Home Opener

LU Men’s Basketball had their first home game of the season last night. I have a long track record of taking a member of this team (or a few) under my wing during their four years (or more) at Lehigh. I love my student athletes. And some of my favorite students of all time have been from this team (hello Zahir! Marquis! CJ!). They work harder than anyone I know. Their schedules are rigorous beyond belief, the pressure they are under (both athletically and academically) is extreme, and they tend to be just very interesting and charismatic guys with fascinating life histories. Working with these kids is one of my very favorite parts of my job.

Before I had kids of my own, I devoted a ton of time to my students’ extra-curricular activities. I’d regularly attend their events– athletic events, art openings, poetry readings, theater productions, concerts, performances. I loved doing all of that. But then we adopted Kyle and Owen, and had Meera, and I just could not keep doing all of that; I was needed at home. But over time I came to miss those things I used to do, and I especially missed the deep connections that doing those things forged between my students and me. It means so much to a student to have me show up at their event. It means so much to me to see their face light up when they notice me there. It takes the professor-student connection out of the classroom and it takes it to an entirely new (and extremely enriching and productive) level. Having all of that missing felt like a gaping hole — it had been one of the things that I loved most, and found most gratifying, about my job.

One of the big motivations for me, in deciding to make the move to live on campus, was knowing that by living here I’d be able to start doing a lot more of those things I had been missing. And it has definitely worked out as I imagined it would: I can attend so much now, simply because it is just easy to do it since I’m right here anyway.

And because I drag my kids along with me (trust me, they are not kicking and screaming; they love this stuff!), it means that it isn’t just me showing up to my students’ events now. It is usually me and a bambino (or three). And while it means a lot to my students to see me show up, what really lights up their faces now is when they see Kyle, Owen, or Meera show up. Talk about lighting up a face!

Right now the star of the men’s basketball team, and the team captain, is Mackey McKnight. He’s a senior this year, but I’ve been working with him intensively since his sophomore year. I’ve been very close to many, many students over my past 12 years at Lehigh, but I have never been as close with a student as I am with Mackey. He holds a very special soft spot in my heart and soul and we have about a hundred stories from the past few years to prove it. We have learned a lot from each other. I have gone way above and beyond for this kid (teaching, advising, mentoring, befriending), and he has gone way above and beyond for me (working at his absolute maximum capacity, as often as possible, and really striving to try to reach my very high expectations and demands of him).

Kyle and Owen idolize Mackey (click here for just one of several posts where Mackey is mentioned). And I don’t mind having them idolize him. Because I know, firsthand, that Mackey is worthy of their adoration. He’s a great role model for my boys in that he’s a great basketball player and Lehigh student, he’s tough, scrappy, extremely bright, and driven. Mackey is not perfect, and just like the rest of us he has his flaws (that’s the beauty of it: I know him well enough to know the multidimensionality of him). I’m not going to sugarcoat this; Mackey is complex. But that is what is so great about this dynamic— Kyle and Owen’s love of Mackey isn’t the typical detached-and-from-a-distance-young-fan-adoration-of-a-sports-figure; Kyle and Owen actually know Mackey and they know that I know Mackey. We all know each other well enough to know our strengths and our weaknesses; the glossy images we see of each other on the Lehigh publications and the views we’ve had of each other’s inside-story-not-at-our-best too. Kyle and Owen know that Mackey doesn’t always get A’s when I grade his papers; Mackey knows that I am not always able to keep my act together; I know that all my boys (Kyle, Owen, Mackey, and all the others too) have idiosyncrasies, that I don’t shy away from, and I try not to hide my own idiosyncrasies from them. We all know a much more “real” version of each other than is typically possible for people in our positions. It is a richer, fuller, and more real experience all around. We’re not trying to fool each other.

Kyle and Owen would want to go to the Lehigh basketball games no matter what, but the real draw for them these past couple of years is to cheer for their friend #11 Mackey McKnight. And I know, because he tells me, that for #11, hearing these two little fans cheer for him means so much when he is down there on the court. And then, the next morning, #11 has to face me in class — and deal with me when I get on his case for not having done the reading (or praise him when he somehow pulls off a superb paper). And as for me… well, I have one of the things that I love most about my job back in place — that hole is filled now with the depth and meaning that can only come from knowing, and shaping, my students as multidimensional people (oh, and, bonus!! I get to share all of this with my own kids too!).

So, doing this sort of thing (going to the home opener of LU Men’s Basketball last night), is not as simple as it appears on the surface. There’s a lot to it. And this post barely scrapes the surface of it. There is a rich complexity and a depth to a lot of what we’re doing on campus, and it is meaningful — maybe even powerfully so — maybe even transformatively so — for those involved.