Here’s a useless factoid I love: According to the Office of Sustainability, there are nine hybrid gas vehicles in the U’s fleet. Most of which, I believe, are the Toyota Prius.

The Prius is as silent as a Utah County democrat. Almost eerily so. Just the other day, I saw a Prius belonging to Campus Security roll up behind a pedestrian crossing Presidents Circle (he was not in the crosswalk, I might add) and come to a halt. The pedestrian casually looked behind him and went into an exaggerated spasm of shock and surprise to find a car right there. Hilarious. The Prius is the automotive world’s version of a chubby, but effective, ninja.

I drive a Prius. I’m not bragging about it. It’s a good little car. Easy on the gas, not so easy on the eyes. It may look like a severed toe, but the little beast navigates around campus potholes like an overly caffeinated ballet dancer. It has survived multiple dings from my own fist (there’s, ahem, this anger issue I have with locked doors, ice-slicked parking lots, other human beings, etc., and the poor Prius usually bears the brunt of my frustration with Life 101), and it capably rolled away from a multi-car pileup on South Campus Drive a while back with little damage. (I’d like to publicly apologize to the poor student in the Honda who rear-ended me that day: I take back everything I said about your haircut and your ancestors. Your hair was impeccably coifed and I’m sure your forebears were very nice people. See the previous parenthetical statement for a brief explanation about the anger thing.) The Prius is a tank, believe it or not. A fuel-sipping tank that fell out of the automotive ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down.

BTW, go here for an amusing review of Honda’s new hybrid, courtesy of the Times Online. Best damn auto review I’ve ever read.

Just about a week ago, some 7,100 students graduated from the U. After crossing the stage to greedily yank an empty diploma case (the real McCoy is mailed out later, after the U determines that students have crossed all the T’s and dotted all the I’s) from the hands of the dean, 7,096 of them promptly torched their class notes and worksheets in the family BBQ grill and vowed to get on with their lives. Three of them (probably with political aspirations) held on to all of their class materials out of fear that someone—someday—might need to see them. And one graduate stumbled into my arms and gave me a big ol’ kiss.  

My wife, Kathy, was awarded her B.S. in nursing last Thursday. Those of you who are “nontraditional” students—or, shall we say, more “mature” students with families of your own—know what a long, strange trip it is from the Registrar’s Office to Commencement day. I’m not going to say it was easy: Over the past couple of years as Kathy diligently knocked out the final requirements to earn her diploma, she wasn’t around much. And when she was, she was squirreled away in our home office clutching a gazillion-dollar textbook and a 59-cent highlighter—and despite my best efforts to derail her good study habits (“Aw, c’mon, blow it off for one night and let’s watch all seven seasons of Gilmore Girls!”), she stuck with it. And consider this: We have a 5-year-old daughter in the house who demands your undivided attention. At. All. Times. As if she’ll wither like yesterday’s arugula unless she basks in the paternal/maternal spotlight—an occupational hazard in single-child households.    

Leaving aside all the frustration and epithets she sometimes hurled at the U of U, the College of Nursing, the universe, and, most often, me—it was all worth it. Especially when Kathy clutched her very own empty diploma case, while my daughter screamed, “I love you, Mommy,” and she planted that smooch on my lips and thanked me for (sometimes) keeping the family dynamic running smoothly (har har, rarely) while she was in school. I almost cried but made it look like I had a mortar board in my eye.

Then the color drained from Kathy’s face as she said, “Wait. Now I have to get a job.”

Yep. Welcome to the dark side of graduation, sweetheart. 

One of the best things about working at the U is having your POV altered, molded, or even shattered, sometimes when you least expect it.

I met with Department of Linguistics Professor Steven Sternfeld to grab a quick photo for Continuum. It was supposed to go like this: 1) handshake; 2) exchange brief pleasantries and/or share complaints about parking; 3) snap a poorly composed head shot beneath fluorescent lights that would turn Sternfeld’s skin the color of celery.

There. In and out in 10 minutes, with enough time to grab a gut-busting burrito at Chartwells before returning to my office.      

Instead, I ended up staying in Sternfeld’s office for the better part of an hour as we talked about his efforts to coax students away from the belief that good grades somehow validate what they’ve learned. His point is that too many students value education only for the opportunity to earn a decent grade, which can then be parlayed into a degree, which may then lead to a good job. The concept that education can be valuable in and of itself—regardless of passing or failing grades—tends to get lost in the shuffle. American school kids hop on the good-grades-equals-lifetime-advancement treadmill pretty early. Sternfeld believes that humans intrinsically enjoy education but modern American society “retrains” the mind to seek tangible rewards for knowledge in the form of grades, degrees, or jobs. And most of us have been brought up that way and simply accept it as reality. We’ve come to believe that’s the way the universe works. But maybe, he said, it was time to reevaluate how we think about this stuff.   

Anyway, as Sternfeld was telling me this, he grabbed a box of uncooked pasta to help illustrate his point that some things in our culture are taken for granted.

“This brand of pasta is also widely available in Italy,” he said. “Now, look at those instructions for cooking the pasta. What do you think the instructions say on boxes in Italy?” I had no idea. I’ve never been to Italy. I don’t cook pasta, because I can’t cook to save my life. I was already out of my depth.

After a dramatic pause, he said, “There are no instructions on pasta boxes in Italy. It is assumed that everyone knows how to make pasta. However, there are instructions on how to make cold cereal.”

Since that afternoon, I haven’t looked at Cap’n Crunch the same way.