It is rare that Ski and I get a chance to go out. For better or worse, this is just something that you get used to once you have kids. However, Mike Sorrell, an old friend of mine was in town and invited us to a special dinner concert that Oberlin College was holding at The Birdland Jazz Club. The invitation only event was hosted by the new president of Oberlin, Marvin Krislov, and featured the Oberlin Jazz Septet. Since I hadn’t seen Mike since our graduation from Oberlin almost twenty years ago, I made it a point to ask my moms to watch the kids for a few hours. I wanted to catch up with an old college buddy, and being a cheapskate, I figured that it wouldn’t hurt to take my wife out at the same time.
It was great to see Mike. It can be surreal when you run into old friends that you haven’t encountered since college. In your mind’s eye you still expect to see them as you last saw them. This is in most cases an unreasonable expectation. However, except for the shaved head, Mike hadn’t changed at all. Unlike many of our contemporaries, myself included, Mike looked like he hadn’t gained a pound. Physically he hadn’t changed, however he was more confident and polished than in our college days. He also seemed happier and more content than I had ever remembered seeing him. That was the most striking thing considering that Mike was always such a good natured guy, and the last time I saw him was during the halcyon days of college.
A large part of his contentment was because Mike had recently been named President of Paul Quinn College. I think that after years of working in the private sector he had finally found his true calling. When I asked him about it he explained that he now had the opportunity to effect change on a personal level. He was now able to provide guidance to young people striving to find their place in the world. I understood what he meant.
The amount of personal change that we as educators are able spark in our students is hard to fully explain to those outside of academia. That is not to say that people in the private sectors don’t accomplish great deeds. It is just that working directly with students, and on the issues that impact their lives, we are able to personally guide them in to become better students, better people, and better members of the community. I can’t speak for others, but in all my time in the corporate world, I never fundamentally changed an individual’s life in the way that I do now as an educator.
As the evening progressed we got caught up on how our lives had developed over the last two decades. We spoke of old friends and mentors, like our Oberlin basketball coach who had since passed on. We laughed how our coach helped us in ways beyond playing ball and how the experience of playing for a sub 500 Division III basketball squad gave us the strange determination to succeed that you can only gain from having your behinds kicked on the court night in and out. But overall we mostly talked about our mothers, their respective battles with cancer, and reflected on how things might have been different for us had we not had such strong women in our lives. It is no surprise that thanks to the efforts of our mothers, neither of us were were ever seriously in jeopardy of falling victim the much chronicled fate that faces many young African-American males. Our outcomes could have been radically different if not for them.
All in all it was a fun night. The music and food were great. Ski and I were able to “go out” without going broke (partying in NYC is real hard on an Assistant Professor’s salary). Plus I was able to see an old friend and reminiscence about more carefree times. Which reminds me, I gotta call Mike and thank him for the invite. Hopefully it won’t be another twenty years before we catch up again.