece shows, the two candidates in the last presidential election had undergraduate majors in political science (Obama) and English (Romney).

Our very own dean of the conservatory, Brian Pertl (a Lawrence University English and trombone performance major who went on to manage Microsoft’s Media Acquisitions Group before rejoining his alma mater in 2008), made perhaps the best argument for this both/and world in his recent TEDx talk called “Dancing Between Disciplines.” In typical liberal arts fashion, his argument is not so much an argument as it is a performance. (Warning: mind-blowing ideas accompanied by remarkably talented musicians included.) Check it out.