Another Fall Opening

I just received a text message (a sign of the technology of the times) from Michelle's cousin who just dropped his daughter off for her senior year at Davis and Elkins College. Yes... it's that time of year again!

Tomorrow is the first day of classes at the University of Maryland, College Park. There is a lot of changes in personnel: New university president, new asst VP in Student Affairs, new director of the Stamp Union, and I'm sure there are similar changes all over the campus in the academic units.

For me - I just want to make sure all the students can use their dining plans in the computer systems I oversee. I'm grateful for IT staff, especially the one programmer who ensures that all of the dining plan data gets downloaded and setup into our system.....

However, the start up of the semester makes me think of the mindset and capabilities of this new group of freshman. They are legally adults, but as my supervisor just mentioned, she was dealing with a letter from a student, but it was really from the students mother! At the counter or on the phone, there are many of these young people who are clearly not as independent as a parent might hope when they drop them off on campus.

Learning to be independent is apparently not that easy. I remember feeling independent but having no way to actually cover my expenses. Even so, I rarely felt incapable of functioning when I was 19 or 20 years. Although I didn't know it at the time, I really had no idea what I was doing.

But I could and did reason about matters of faith. I considered what truth was and what it was not. Yet, I am not sure the students of today can grasp the idea of truth - for many, truth is not achievable, or at best it is up to the individual - that is, truth is relative.

I know that these not-so-independent young people will learn about certain elements of truth - right and wrong on an exam for example. But I hope they can translate this into the realm of ultimate reality - it is either no God, and all that it would mean for that to be TRUE, or one has to choose wisely the universe explained by one of a number of faith systems. They can not all be TRUE. I simply hope that - and will do my best to help - today's college students will be savvy enough to realize that whatever metaphysical reality they choose, that it actually reflects the real world morally, physically, spiritually, and intellectually.