A Final Word:
Clearing out your file cabinets brings you across a few things you want to save for sentimental reasons. I was a Professor of Physiology for 25 years and I always felt being around young college students was a perfect atmosphere for me. But my nature is such that when something is over it is over. Period. Recreating the past is futile. If the past was good, that to me is hitting a home run and the good from the past is what you still carry with you. Below is the front page of a final exam in a Physiology course I taught which seems worth preserving some place, so I put it in here where so many of my thoughts are stored. As I recall this particular Final Word was the one the most students requested to separate from the final exam and take home. It is as follows:
A FINAL WORD FROM YOUR INSTRUCTOR
"Now the END IS UPON US, and so we face the final curtain. We have been like ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing: Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness: So on the oceans of life we pass and speak one another, Only a look and a voice; then darkness again and a silence." (Longfellow)
For those of you who are young, as your world expands you will see SO MANY PEOPLE, SO MANY OPINIONS. Nevertheless, I encourage you to adopt an EXPANSIVE philosophy and not be CONSUMED by conflict. In this little chapter of your life you have toiled to learn some basic principles of physiology. To some, I suppose, this course has just been one damn thing after another. And sometimes, to me, it seems instructors are the bones on which students sharpen their teeth. This has been a personable class with ample talent and I believe most of you have given a reasonable effort, albeit in many cases far short of your real capabilities. Some will achieve their current objectives in life; others will change course, but ALL OF YOU can find a fulfilling niche in life. I like to keep things simple. There is SO MUCH GOOD in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us, that it hardly behooves any of us to talk about the rest of us." (Hoch) My final advice to all of you is DON'T STAND STILL and passively watch the world go by, because if you do---IT WILL.
"It is not doing the thing we like to do but liking the thing we have to do that makes life get better. We do our work and sometimes it goes well and sometimes it doesn't. And when it doesn't we feel low. We pause for a moment, say a prayer in church, drink a beer in the backyard, go to a psychiatrist, or smoke grass if we are young. The granite mass of time cracks and we feel wonder at the world. WE GO ON." (Taylor) As time passes you will eventually realize THE BEST THINGS IN LIFE AREN'T THINGS. Be afraid only of standing still, for the "greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall." (Confucius)
As a student in a course don't wait for the final judgment---it takes place every day with every assignment---and every little corner cut, every little task slighted, can begin a slide from which there is no recovery. "Reality isn't the way you wish things to be, nor the way they appear to be, but the way they actually are. Either you acknowledge reality and use it to your benefit, or it will automatically work against you" (Ringer). This is the END OF THE COURSE, but this course is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the END OF THE BEGINNING.
"There is a way of life, a way of thinking, of behaving towards other men and your fellow creatures, towards all living things, towards the whole earth and the sky and the sun that is based on love, on compassion, on respect, on cherishing everything there is around you because it is wonderful, unique, it's natural and good and it evolved that way by itself, it's got to be cherished and if we think like that and live that kind of life, we can all feel the sun and smell the grass and smell the flowers and look upon each other with appreciation." (Davis)
