Memorable

We had our last open house of the year on Sunday — a doubleheader, in fact — with “sold out” crowds of students and their families visiting our campus. During the day, they heard all of the standard admissions fare — numbers, timelines, various remarks from several administrators, and a welcome from our parent ambassadors. Our student panel is always a highlight, and this year we have added a new wrinkle with a chance to visit mini demonstration classes.

It has been a long time since I attended an open house with my own children, and yet I still remember what it felt like to visit campuses and wonder what I was really learning. I don’t know if it is possible to communicate the true essence of a place, but my, oh, my, do schools try to convince you what should matter to you. I was always struck when schools compared themselves to others. “We have more books in our library than school X.” Or “we send more students to doctoral programs than school Y.” I did appreciate where they stood out — a school that graduates a lot of students heading to doctoral programs clearly has created an environment where academic curiosity and persistence thrive, but the comparison game smacked of a lack of self-confidence.

In the end, the impact of our visits seemed to be the sum of a complicated calculus about what was memorable and essential and real. Plenty of schools crafted carefully choreographed tours and info sessions that were memorable, but if going to college was about intellectual pursuits and impactful experiences and not easy access to a food court that rivaled the local mall, then why was so much of a tour spent showing off the ice cream bar?

I hope that our guests who were visiting Poly left with a sense of what is important to us and were able to see that our mission is evident in what we do. We strive to show them what we feel is essential and real by honoring the promise of our mission daily. Last week we had two community events, an all-faculty-and-staff meeting and an open meeting for parents called Community Conversation. At the end of each session, we asked a simple question: What inspires you most while working at Poly? What is your greatest hope for your child at Poly? Through the use of a polling software application, the responses appeared in front of us in the form of a word cloud with the most frequently used words in the largest font. For the faculty and staff, the word students grew and grew and grew. For the parents, happiness and confidence took center stage. As we work to define excellence in an era of exhilarating and sometimes unforgiving change, knowing that these three words ground our focus and guide our hopes is memorable, essential, and real.

JWB