Ponder College (4)—Spring Break

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One year ago on Round and Square 30 March 2013)—China's Lunar Calendar 2013 03-30
One year ago on Round and Square 30 March 2013)—Calendars and Almanacs (f)
Two years ago on Round and Square (30 March 2012): Just Do It Over: Pink Slime
Three years ago on Round and Square (30 March 2011)—Theory Corner: Introduction

[a] Ponder Break RF

It has been a studious week at Ponder College, my alma mater.

It always is. That's how we roll here.

Not much has actually been going on at the college this week. Pretty much everyone has cleared out and headed toward spring break destinations. Students, faculty, and staff are all encouraged to make the most of the week, and the college operates with a pared down, bare bones staff until things start up again. You see, we take autumn and spring breaks very seriously down here at Ponder College, and feel that it is just the slice of relaxation and, well, pondering that makes for healthy students, teachers, and staff members. Almost everyone goes somewhere.

[b] Somewhere RF

How is that possible?...I hear you ask...

Well, thanks to the generous donation of a very wise (and financially well-set) old scholar a few generations ago, there is a sizable endowment for spring break travel at Ponder College. This tends to make our spring break just a little bit different from the Daytona drunkfests that are common in the "literature" about spring break life. Students can apply for up to $2,000 each (this amount is often unnecessary) to go somewhere that will add richness and luster to their educational experiences. Almost as soon as autumn break (also a week) is over, students begin thinking about where they will go in the spring. Almost six months of pondering go into each of these little week-wedges in the otherwise relentless academic calendar.

There is only one rule. 

You have to take "a book."

[c] Golden RF

Yes, and you have to read it and write an essay. This is serious stuff at Ole Pond, and it has been going on since the late-1950s, through times of national introspection, anger, and even musical rebirth. A group of students from the Class of '71 proposed a sophomore trip to a New York farm that was going to sponsor "a few bands." Or so they heard. They planned to bring copies of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit with them to read amidst the tumult. Then they learned that this "dairy farm music" thing was actually going to happen in August, so they made backup plans (and still went to New York for Woodstock before the '69-70 academic year began—they brought the book, too).

Think about it, though. $2,000 to go anywhere for a week. At Ponder College, almost as much thought goes into "what shall I read" as "where shall I go?"

[d] Auckland RF

A gentle (but très sérieux) jockeying for literary position is a hallmark of the planning stages for these spring breaks. As early as November, students start plotting, planning, and negotiating. The reading choices flow from this learned confusion. Every year, a few students overreach, and are chided by both faculty and fellow students for failing to understand exactly what kinds of readings work in the context of what is really an eight-day break (effectively Saturday-Saturday). Just last year, Brandon Coakley '15 made the mistake not only of choosing Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, but the far more serious one of proclaiming it loudly to all who would listen. He returned from break bent, haggard, and utterly broken in spirit, having failed even to notice the lush Ozark vistas from his rugged little cabin. He just ate frozen pizzas and burritos, drank Coke Zero, and stared at incomprehensible pages.

This year, he has chosen Henry James's The Golden Bowl. He is going back to the Ozark cabin he never left last year, and plans to take a few walks. He has learned something about eight days of learning and reflection.

[e] Winding Down RF

And that is the point of the "break." To learn. To grow. To visit other places. The more trendy among our students and faculty call this "experiential" learning. Galen Grimsrud, Edmund Leach Distinguished Professor of Ethnographic Inquiry, scoffs at this term. "Experiential? That is what learning is. Give me a notebook, a great work of literature, and a setting where I can talk, ask questions, reflect, read, and write...and I'll call that 'learning.' What need have we to add silly little modifiers?"

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So off they went last Saturday—to the far corners of North and Central America, as well as various corners of the globe. It's tricky, though. Think of New Zealand. Traveling for the better part of three days (not counting time lost to jet lag) is not always the best way to spend an eight-day break that is meant for relaxing, reading, thinking, and experiential learning. The funding committee is usually quite generous in its appraisal of these ventures, knowing that the best way to learn from gnawing off too large an itinerary is to have a few overly ambitious souls do so...and then speak loudly enough upon return about their flawed plans to etch it into the Ponder College spring break mythology.

So, rather than Auckland, a group of junior history majors decided to retrace Alexis de Tocqueville's journey across the territory we know today as "Michigan." They read the accompanying essay in the back of the Penguin Classics edition of Democracy in America, and thought about the Michigan frontier (and immensely dense forests) back in the 1830s. It was just about the perfect balance of reading, traveling, and reflection. Just right—like baby bear (and they saw a few of those, too).

[f] Paleozoic RF

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Faculty members have access to the fund pool, too, and often make action-packed trips to the areas in which their research and teaching is based. This spring, Jeremy Baustian, Associate Professor of Arabic and Swahili, made a whirlwind (and, as he notes, utterly exhausting) trip to Kenya and Tanzania to look at the East African sources of travel for an unlikely explorer from Doylestown, Pennsylvania, a century ago. "He started the trip in Mombasa, and crossed the heart of central Africa—all without knowing really a word of any relevant African language. He was a strange man." Professor Baustian brought that traveler's 1904 book A Yankee in Pigmy Land with him, and winced repeatedly at the confident colonialism of yester-century.

Chris Chrislie checked himself into an anger management clinic. "If I don't get this anger thing under control," he muttered to no one in particular, "I'll never be a dean." He brought the Daodejing with him, and pondered messages of flowing with the Way.

[g] Journey RF

Even President Andrea Blume took a trip—almost like a mini-sabbatical in a swirling calendar of fundraising. She went to Vancouver Island, and brought a copy of Rousseau's Second Discourse with her. "There is no direct relationship between my chosen location and the book I read," she cautioned. "I learned early in my presidency that you can overthink these things, and get too "cute" with the relationship between observation and travel, on the one hand, and reading, on the other. I usually pick a book and a location almost (and that almost is key here) independently of each other."

But students enjoy these trips as much as anyone. Indeed, seniors have worked the breaks down to an art form. No longer trapped in the vise of surreptitious alcohol consumption, they apply themselves to creating the perfect spring break capstone. This year, a large group of anthropology majors read both Genesis and Darwin's Origin of the Species. And they visited the Creation Museum in Kentucky. "This trip was about learning...asking questions, listening," said recently returned Katrina Schuman '14. "It might seem that we had an 'agenda,' but we (emphatically) did not. We just wanted to think about key areas of disagreement in our society. We watched, we listened, we read, and we learned. That's all."

[h] Scuba RF

So think about it. Eight breaks—one in the middle of each of the eight semesters. Eight "books" (we'll talk more about that as autumn break approaches next October). Eight trips. As a unit, they form one of the most distinctive (and appealing) aspects of a Ponder College education, and the fund is continually replenished and expanded as alumni who have valued their own experiences give back to the college.

And now—today—it is over.

Everyone is filtering back and, by Sunday night, each student will be starting preparations for Monday classes, post-midterm papers, and the inexorable march toward finals. No one can ever take that trip away, though, and dreams of the next one will begin almost immediately.

NEXT
Sunday, 7 April 2014
Ponder College (5)—One Wheel, One Dream
A Ponder College education only looks like it is "skewed" towards academics to outsiders who do not understand. From the top down (and "bottom" up), Ponder faculty, staff, and students reject this categorization.

[i] Twilight RF