Once upon a time, when I was a little girl, I asked my mother why the word "university" has the word "universe" in it. She told me that it's related to the word "universal", meaning "for everyone". (Which is fairly accurate, according to the OED entry. There are more nuances, but it's a perfectly reasonable explanation if your audience is a small child.)
So I thought about this, and about what I knew about universities. I'd been on a university campus before, and I knew there were a wide range of people there. There were old people with beards and white hair, people like my father who worked there, grownups who were younger than my parents walking around in crowds and sometimes doing silly things, and kids like me who took swimming lessons and gymnastics classes on campus. When my parents talked about their time as university students, they mentioned having classmates and professors from all kinds of different places all around the world. And my parents themselves sometimes took continuing education classes at the university.
In short, all kinds of different people from all kinds of different places of all kinds of different ages doing all kinds of different things. My mother's explanation seemed accurate: universities are for everyone.
What's interesting is the lifelong impact that this little conversation had on my thinking.
Once upon a time, a friend of mine had to kill some time between appointments and was trying to figure out what to do. She was near a university campus, so I suggested that she go on campus and find a coffee shop or a library or a quiet corner with a seat and some wifi. She was reluctant to do that because she was older than the typical university student and felt like she'd be out of place. But I was completely baffled that anyone could ever feel this way - universities are for everyone!
In my own university classes, we had our fair share of mature students. I didn't think to question it, because universities are for everyone. I later heard some classmates talk about being weirded out by the presence of older students, and I was shocked into speechlessness that anyone would feel that way. How is it not glaringly obvious that universities are for everyone?
And even now, as an adult who is older than the "older" students whose presence weirded out my undergrad classmates, even knowing that there are undergrad students who feel that way, I wouldn't hesitate to go back to school if I should ever find myself in a situation where it's the correct decision for me. Because I know, intrinsically and instinctively, that university is for everyone.
I'm quite certain my mother wasn't intentionally trying to instill in me a sense of comfort and belonging at institutions of higher education. I wouldn't even be surprised if she didn't actually know that the word "university" was in fact derived from the word "universal", and was just saying something that sounded plausible to get me to shut up because that was the 4738th question I'd asked her that day.
But, nevertheless, I internalized this passing remark to the extent that my brain doesn't even question it, even though I know full well that it's just a passing remark that I unduly internalized and that many people in the world believe it to be untrue.
Isn't that terrifying?
3 comments:
The persistence of parental influence is the #1 reason for therapy. At times it seems indelible. We can only liberate ourselves from it with tremendous effort and vigilance. And yes. Terrifying.
And more specific to this post, and more in keeping with the post's positive vibe: my mother completed her undergraduate degree when I was a little girl (I am the youngest) and then went on to complete her Master's. She was the first university graduate in our family, and she did it as an adult with three children and an unsupportive spouse. That definitely influenced my decision to go to grad school as a "mature" student.
The irony is that my parents made many, many attempts, both explicit and subtle, to deliberately instill certain values in me. And I got to a point (and this is well before the age of 10) where I could tell by their tone that this is what they were trying to do and it would make me suspicious.
But this casual passing remark (and, I'm sure, many others that I'm not even aware of) just dug right in.
Post a Comment