This week is, as Dickens would say, the worst of times and the best of times.  It
is a black, snarling, teeth gnashing time of coming up with those very anti-educational
things we call final grades.  It is also a sunny, smiling, and radiant time in each of my
four first year American history survey classes we have that I call "Closure."  No more
journals, films, issue papers, "words for the day," study questions, evaluations,
communication logs, exercises, projects, and a bunch of other stuff.  Just shared
reflections on what it all meant.  Instead of torturous, anti-learning final exams, this
last day we all meet is a time when each of us, including me, brings in something to find
if there are any jewels of the semester's sweet challenges in the toad's crown, to
paraphrase Shakespeare from "As You Like It."  It's a time when we each openly delve
within to see if we've come near the five "whys of it all" I discuss on the first page of
the syllabus under the heading:  "Why are we going to do all that we're going to do, and
what do I hope you get out of this course."  Closure, then, is far more than about what
each student has learned about history or about pondering just what it is each of them has
done or not done or about getting a grade.  It's more about focusing on what it all says
about what each learned about their uniqueness, ability, capacity, talent, and potential.
Closure is a brief and conscious contemplation about if and how each of them might have
grown and changed.  That is, "closure" is like attempting to see that this final day of
the semester is an end without a conclusion, something that is both timely and timeless.
It's about saying "this is who I was when I came into class and this is who I am leaving
this class and this is who I know I can become."  It is that brief time, sometimes very
emotional, we each openly reflect on the "I won't forgets," that is, what being together
for a semester meant to each of us and what it is that we are taking with us and within us
beyond the intellectual constrictions of grade-getting, the physical confines of the
classroom, and the time limits of the semester. 

	I work hard, not always successfully, to consciously, visibly, and vocally
inoculate meaning and purpose into everything, to create an experience to remember, to
make the classroom into something of a ten week long "last lecture" that lasts, to create
an Energizer bunny environment that goes on and on and on, to make the classroom
experience so memorable that students will talk about it for years to come, and to make
the classroom experience a transforming one for each student.  And so, at the beginning of
the week I was struggling.  I was mumbling about the house, "What to bring in?"  I looked
around and around and around.  Then, on Monday morning, just before the first of the four
classes would meet, it hit me.  I smiled.  I went to the cupboard and grabbed a wine
glass.  Next, I went to the bookshelf and picked out a book.  Then, I walked to campus for
that last time we would meet as a class carrying my objects.  

	Why a wine glass and a book?  I'm glad you asked.  You know the end of the
semester is a bitter-sweet affair for me.  There's always within me a tug-of-war between
the people I've come to know--and love--in those classes ending and the adventure of
meeting a new set of people in classes beginning.  I guess it's the usual conflict between
two "natures" within each of us:  the comfortable and reassuring call of the known and the
nervous curiosity-stirring call of the adventurous voyage into the unknown..  But, there's
more to it.  It's like sipping wine and reading a book.   When I am sipping a wine whose
taste I dislike or reading a book I'm not enjoying, my face wrinkles up like a pug and I
can hear myself saying "Ugh, rotgut!" or "What trash!" or worse.   I either spill it out
or put it down and walk away; or, I either feverishly gulp it down or race furiously
through it with a sort of "let's get this over with" attitude; or, my mind drifts to other
places and times, and I can't wait to get away from them with a relieving "thank goodness"
wave of a good riddance.  But, when the wine is to my taste and I like the book, I slow
down with a soothing and satiating warm glow of "aaah" enveloping me.  I don't want to
rush away from the moment; I want to take a look around and see their beauty.  I want to
savor each drop or word.  I don't want to say goodbye to the time I'm in and the place
where I am.   I don't want an ending to the richness of the experience to live, to
achieve, to feel, to learn, and to grow.  And, for the last seventeen years since my
epiphany, though, like each of us academics, each student certainly needs additional aging
and editing, I have never felt anyone in any class, especially those first year students
to be anything other than a good glass of wine or book.  

Make it a good day.

      --Louis--


Louis Schmier                                http://www.therandomthoughts.com 
Department of History                  
Valdosta State University             
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