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“Individually Successful, Collectively Diverse”
In welcoming the Class of 1998 to Yale College, President Levin reminded his audience that the path to self-discovery should be neither unwavering nor short.
October 1994
by Richard Levin ’74PhD
Thirty years ago and three thousand miles away, I enrolled as a freshman at one of America’s great academic institutions. I must confess that I can barely remember my freshman assembly. I imagine that my university’s president offered some stirring words on that stately occasion, but they are irretrievably lost in memory. I suppose that there must have been some kind of reception following the ceremony, but I remember nothing of it except that it was the first time I wore a necktie in four years at Stanford. The second time was at commencement.
Freshman assembly aside, I have vivid memories of my first days in college. Recollections of some first encounters with classmates remain sharply in focus, but especially vivid is the memory of one of my freshman counselors—a lively, enthusiastic senior whose principal academic interests were English, psychology, and the Boston Celtics. Short, stocky, and curly-haired, he spoke to us that first night in a high-pitched voice filled with an energy and passion that I found electrifying. I don’t remember exactly what he said that evening, but I remember exactly what he stood for throughout that freshman year and just how he challenged us.
My freshman counselor had a remarkable appreciation of people of virtually every description. He had an extraordinary ability to grasp and to articulate the essential and differentiating features of each person he came to know. He was a student of human behavior, vitally interested in learning everything he could about other people. It wouldn’t be fair to say that he was nonjudgmental, because he examined everyone with a discerning clinical eye, but he relished, almost indiscriminately, everyone’s individuality and idiosyncrasies. In some ways, he seemed to relish most those whose behaviors were most extreme—from the terrified grind who pulled twice-weekly all-nighters to the exuberant young man, now a distinguished medical ethicist, who repeatedly filled our dresser drawers with shaving cream, flooded the hallway with barrages of water balloons, and occasionally hung dead snakes on doorknobs. But, ultimately, my freshman counselor valued most those people who had the self-knowledge and courage to define themselves by their own lights and stake out an independent course.
He challenged us. He challenged us to be as curious about ourselves as he was, to reflect on our histories and our surroundings, and to figure out, each of us for ourselves, who we were and what we hoped to become.
Why am I telling you about my freshman counselor? I suppose it would be reasonable enough for me to reminisce about my freshman year with any incoming freshman class. But I do so today because among you is the daughter of the freshman counselor I have described. And it is my special pleasure this afternoon to try to pass on to you something of what he taught me.
As members of the Class of 1998, you are individually successful and collectively diverse. You come from 28 different countries, 50 different states, and 886 different high schools. Among you is a cross-country bicycle racer, a cattle breeder, a professional tennis player, and a student who has not had any formal schooling since fourth grade. All of you have significant achievements. You are accomplished scholars, artists, musicians, athletes, entrepreneurs, community activists, leaders. A few of you have already discovered a consuming passion, an interest that will sustain and motivate you throughout life. By serendipity or hard work you may have precociously staked out your identity, found congruence between your dreams and a role that society has available for you.
But for most of you, the task of self-discovery lies ahead, as it did for me 30 years ago. Here at Yale you will encounter new ideas at an astonishing rate. You will meet people with values and attitudes unlike any you have known before. You will be challenged—challenged to think through for yourself just where you stand in relation to these ideas, values, and attitudes. You will be challenged to define yourself, to seek an identity that both incorporates your past and differentiates you from it, to find a role for yourself in the larger society that gives appropriate scope for you to be the person you aspire to be.
When I spoke to last year’s freshman class, I stated my belief that the task of a liberal education is to develop the capacity to think critically and independently. Your central project is not only to acquire this capacity but to use this invaluable tool, which will be sharpened and refined in the course of your education, to define yourself.
Like most young people in search of identity, my freshman counselor had his own personal pantheon of heroes and villains against which he measured himself. It was quite an eclectic lot. Among his heroes was Red Auerbach, the tough-talking, cigar-smoking coaching genius who led his beloved Celtics to nine NBA championships. Among the villains was the commander of the campus Reserve Officer Training Corps, who, in response to my counselor’s mild, but principled objection to some military procedure, uttered the memorable words: “Son, never let your ideals get in the way of your daily life.”
Needless to say, my freshman counselor ignored this advice. For somewhere in his pantheon there were intellectual heroes, thinkers who helped define the ideals that got in the way of and, indeed, guided his daily life. One such hero was a distinguished psychoanalyst who died this past year, a man who can easily be forgiven for spending most of his career at Harvard because his son has been for many years one of Yale’s most loved and respected scholars, teachers, and citizens. I refer to Erik Erikson, whose important books Childhood and Society and Identity and the Life Cycle gave an early and very illuminating treatment of the idea of identity and its role in psychological and social development.
One of Erikson’s principal contributions was to emphasize that identity is formed in a context shaped by personal history and social environment. Personal history matters—the nature of your family, the values and beliefs that governed your childhood, and the ease or difficulty with which you passed through the various developmental stages prior to young adulthood. Coming to be your own person requires that you understand your past and define your aspirations both in terms of past values and beliefs as well as against them. For some, a period of rebellion against the values of childhood and family is inevitable, but forming a healthy personal identity requires a movement beyond rebellion to the integration of the past with aspirations for the future. We are each of us what we have been, and yet we need not be prisoners of our past. Each of us has the potential to be something more.
In Childhood and Society Erikson draws on historical and anthropological material to illustrate—in the context of Sioux, Yurok, German, Russian, and mainstream American cultures—how the formation of identity is influenced by the social environment. Here at Yale you can seek your identity in an environment that abounds in opportunities for learning and growth. There are 1,800 courses available to you—a virtual map of human knowledge. We have magnificent art and natural history collections and one of the great libraries of the world. More than 200 student organizations give you ample scope to explore your extracurricular interests. Yet perhaps more important than these institutional resources are the people you will encounter and the norms that govern this community. Among the faculty and your fellow students you will find many who have histories, values, beliefs, and attitudes that are strikingly different from your own. But despite our differences, we are collectively connected, by long-standing tradition and by deep conviction, to open discussion, critical inquiry, and independent thought.
In such an environment, you have an extraordinary opportunity to learn, to test your values, beliefs, and attitudes against others, to define new possibilities for yourself. Having the time, resources, and freedom to shape your own identity gives you the best possible chance to lead a full, happy, and productive life, the best possible chance to contribute to the well-being of those around you—your family, your community, your nation, your world. The opportunity to become a whole person is not given to everyone. You have it. Seize this opportunity with energy and passion.
And don’t rush to closure. Take time to explore ideas and possibilities. You have four wonderful years ahead. You don’t have to plan the rest of your life by Thanksgiving.
Another of Erikson’s notable contributions was to warn of the danger of losing one’s autonomy by over-identifying with a group. Now, Yale College is a place where the tendency to affiliate—with singing groups, drama groups, athletic teams, student publications, political and cultural interest groups, and Yale itself—is particularly strong. This is a great virtue of the institution, and it is reflected not only in the astonishing energy of undergraduate life here but also in the devotion of Yale College alumni, whose sense of affiliation with this place is second to none among graduates of American colleges and universities. But Erikson is right to warn against letting affiliation with a group become a substitute for shaping your own unique identity. There are two practical lessons here. First, though there is much to gain from exploring the common interests you share with others, don’t avoid or exclude those whose values, beliefs, and interests are very different. You have the most to learn from those who are least like you; they will challenge you by asking questions you should ask yourself. Second, don’t just adopt a role by conforming to the norms and expectations of a group. To discover who you are and to determine what kind of life best suits you, you must reflect seriously on your personal history and the people and ideas you encounter.
You will not be surprised to learn that as a junior I became a freshman counselor. My copy of Erik Erikson’s monograph, Identity and the Life Cycle, was given to me the first week of my junior year—as you might expect, by my freshman counselor, then a graduate student in clinical psychology. It is inscribed as follows: “To Rick, who is now helping others to seek the wisdom in this book.”
Twenty-eight years later, I am still trying.  |
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