Welcome to the 27th year of University High School!
Our theme for this year is gifts: What gifts do we have? How do we recognize the gifts of others? And how might those gifts impact our communities?
If you watched Ron Finley’s TED Talk this summer, you saw one answer. Finley has a gift for gardening, and he used it to transform his South Central Los Angeles neighborhood. I do not have Ron Finley’s gift. The only plant I have successfully kept alive is a one-inch cactus my daughter Parker and I brought home from St. Louis when she was in sixth grade. His name is Gerald.
But I do have other gifts. Rapping, some might say. A larger-than-average knowledge of mid-twentieth-century American confessional poetry. Parallel parking. Public speaking. Teaching.
You might be thinking, That’s great for you, LaMags, but what if I don’t have any gifts?
I promise you do. You just might not know what they are yet.
One of the great privileges of working at University is watching students discover those gifts. Every student who has come through this school has brought something with them, and many have gone on to use those gifts in remarkable ways.
The school itself is also a gift. University was entrusted to us by a founding board and faculty who believed high school should be different: that the heart is as important to learning as the mind, and that young people should hold the center of their own educational experience.
University is a chance to challenge yourself, discover what you’re good at, geek out on what you love, and imagine the vastness of what you are capable of.
And our time together is short.
Every year, this school is created anew by the people gathered here. Ninety-eight students in our community have never gone to school here before. Others who were here last year have moved on. This is the only year this exact group of people will be together.
So don’t leave this gift in the box.
Challenge yourself. Think creatively. Take responsibility for your actions. Be an active steward of this school. Treat the people around you with mutual respect, support, and trust. Recognize that what we have here is something of great worth, and treat it that way.
There is one more kind of gift I hope we give one another this year: hospitality.
You may have seen The Odyssey this summer. In it, hospitality, or xenia, is a sacred obligation. You welcome people to the table regardless of who they are, where they come from, or what they have to offer you in return. Antinous, one of Penelope’s suitors, is particularly bad at this. He enjoys the hospitality extended to him while denying that same generosity to others.
Or, put another way: Don’t be Antinous.
We are about to give one another the gift of this school year. If you’re here, you’ve been invited to the table.
Let’s come to that table together, and have a great year.