It's not as you think

We're just about finished with reading UCSB admissions applications. By the end of the week we should be enjoying retirement again--sleeping past 6 a.m., reading for pleasure, morning gym workouts, the ritual Thursday morning visit to Starbucks (perhaps shifting to Peet's), and the exhilarating sense of the loosely structured weekday.

Still, we'll miss the people we work with and the sense of camaraderie in a shared, deadline-driven endeavor. As we were driving off campus yesterday, we agreed that, oddly, we feel more connected or even committed to the university now than we did throughout the past several decades of living in town, and more so even than when we were students there in the sixties. The campus is vastly changed--both physically and as an institution--but working there each day, helping to create the population mix that will be educated there, binds us closer than when we were limited to the student perspective.

We are also acutely aware that this formerly impersonal institution has over the years transformed itself into a consumer-friendly place where student needs and tastes are at the center of the operation. Whether it's the Wells-Fargo ATMs scattered about campus, the variety of fast food choices available in the UCEN, or the more than 200 different majors to choose from. it's obvious that like any large, competitive service enterprise, the customer must be kept satisfied.

When we out-to-pasture former teachers were students, it was quite the opposite. Our job was to figure out the arcane standards and procedures set by what often seemed to us inscrutable, perhaps willful, or simply arbitrary authority figures and then do our best to please--or at least not displease--them. I don't remember any first-generation-to-attempt-college (which we both were) "outreach" efforts or newcomer receptions, and if we had needed tutoring in the fundamentals of academic discourse, well, we would have probably been informed we didn't belong there.

For all the talk of how college admission has become so brutally competitive, the institution has become a much friendlier, more welcoming place. Until we started working there, I had no idea how complex the process of choosing a freshman class could be, but we've also discovered that the people doing that job are genuinely interested in helping each candidate get his or her best shot at acceptance. There are no gruff cynics or dour guardians of the academic bastion here. Our job is not perceived as holding back unworthy hordes.

Quite the opposite; the goal is to look broadly and deeply for merit, seek out subtle or unappreciated indicators of future success, and advocate for those who haven't had the advantages of a family legacy in higher education.

And with that being said, perhaps we can retire again and for a time avoid the stream of questions and requests for advice from parents shepherding their offspring toward this mysterious adventure.