Brodhead to Sophomores: Build a Bigger House at Duke

It has been said that youth is wasted on the young. I don't know if that's true, but it may well be that freshman convocations are wasted on the freshmen. At the fateful moment when college begins, we ask you to purge your minds of all other thoughts and receive the wisdom to govern your new life. The only trouble is, in those first days, we hit you with every possible orientation all at once, as in a giant inoculation program where all the shots are given simultaneously -- plus we share our words when you are dazed and confused, prey to a thousand distractions. When you sat here a year ago, I imagine you were excited by the great unknown and a little unnerved as well. I spoke, but you were busy listening to inner voices: would you ever find the buildings where your classes met? Would you ever understand the freshman dining plan? Who were all those people behind their smiling faces? Were they cool enough to be your friends? Were you cool enough to be theirs?

My dear sophomores, take the measure of one year's growth. You know your way around now; you've taken over the choice real estate; you've made Duke home; in short, you own this place. You're miles beyond the freshman you were -- and unlike seniors, you're not on your way out, and can leave the future for another day. If you seem comfortable, even a bit smug, how can I blame you? But your comfort gives me my opportunity. I plan to treat this as a do-over of your freshman convocation: convocation for those who have ears to hear.

What happened between then and now? In part, you mastered a terra incognita of infinite possibilities by composing your personal program. You organized time into your daily schedule and space into your daily itinerary. You structured Duke's vast social wilderness into your web of connections, your patterns of activity and association, your social life. Having done this, you come back to a life that's settled, familiar, deeply known. But habituation brings dangers along with its comforts. Let me say a word about both.

Habit means doing the same thing over and over until it becomes second nature. We need habitual routines to get through daily life. And habit has long been recognized to have a crucial role in education. Aristotle taught that virtues aren't innate powers but dispositions we build through repeated actions. Athletes and musicians practice so that excellent performance can become a habitual achievement. We learn to write by having to write repeatedly in an atmosphere where writing is subject to critical attention.

And it goes deeper. If you are a member of Colbert Nation, you know that I have a new platform as a champion of the liberal arts. (I trust you already knew what margins are for.) This education aims to equip you not just for your first job but for a long, productive life. It does this by training you in deep dispositions, habits of intelligence you can deploy in changing contexts. Duke aims to produce creative, versatile problem-solvers for whom it's second nature to take a lesson learned in one context and apply it in another. How did you master that skill? You didn't take a class in it. You built this habit through continual exercise in a hundred academic and extra-academic contexts, until it became part of who you are.

But if habits lock in valuable things, they lock out alternative possibilities. And if I have a worry for the Class of 2016, it's that the habits that make life so comfortable on your return may set invisible boundaries on your education. "Doing things over and over" is excellent if you want to learn to play arpeggios or sink free throws. When it means making the same curricular choices over and over, or hanging out with the same friends over and over having the same conversations for the hundredth time, self-definition can quickly shade into self-restriction.

Emerson caught the paradox in a memorable line: "Every spirit builds its house; but then the house confines the spirit." You built your personal Duke last year. But as sophomores you don't need to be confined to the Duke you've already constructed: you could build another, bigger house if you remember the choices that are still yours. Everything you start to study here can open the way to deepened understanding in your later life; and every subject you neglect can set you up for a career as an ignoramus. Please don't doom yourself to be a perpetual know-nothing about neuroscience or foreign policy or economics or American literature just because you didn't take them in your freshman year.

Plus as you know, at Duke, stimuli to deepened understanding run far beyond formal coursework. A new exhibit of Islamic art opened at the Nasher last Thursday. A national conference on health care innovation will take place this coming Monday. You could go to both events. So do you plan to? You could say, I'm not the kind of person who goes to things like that, that's not my habit -- or you could say, I'd like to open my mind to that, and maybe form a new habit. You'll get a richer education by one of these roads than by the other.

Then most of all: Duke has gone to the trouble to surround you with a generous selection of the most talented men and women of your generation.  Easy access to such diversity of talent is a luxury you will not find in later life. It's great that you've accessed this resource in some measure by making your first sets of friends. But again, you have a choice. Either you can hunker down in relationships already formed and hope there's enough nourishment there to last you, or, holding fast to friends already made, you can keep reaching out and enlarging your acquaintance, winning the education each new friend embodies.

One thing I love about Duke is the way the appearance of tradition masks a continuous openness to new creation. Traditions are to institutions what habits are to individuals; their repetitions can preserve value, but they can close the doors to invention and improvement. I love the fact that this ancient-appearing university was dreamed up by a President and a donor as recently as the 1920s. I love that the solemn gothic of Duke Chapel is not a medieval legacy but a modern creation (it opened in 1935). Sophomore Convocation itself was dreamed up a mere two-plus years ago by a student, even now only a senior, who saw a void this event might fill.

These people made Duke; they didn't just receive it. I challenge you to make something meaningful of your time at this place -- to build an education commensurate with your desires. Three years to go: there's plenty of time, if you have courage and the will. I welcome you back to your new life at Duke. Please amaze me with your new inventions.