HARD LESSONS
“Steve!”
I looked back and there was Mr. Wilson, gesturing with one finger for my seventh-grade self to join him as he walked out of the classroom and into the hallway of Delphi Community Middle School. This was not a good thing; I was in trouble with a capital T.
If someone had asked me what I had done to get into trouble, I might have answered like the prisoners in The Shawshank Redemption: “Everybody’s innocent in here, don’t you know that?” But I knew why I was in trouble. I had committed one of the worst crimes that a seventh grader could commit in a classroom: talking. We had been asked to be quiet, and told that the next person to talk would “get the board,” “paddled,” “swatted,” whatever you wanted to call it.
Well, I talked.
We walked into the hallway, and Mr. Wilson knocked on the door of the classroom next door to get Mr. Moore to come out to the hallway because he needed a witness. Not only did the kids in my class know who was getting the board, but at least a few students in Mr. Moore’s class had seen who was in the hallway and were spreading the word, prompting both classrooms to fall silent as they listened for the swats.
The swats were not fun, but perhaps the worst of it all was having to walk back into the classroom without crying as everyone looked at me. This actually happened to me twice from the same teacher—both for talking—and one was in study hall!
Those swats played their part in developing me into the man I am today. But the theme of “second acts” got me thinking about the changes in our lives, what brings them about, and how a small action can sometimes spark a major change elsewhere.
Hard lessons come in many forms, but there is always that moment of accountability. Then, that second chance—the moment you have a choice to learn or to repeat it all over again.
I hear this theme often from alumni at Big Bash and other gatherings, especially when they’re telling stories they are less than proud of from their time at Wabash—mistakes that led to difficult conversations with the dean, or a professor, or to a failing grade or falling short of hopes and expectations. There’s the sting of the hard lesson, being held to account, then the second chance to make the right choice next time.
It’s a sign of a good place, I believe, that so many of us have these stories.
Interesting, too, that the sting of that hard lesson, or the person who gave us that second chance, is what we remember best.
STEVE HOFFMAN ’85
Director, Alumni and Parent Relations
hoffmans@wabash.edu