Associate Dean’s Reception Toasts in Annapolis

At the end of each semester as we prepare to bid farewell to our new graduates, students and tutors are welcomed to raise a glass to one another at the Associate Dean's Reception to reflect upon their journey in the Graduate Institute as this chapter comes to a close. For our summer graduates, many of whom are unable to return to campus the following spring for commencement, this gathering allows students to don their cap and gown and celebrate their accomplishments with fellow Johnnies and loved ones.  

Several summer graduates have generously shared their toasts with us:

Mr. Chase Waller 

Selected by his fellow students to deliver the official toast to the tutors 

"As I have reflected on the past four summers which I have spent at St. John’s, the big question, which I and probably my classmates have been asking is: What did I get out of this? What have I gained from my time with these amazing tutors reading these texts? 

Plutarch credits Solon with the following words: 

'The future that bears down on each of us is variable and determined by unknowable factors, and so we consider a man only happy when the gods have granted him success right up to the end of his life. However, to count anyone happy while he is still alive and faced with all the uncertainties of life is as unsound and valid as proclaiming an athlete the winner and crowning him while the contest is still in progress.' 

So I guess, by Solon’s calculations, I can’t thank the tutors for making me happy. Hopefully, the gods will grant me success up to the end of my life, but that privilege seems reserved for a small percentage of people. And I will corroborate Solon’s claim further by saying that St. John’s, in one sense, has not brought me happiness. I am more confused now than I ever have been in my whole life. 'About what?' you may wonder. About everything! About justice, and love, and education, and history, and parallel lines, and God, and everything. It’s chronic! It never stops. St. John’s has effectively ruined certain things for me. I feel like I haven’t answered a question in four years! When I drive down an open road I see a Lobachevskian parallel and have to pull over and take a nap. I have grown to be tepid – I struggle to assert anything because I feel so lost in the vast world of wisdom and knowledge and story. This state is not happy. Sometimes it’s angry. I feel like Thrasymachus, barging into the dialogue and demanding that people listen to what I am saying, even though what I am saying falls apart so quickly. 

And yet, in another sense, St. John’s has brought me some of the greatest happiness in my whole life. I have made friends every summer I have been at St. John’s. I have cried every summer I have been at St. John’s. I have laughed every summer I have been at St. John’s. The list goes on, but the full range of emotions has been readily available, and I have embraced each of them openly with others. What else can you do when presented with truth and beauty? So, to answer the question, I would like to thank the tutors for what I feel is the most important thing that I have received from St. John’s (and that which might cause me to disagree with Solon): simply, the ability to listen. Every time I sit in class I look at the tutor and wonder to myself: 'How can they listen to this conversation, having themselves read and re-read the text so much more than me, having themselves so much more background information about the text, having themselves thought so many more years than I about these things, having lived so much more life than me?' How did you, tutors, listen to my confused attempts so patiently? Why do you reject time at the beach during the summers to sit in a classroom and continue the dialogue? It is an act of love, and I am so grateful. You taught me how to listen carefully, and to dignify every person by that very act. It is tremendously profound. 

I hope, like you, the tutors, to be able to willingly enter confusion and difficulty over, and over, and over again with excitement, and generosity, with an ear for everyone (including the authors) and with the extreme compassion to listen. 

Furthermore, by your example, I have learned how to listen to and thereby love myself. When I came here, I was in a crisis. I didn’t know what to do. I used to berate myself for every little mistake I made. I still don’t know what to do, and I am still in a crisis. But now, thanks to my tutors and my friends, I know that I am not alone, and I know that I don’t have to beat myself up for not knowing. Not knowing is part of the fun. And just as I want to be like the tutors in loving others by listening to them and valuing what they say, I want to learn how to do the same for myself. Just because I don’t necessarily come to any grand conclusions doesn’t mean the ideas in that pursuit are worthless. 

I will conclude with this: when I first read [Stringfellow Barr's] Notes on Dialogue, the strangest precept to me was that we were not to take notes. I thought it strange because I wanted to remember the ideas in the conversations we had. But in my time here, I saw that it was actually extremely profound to fully listen to someone, without the distraction of trying to write anything down, making full eye contact. It makes sense to me how full attention to someone’s words will give you a much deeper appreciation for their ideas. And though I might not have a record of that idea on paper, what I do have is an intimate experience with the person, having given their words due thought, and having let them convince me. In that sense, the ideas become more a part of me when I encounter them in this way than they would have had I recorded each and every one of them on paper. Every conversation was a relationship; every conversation changed the way I think in some way. I don’t need them all on paper because I think for me that would just be a temptation to return to the ideas and use them for something other than what they were meant for. Perhaps, it is better to just listen, and in so doing, to love. So, to the tutors, here’s to you for teaching us how to listen and to love. May we follow your example and thereby learn how to embrace confusion, argument, paradox, and complexity for the sake of perhaps seeing something true." 

Ms. Kelly Lindquist 

"Tutors, Graduates, Fellow Students, 

I would be remiss if I didn’t toast you here this evening. But first I have an ugly confession to make. Seven years ago when I started this program, I started the program with doubt. I went home to my husband, a Johnnie himself, after my first classes and told him the following: 'No one can be educated in this manner, all the students are too stupid to educate me, the tutor won’t speak up enough to educate us, and I’m too stupid to educate myself or anyone else, so how on earth is anyone supposed to be educated this way?!' I’m sorry I spoke those words, but I’m not sorry to have heard my husband’s advice. He told me that we would all educate each other, and in me educating others, I would become educated, and in them educating me, they would become educated, and the tutors would somehow guide us through this process of following the logos of the text.  

This whole scenario seems totally unbelievable until you attend just a week of classes at St. John’s. In just the first week, quickly I saw false opinions dying away, as we all excitedly tried to follow the logos, courage rose up in those less willing to speak before, temperance tamped down on those too willing to speak up. And before I knew it, a friendship was born between me and my fellow students, as we all gazed upon the highest things together. It has been one of the most beautiful graces to participate in this form of education and to see it at work. 

I have a lot of children, and I eventually came to the point where I never thought I would finish this degree - too many mouths to feed, too many souls to attend to - but then my husband died of cancer two months ago, and finishing the degree seemed to be the most practical thing going forward. But by far the most fruit that came out of my last semester was not the loads of cash I will make with my master’s degree, but rather the closeness I got to feel to my husband while reading the texts he loved and which informed his life the most. I’ll never forget reading Aristotle’s Ethics and Plato’s Republic with you all. For those two weeks, it was like I was dwelling in the heavens with my dear love, and all because of the help of your friendship in coming to understand these hidden truths.  

So I would like to toast you all. I pray you all take heart in the death of your false opinions, in the birth of your courage and temperance, and in learning to read the books well, I hope you will read the world well and, like Aristotle, see in the things before you not only the chaos and the muck but the deep and abiding things that dwell within. CHEERS!" 

Mr. Matthew Ely 

"I’d like to propose a toast to anyone who has tried to explain St. John’s College to their friends or family. 

I have tried plenty of times, and it never comes out quite right. I end up using similes, trying to describe what the school is like since it’s so hard to describe what it is. 

I described it to my school district as a teacher professional development program. I’m going to St. John’s to learn instructional methods, to build my background as an English teacher (even though I teach social studies), and to build my professional network. And of course since I’m doing all this developing, I deserve a pay raise. And you know what? They bought it. 

I’ve told people that it’s like a classics degree. Or an English degree. Or a books degree. They may not know what the Great Books are, but they do know what English is, so that can usually end the conversation happily enough for all involved. 

I’ve told my friends that St. John’s is like summer camp. Every summer I come back here I get to see my “camp friends” from previous years. I get to see all my favorite camp counselors (tutors). I eat a lot of pizza and play bocce on the quad. In my normal life, I don’t get to spend time with weird book lovers, so I have to go to “summer camp” to find my people. 

Sometimes I say that St. John’s is like a monastery. I abandon my family and live alone in a small room. I don’t have a car, so I only eat what I can carry in my backpack. At prescribed hours the community gathers together to reverence the sacred texts, and much of my time is devoted to independent study. And with a name like St. John’s, it doesn’t take much to convince people that the place has a monastic flair. 

But what do I tell myself? How do I describe this place in my own mind when I’m not trying to make it make sense for other people? I tell myself that this is a place where I learn to submit to the wisdom of texts and people, a place where I must be forced to believe that I have more to learn from others than they have to learn from me. Despite all the talking I do here, St. John’s is a place to learn how to listen and examine what I don’t know instead of insisting upon what I claim to know. I tell myself that what I’m doing here is getting a Master’s degree in Accepting the Depths of My Own Ignorance, although I’ll admit that doesn’t sound great on LinkedIn. 

The issue is that I lie to myself. A mere submission to ignorance is not all I’m doing here. Of course it isn’t. All of these things are a partial description of my experience, but none of them suffice. 

The truth is that when I first heard about St. John’s in 2017, something simply clicked for me. It was obvious in a way that defied description that I wanted to visit. And when I did, it was obvious I needed to stay. Out of the depths it called to me, and out of my depths the call echoed. What am I doing here? Why did I come? I’m here because I can’t help myself, because this is the place for me. I came because I couldn’t not. And that’s as much as I can say for sure. 

So if you’ve ever attempted to explain this place to someone, I give you permission to fail. But cheers to you for trying." 

Cheers to all of our summer 2022 graduates!