This may well be the last edition of The Tufts Daily that you will read before you commence out of here. Some of your parents will read this, also. So, I want to tell you things that have been important to me and may be important to you.
This has been the 62nd consecutive year that I have been in school. Since Kindergarten and Miss Bergen, who let me roast my apple on the radiator if I was a good boy, every September I start school, and every May or June the year comes to an end. I have to tell you a secret: this is the greatest life in the world; and I hope some of you think about following in these ageing footsteps.
First of all, you ought to be reminded just how intelligent you are. Everyone of you who will march across that stage is as bright as any of us who have been teaching you for the past four years. All of you are qualified because of the gray matter between your ears to go on for the Master's and Doctorate degrees. All you need is the capacity to sit on your duff and do the work. The brains you have; it's only a durable rear end that you need, what the Germans call "SITZFLEISCH." Writing a Ph.D. thesis of a couple hundred pages may seem beyond your wildest hopes, but I assure you, each of you can do it.
Now that you know that you can do it, the question is: why should you? Well, I tried to hint at that earlier. This academic life, when compared to any other I might have chosen, is by far the most satisfying. You don't have to worry about making a lot of money. You are not going to, so that's that. But, don't worry, we professors are doing well, making more than we ever dreamed we would. We are not judged on our salary, on how much we earn. There are other standards to measure success: being a great teacher or a significant scholar. I have seen some of you teach, and I have read many of your papers. You can do it all.
You can choose the kind of institution you want. There are l,500 community colleges, small churchy places, huge research universities, and places like Tufts, which has been perfect for me. For the past thirty-eight years I have been teaching undergraduates, while educating graduate students about the art of teaching. I like the teaching university, where all the faculty do research. That's us, that's Tufts, and the fact that I wound up here is one of the luckiest breaks I ever got. There are 4,000 colleges and universities for you to pick from, a delicious variety to make a career.
What else? I get to be near a gym, a swimming pool, an indoor infield and a training room. I haven't missed many days in the past nearly four decades.
I never have to grow up completely. Every year we graduate the 21-year-olders and bring in the 17-old kids. It's like Peter Pan. In case you haven't noticed, the faculty, no matter how old, are not too stuffy, not too formal. That's because we like serving pancakes at night during exams, throwing some basketballs around, and being with young people, particularly undergraduates.
Then, there are the books, the library, the business of just reading all the time. My older brother has always been jealous of me, of the quality of my life, the fact that I can read anything I want, because it is what we are supposed to do. When I see a book that I want, I order it for the library. When it comes in, someone sends me a note. What could be better in life?
I have had more than a 40-year career teaching at a university. It has been wonderful: summers in Europe on $l0 a day (the l960s), sabbaticals with the family in Germany, travel to Italy with weeks in Florence, Venice and Rome. There was more time to spend with the family than could be provided by any other profession. We have an extraordinary amount of freedom as faculty, we hardly work for anyone. We are mostly anarchists, anyway: fiercely independent, often uncooperative, so don't tell us that we have to come to work five days a week. We work when we want to. We also get lifetime appointments after seven years, if we are lucky. Tenure is wonderful, even if we abuse it sometimes. Having tenure never made me lazy.
Finally, there will be jobs. Although the Pepper Amendment took away any mandatory requirement for retirement, I think our profession is sufficiently responsible to realize that we can't go on forever, and that we ought to make room for the next generation. None of us thought we would be teaching at 70. When we started, we all assumed that we would be retired by 65. Now, there is no retirement date, and some of us are going on too long. We need to make way, to give the next generation a chance.
You don't have to decide now that you want to follow this path. Maybe taking a year off to do anything you want isn't a bad idea. But, start thinking about this blessed life that I have had. It doesn't get any better. I even loved graduate school. Find a great, huge university where the faculty only want to win the Nobel Prize and don't give a damn about undergraduates. That's the place to get your Ph.D.(The perfect education is a Tufts undergraduate degree and a Ph.D. from UCLA, where you can stay warm and watch big-time sports played by semi-professionals.)
So, there it is, the best life in the world. Think about it. If you want to talk, let me know. In the meantime, have a wonderful life.
Sol Gittleman is the departing provost of Tufts University.
