When I came to interview at George Mason University a year ago, I was struck by the energy of growth and change. This was a young place, too young to have any ways to be set in. This was a place still stalking its niche, all elbows and knees and scrappy attitude.
Not polished, not at all; institutions with many decades of history behind them don’t brag about Nobel prizewinners, especially since anybody who is anybody in academia knows that Nobel prizewinners are trophies to be bought and sold. Snagging a few and parading them about is the act of an insecure arriviste.
But I sensed during the interview and still sense that Mason genuinely wants to live up to its own hype about itself. The place doesn’t just want to seem good; it wants to be good. And that’s an ethos I can live with, even as I cringe at how it plays out sometimes. (We’re not free of creeping adjunctivitis. Heck, we’ve got it as bad as anyplace and worse than many. And no, we do not deserve a Phi Beta Kappa chapter.)
Some of my own colleagues, even, privately sneer at the institution’s opportunism and quick shifts of mood and strategy. Myself, I’m just as happy to be somewhere that crosses borders, fills in gaps, turns on the occasional dime. I saw the polar-opposite stance firsthand in one of my other interviews, and it didn’t make me happy at all. I can relate to an institution that tries hard and learns fast, but now and then chases the wild goose or doesn’t remember to behave with old-school decorum. I’m like that too, after all.
Our basketball team’s grand chariot turned back into a pumpkin last night. That’s all right by me. What’s impressed me all along hasn’t been the on-court action, but the impeccable class and irrepressible joy exhibited throughout by players, coach, and school. Even after the loss—disappointment, certainly, but no spite, no anger, not the least lapse of sportsmanship or in the school’s support for its team. An awful miasma of crass idiocy surrounds college sports; Mason kept free of it this tournament, and that’s something to be proud of.
I’m proud to work at Mason. I have been since I started here. It’s a fine school.
