By All Accounts, a Tough Year in the Groves of Academe

An essayist I admire, Tim Kreider, once confessed to being “inappropriately cheered” by the knowledge “that Things Are Tough All Over, that everyone else is secretly as wretched as I am.” 

I was similarly consoled recently when a friend mentioned the latest murderous attack at a school in her native Sweden. Don’t take this the wrong way, I told her, but I’m slightly comforted to learn that mayhem in schools isn’t a uniquely American phenomenon. Things Are Tough All Over.  

I could devote this entire column to that topic, though considering what’s going on in Ukraine, I could make the opposite claim: Things are so tough there that life’s a bowl, or at least a thimbleful, of cherries most everywhere else. 

Instead, I’m going to narrow my definition of “All Over” to the supposedly cosseted world of higher education.  

To review: After two-and-a-half semesters of Zoom-and-gloom, we welcomed Penn State students back to campus last fall, amid general mask-muted rejoicing. After endlessly surfing from one class to another without ever leaving their bedrooms, students were like air travelers during a layover between long flights – happy just to be moving about, and basking in the company of their fellow humans. Even listening to a more-or-less live geezer in some soulless cinder-block space in the Willard Building had novelty value. 

The honeymoon, alas, did not last. 

Attendance plummeted. So did participation. At first I thought it must be me, the Least Interesting Man in the World (though I have long contended that even if I am boring, the readings in my literature of journalism and column-writing classes are interesting). 

Here’s where knowing “everyone else is as wretched as I am” comes into play. I compared notes with colleagues. Things were much the same in their classes. Then came an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, the upshot of which was that things were much the same from coast to coast, and from tiny colleges to jumbo state schools like ours.

It’s tempting to blame the lack of student engagement entirely on COVID, but faculty who responded to the Chronicle’s request to share experiences said the pandemic only magnified stressors that were already there. 

Here is what one prof heard from students: 

“They say everything feels hopeless. They say they are overwhelmed, stressed, and anxious. They say it feels as if the world is falling apart and everything is out of control…They say they have no time to sleep and take care of themselves. Many also admit to compulsive use of the internet.”

Verily, every generation gets pummeled by events that make folks feel like things are spinning out of control. Among the readings I assign in my column-writing class are contemporaneous accounts of the assassinations of JFK, RFK and MLK. Ancient history for my students; for me, a stark reminder of the general madness of a slouching-toward-Bethlehem childhood.

This current crop of college students may have it worse, though. They have never known what it’s like to go to an airport without being treated like a potential terrorist. They’ve been shadowed by school shootings, toxic politics, an increasingly cutthroat economy that has many doubting that they’ll ever be able to afford a house or a kid, and a growing sense that their social media fixations are doing them more harm than good. Looming over all, the climate-change doomsday that may come in their lifetimes. 

Yet when I asked my students what they thought about the columns we read on these and other grim topics, they had little to say. 

Perhaps you’re thinking, what did you expect? Feed them a steady diet of terrible news, and of course they’re going to clamp their jaws shut. (I’m not a total sadist: We also do a week of humor columns.)

It’s possible they’re not ready to think about the big, scary world out there. Their focus is more local, as in, the dramas of their own family and social lives. 

We’re all like that to some degree. As upset as I am about the war in Ukraine, I’m ashamed to say that I’d probably be more upset if, say, my basement flooded, trivial as that is compared to the siege of Mariupol. But at least I know about the siege of Mariupol.

A few weeks ago, after posing a juicy discussion question, I broke the lengthening silence by grumbling, “You’re in an opinion writing class, yet you have no opinions?” 

I learned from their columns that they do, in fact, have opinions. So probably they were just shy about voicing them — afraid they might say something stupid, or that they might espouse an unpopular view. 

OK, I get that, too. But it didn’t make my job any easier. Or any more fun. 

Believe me, I’m keenly aware that compared to many other ways of earning one’s daily bread, academic life is pretty cush. But ask any of us. This year was a toughie.