People | George
Davis
Beginnings
Commencement Address
St. Gregory College Preparatory School
Tucson, Arizona
May 26, 2007
Graduating seniors, parents and family members, distinguished
faculty, Trustees, and guests.
Headmaster Creeden was winsome when he called
to invite me to give this year’s Commencement Address, explaining that it would be
on May 26th, at 7:30PM, in El Mirador, …and that there would be
air conditioning! After saying yes right away, I told
him that I wanted to entitle my address, Beginnings, for May
25th was to be my last day as UA’s Executive Vice President and
Provost, before beginning sabbatical leave, and preparing to return
to teaching and research in Geosciences.
One of the beckoning phrases in Wordsworth’s Prelude is
the vision of expectation and desire and something evermore about to
be!, …which is the psychology of life that brings us to an emphasis
this evening on Beginnings. I want to stress
that one of the transformative realities about life is that there are many beginnings
in a single life. Thus the singular Beginning just
won’t do, even for Commencement this evening. Each of you,
as graduates, will experience successive beginnings during your lifetime,
and your St. Gregory core will allow you to be adept at new
beginnings.
In my own case the beginnings over the decades
have included going to college, going to grad school, getting married,
having kids, becoming a professor, teaching new courses, starting
new research projects, learning to play Bach on chromatic harmonica,
becoming a vice president for business affairs, becoming a university
president, and becoming a provost. Yet, if I were to choose
an example with which to explore the fundamental dynamics of new
beginnings, I would use a personal example not about academics
or family, but about athletics: in
my case, deciding as a sophomore in college to try pole vaulting for
the first time.
[bring the vaulting pole into view, pushing it out toward audience,
then raising it vertically by the podium, for most of the talk]]
As a freshman at The College of Wooster, in Ohio,
I made the basketball team, but wasn’t a starter (a new experience for me), and over
the summer I tried to get in touch with what I did best, what I might
do best, and what might really be challenging and, as a result, satisfying. I
concluded that my physical makeup, my skills, and my reckless courage
would work for the pole vault. When I returned as a sophomore,
I gave up basketball, and turned my attention to track and field.
Lesson One: In
turning to brand new things with the objective of doing them well,
prepare to give up something very important to you.
In the early Fall I told the track coach, Coach
Munson, what I aspired to do. He loved it, for he knew I could ‘fly’, …he
had seen me sprint after the ball in P.E. soccer classes. However,
Coach Munson ‘pooh poohed’ my desire to be a jumper. I
heard the coach, in-effect, say: “A little late in
life to start vaulting; you’re 19 years old!” So…,
on my own, I started reading about pole vaulting, and how to do it. The
books were about vaulting on a steel pole.
Lesson Two: Don’t
accept the limitations that others might try to impose on you.
Reading about pole vaulting in the privacy of
my room was one thing. Trying
my hand at it was quite another, especially as others looked on. I
borrowed a 16-foot-long steel pole with a 2 and ¼” diameter,
[the pole I now have in my hand is a 13-and-one-half feet long with
a 1 and 1/8 inch diameter], and began to take baby steps. I would
run around what I hoped would be the most unpopulated parts of campus
while carrying the cumbersome, heavy object, thusly. Later, inside
the gym, I tried learning how to “plant” it, with mats
for some protection. I never had the opportunity to actually
jump until the first meet of the year, in the winter, indoors. Coach
Munson put me in three or four running events and the long jump, and
I persuaded him to put me into the pole vault as well. I
asked that the bar be placed at 8-and-a-half feet. I cleared
it on my first jump, but at the top of my jump it became obvious to
me, and to others, that I hadn’t read the part about landing
with delicacy.
Lesson Three: Be
prepared to learn some things that seem impossible completely on
your own, accept exposure, expect skepticism, deal with embarrassment,
and, as necessary, humiliation.
In my Junior year, I set the school record. [about 3” below
the height of this pole]. Now Coach Munson was on board,
and he bought me a brand new pole, fiberglass, a purple “Skypole.” What
a beauty! [Hold up the segment I still possess; slip it over
the modern pole; show them the gold label with the word, “Skypole.”]. This
was in 1963, and if there were books on jumping using glass poles,
I never found any. But, someone found me: Gordy Collins,
or should I say, Assistant Professor Gordon Collins, Department of
Psychology, a vaulter himself, and in his first year on the faculty
of Wooster College. He wandered down to the (sawdust) pit one
afternoon, and became my mentor, my coach. He helped me figure out
what these glass poles were all about. Together we celebrated
when I broke, …we broke…, the conference record. [9 inches
above the top of this pole].
Lesson Four: You
really can’t do it alone. Accept help, accept advice,
bask in mentorship. Things then can go from harsh to joyful.
The manufacturers of ‘Skypoles’ didn’t
really know how these poles worked. It was up to the jumpers
to figure them out. The early great vaulters who mastered glass
were experimentalists! I saw ex-Marine Jim Tork clear 16 feet,
indoors, in 1963. The technique was totally different than for steel. With
steel you had to control your speed, or accept losing all your shoulder
muscles during the shock of the plant. [motion a plant] With
glass you had to run at top speed with the pole, as if you were trying
to break through a brick wall. Incidentally, you ignored the
fine-printed warning: for example on this pole I am holding the
label says, ‘don’t exceed the 140 pound weight limit that
this pole has been tested to support.’ The Skypole I
used at Wooster had a 170 pound test limit; I weighed 185 pounds at
the time). You might suppose that the capacity for vaulting higher
with fiberglass was all about the limberness of the pool, and its ‘slingshot’ effect. Actually,
you want to use the stiffest possible glass pole you can somehow
manage to bend through the combination of sprinting velocity and body
mass, and in doing so literally load the pole with strain
energy at impact during the plant. It is the release of
the strain energy, like release from a very stiff spring, that propels
you, -preferably upward - , assuming you are positioned properly, that
is to say, essentially upside down on the pole.
Lesson Five: You
must be prepared to adapt to changing conditions, changing technologies,
and as you learn the new technologies, you must really understand
them at the core, including the risks.
How crazy it is to jump with fiberglass! Fly
down the runway, plant at full speed, and then, immediately,
lift your legs not only straight above your head but back toward
the approach path, …and
then just ‘hang’ for a few seconds.
Lesson Six: You
really can’t just go half way entering a new beginning; instead
you must throw your whole self into it. Otherwise
you simply won’t reach altitude.
Don’t panic when, in the first nanosecond of the jump, with
legs overhead and eyes looking back from whence you came, you descend
a foot or two as the pole bends. This happens even though you
have been programmed to believe you should be ascending throughout. Resist
bailing out!
Lesson Seven: In
most new beginnings worth doing, courage and poise will be required. Advance
preparation and an understanding of the fundamentals will, in the
complex mix of things, help you to ignore what may appear to be a
setback.
If once in a while you achieve full velocity,
and the steps are perfect, and the plant is seamless, and the standards
supporting the bar are just the right distance away, and the feet
fly up fast, and if you’re
in perfect suspended balance, …well, there is no feeling
quite like it. Suddenly, effortlessly, you’ve cleared
the height without any serious work at the top.
Lesson Eight: It’s
the preparation at the ground level, at the beginning, (here
at St. Gregs), that counts. If you don’t
have it at the base, you’ll flounder at the top, sometimes
clearing, …but not in a way that’s pretty, …and
usually missing, or getting hurt.
I can speak from my own experience: it was liberal arts education,
of the type that St. Gregory School emphasizes, that provided the foundation
for me to serve as the Provost, the Chief Academic Officer, of a major
research university. It wasn’t specialization that prepared
me, … (specialization is essential but not sufficient), …it
was liberal learning inside and outside of the classroom, through decades
of new beginnings. This applies to leadership generally.
What I’m really saying is that the preparation for new beginnings,
and then soaring, involves introspection that reaches conclusion; inspiration
that connects with inner passion; letting go of certain things comfortable
and known; independent learning and engagement often before others
see the potential in you; adapting to new environments and challenges; gaining
new understandings of fundamentals; preparing solidly and over long
periods of time; accepting risks; being mentored; taking yourself
seriously, but not too seriously, …fortunately, many ‘landings’ are
in foam rubber.
Above all, perhaps, keep perspective even though
it appears that the only thing holding you up is a thread. [hold up the pole] Invisible
forces, invisible hands are supporting you all the way.
Robert Frost captured part of this feeling in his poem, Birches. (I
once heard him read some of his poems to a full chapel one afternoon
at Wooster College, and I think it was right before track practice).
Frost, in referring to a boy (could have well
been a girl), …over
a season, …over the years, climbing and bending one birch tree
after another on the family farm, wrote:
…“He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.”
…which brings me to the final
lesson: |
Lesson Nine: New beginnings
are the substance of hope, progress, and transformation, and
you will begin things best, throughout your lives, when you stay connected
with the youth of successive generations to your own, …when
you stay connected, in a manner of speaking, with you (the
graduating class) as you are this very evening (take a flash
photo of them from the podium), I repeat, as you are this very evening
(another flash photo), …this very evening (a third photo).
Congratulations on what you have accomplished,
and congratulations, in advance, for what you are about to begin.
George H. Davis
Executive Vice President & Provost*
Regents Professor, Department of Geosciences
The University of Arizona
May 26, 2007
*Having served 7 years, Professor Davis’ last day as Executive
Vice President & Provost was May 25th, just the day before giving
this address at St. Gregory School. May 26th was Davis’ first
day of sabbatical. What a good way to begin!
|
