University of Virginia Library

colloquium

fragmentation obscures reality

by earl glosser

Dr. Glosser is director of the counseling
center at the University.

ed.

One of the reasons that a counseling
center exists among you today after 150
years of U.Va. history is the abrasive fact
that our times have managed to alienate
the hearts and fragment the personalities
of a large percentage of our college age
young people.

It has been relatively easy to
accomplish this: geometrically increasing
wads of information in subject matter
areas producing new technologies as
"spin-offs" trigger ballooning needs for
specialists in business, industry,
government and education...add the
specter of computers, season with the
death of god, stir briskly with credibility
gaps and similar adult hypocrisies, toss in
urban sprawl, suburban withdrawal and
ghetto living, sweeten with the pinches of
draft calls and unpopular wars, top off
with general material prosperity and
garnish with so-called "hard core"
poverty. Serve this chaotic concoction to
our naturally idealistic young people via
the victories of microsecond
communications systems and be sure to
prolong their adolescence and dependent,
non-participatory, consumer-only status
with regard to the society in which they
live.

And what of the state university, or
multi-diversity, in the midst of this
extraordinarily speeded-up and
encapsulated version of all western
society's historical illnesses? Can it now
and in the future retain semblances of
dispassionate inquiry, objective criticism,
and the production of liberally educated
and well-trained human beings.

It is, of course, the latter-mentioned
concern that grasps my attention day to
day, but I am not without awareness that
great economic and social pressures
directly impinge upon the health of the
other two. The need for wide-based
popular political (and thus financial)
support of state institutions, and the
increasing dependency on government
financial research grants, are but two of
the obvious (perhaps realistic?)
encumbrances to the concepts of
freedom and autonomy for such schools.

But what of the students who come to
college filled with the curious
expectations and notions that parental
nostalgia, admissions office brochures,
guidance counselor advice, and their own
urgent individual needs blend to create?
Well, it seems that most of them are not
as out of touch with reality as one might
expect. They largely view the university
as a place from which they hope in four
years or so to extract a certificate of
admission to the inner circle of "good
job" holders. They seem generally
prepared or resigned to put up with
whatever requirements or ceremonies are
prescribed in order to obtain this
document. (There are, of course, glorious
exceptions to this generalization.)
However, their fantasy life is most
evident in the belief that the college will
somehow produce magically for them the
confirmation of themselves as competent
and worthwhile human beings a general
condition which inwardly they tend to
doubt. They work hard, initially abuse
their relative freedom, usually learn to
drink too much, gasp at the pain of first
failures, marvel at the apparent sexual
success of some of their brethren, and
damn the dean, the library, their parents,
General Hershey, and their instructors
with predictable gusto: that is, they do it
among themselves. When around older
adults or with girls many are constrained
and passive until the prescribed number
of drinks allows them some measure of
freedom.

By the beginning of the third year,
those who have survived are now in a
good position to view with considerable
realism what the undergraduate life is all
about. Thus, if you want to know what
the university environment is really like,
talk to the third and fourth-year men.
Counselors, deans, alumni and younger
students usually have somewhat more
distorted images than those of the
upperclassmen.

The upperclassmen, sometimes almost
precociously, becomes dimly aware
that his fraternity has not magically
molded him, that his course work to date
has not, in general, prepared him for a job
nor specifically provided any sense of the
integration of the knowledge that he's
heard about. He may even be painfully
aware that the University's pattern of
autonomous departments and schools
tends to be as fragmented a universe as
the isolated bits of information he has
managed to retain from cram sessions
prior to June finals. He is hoping that his
chosen major will now provide something
of a personal goal for him, and that the
girl he met over the summer will either
[A] forget all of the things he said to her
or [B] write to him three times a week
and take his fraternity pin seriously.

As he gets to know something about
his major area he becomes increasingly
aware of how busy almost all of his
professors are. He listens in on
conversations and classroom digressions
and occasionally discovers that more than
one of his instructors is something of an
entrepreneur and is doing consulting
work and/or has a multi-thousand dollar
research grant going for him. These
interests, plus the usual rounds of
professional meetings, take our
upperclassman's instructors away from
class periodically. They also make these
same people hard to locate for after-class
conferences or bull sessions.

Thus I return to the essential bases for
establishing a counseling center here at
U.Va. It comes in response to the
multitude of pressures tearing at all of
society; in response to the sheer problems
of increasing university size; in response
to the abrogation of duties once felt to be
intrinsic to good teaching; in response to
the increasing specialization of knowledge
concerning the art and science mostly
art) of human relations; and most
importantly in collective response to the
needs of many students for an integrating
experience regarding who they are and
how they might invest themselves in the
present and future society. This is
especially true of the very brightest and
most creative of our students.

Sadly, I assure you that we have no
big medicine to solve all of the problems
which brought the Center into embryonic
being. Often we are reduced to the role of
technician required to patch up the
somewhat battered machine and send it
puffing back into the race. A symbolic
five minute pit stop is not time enough to
consider whether one should be in the
race at all - or to determine if one might
plot his own course.

However we are able to help some
students ameliorate many of the
difficulties they normally encounter in
their development. Said students now
have a confidential environment where
they can explore themselves without fear
that such an open confrontation will
damage their grades or reputations. They
usually discover within themselves that
they have the capacities for both
constructive and destructive behavior. In
most cases they begin to make decisions
that they have previously left to the
external world - in short they begin to
own up to themselves and their personal
responsibilities. Specifically, a counselor
most readily observes this as the student
moves from a position of "I understand
you have some tests that will tell me what
I'm best suited for" to "I see that I've got
a lot of questioning to do before I make
up my mind about my way of life but for
now I'm going to major in math and take
as many electives as I can in economics
despite my father's probable
disappointment."

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