Five Senses of the Malcolm Gladwell Student Event
Before we get to the meat of today’s blog, two quick items: First, many thanks to all the families who supported our Deacs Day of Giving yesterday. I looked at the website this morning and it shows we got 3,062 gifts, surpassing the 3,000 needed to get the $500K match. Thank you to every family who helped get us there!
Second, for all who are observing Yom Kippur, I wish you G’mar Chatima Tova, or ‘may you be inscribed in the Book of Life for Good.’
I was fortunate enough to attend the student event for our Face to Face series, a Q&A session with Malcolm Gladwell, noted author and journalist. Not gonna lie, I was super excited to cover this! There is a fantastic news story that you can read about the content, but since this was a student-only event, I thought it might be nice to bring this to you Five Senses style, so you can feel like you were there yourselves. Here goes.
I see…
Nicely dressed students in gold nametags ushering people in to the chapel. I assume they are President’s Aides.
Bright sunlight coming in the west windows of Wait Chapel. There are blocks of seats that are very sunny when I arrive.
The inimitable Ken Bennett taking pictures of the gathering student crowd.
Students coming in in groups of three or five. All are masked.
Two young women taking a selfie with the Face to Face stage behind them.
Green ferns dotting the stage to give it color.
The downstairs seats filling up nicely. At its peak, it is probably close to half full on the bottom level.
Student leaders gathering at the front of the room.
A casual stage set up: two chairs close to each other for student moderators, and one for Malcolm Gladwell. There are two big Face to Face banners framing the stage.
Lots of male students in baseball caps.
Two male students leave their seats before the program started. I hope they came back.
A young man taking a picture of Sue Henderson, lead of the Face to Face team, as she makes her introductory remarks.
Maybe what is most remarkable, as Malcolm Gladwell begins speaking, is what I DON’T see, and that is students looking down at their phones. He has their full attention, and I think that is speaks to the quality of his content. I can’t stress how rare it is to have hundreds of students in a big setting like this and everyone’s eyes are on the stage.
A male student giving a fist pump when Gladwell starts talking about rookie quarterbacks. He instantly struck a chord with sports fans, but also you can sense students’ growing respect at the bewilderingly vast array of topics Gladwell can talk about on more than a casual level. His knowledge has both breadth and depth.
A female student holding her phone up high over the crowd to get a picture of the conversation unfolding on stage.
The sunlight gradually crawling across the room. It had started on the left/west side of the chapel, and slowly over the course of an hour, it crept through the center section, then east/right side. All very gradually.
A young woman with glistening black hair close to the front pulls her hair into a ponytail shape and then lets it fall down the back of her seat.
I hear…
A low, constant buzz of chattering students as they enter the chapel before the program begins.
Soft jazz music playing in the background as people find their seats.
A male student telling another (as they pass me by) “this is a really fun story actually…” and then sadly they get too far away for me to hear the rest.
Ushers greeting people with a “hi” and encouragement to move down front to fill those seats first.
Female laughter as a group of students pass my seat.
One student’s phone hit the floor.
A sound that is inbetween a squish and something like velcro being pulled apart. A student is in a walking cast and it makes noise as they walk.
A slightly tinny sound as the program begins and the first speaker takes the mic. My friends at the sound booth calibrate it on the fly and it sounds right after that.
Laughter. Malcolm Gladwell makes some funny, relatable observations about things like job searches and majors, and it strikes the right note with our students. Later he makes a joke about our city name and again, broad laughter.
The occasional cough from the audience.
There was a moment of six or seven loud metallic bangs early on during Gladwell’s remarks. Those ended blessedly quickly because they were loud.
Wry chuckles from the students when the suggestion was made that students give up social media for a month. (None of your students seemed eager to hop on board that train).
Several themes that seemed to weave throughout his remarks: the importance of repetition (either becoming expert at something, or practicing forgiveness), the importance of respecting difference, taking time to learn, the importance of curiosity.
I feel…
The warmth of a beam of sun coming through the window as I enter the chapel. The sun is going down and the western-facing windows are providing patches of sun throughout the front of the room and the aisles.
The firm, hard back to the wooden seat.
The occasional rush of air as students walk by me to find a seat.
Amazement, listening to Malcolm Gladwell talk. He has a remarkable way of building rapport with a large audience in a short period of time. It’s fun to watch him work.
A sense of affinity with what he is telling the students. He covers a wide variety of things – how important it is to experience different and new things in college, the importance of developing deep expertise in something. These are things that were encouraged during my own time at Wake, and it is comforting to see that theme emerge here.
If I am honest with myself, I also feel a little envy at his ability to storytell.
A little bit warm due to the sunlight in the room.
A palpable sense of relief from the students when Gladwell starts talking about how it is the exception to have your act together in your early 20s, not the rule. It’s almost like the room had been holding its shoulders very tensely and suddenly they all relax at once.
Pride when one of our student moderators riffed off one of his answers and made a clever joke. Well done. (The moderators and student speakers were terrific overall).
A sense that the students were really leaning in to the section of his Q&A that discussed social connectors, or people who have an unusually wide circle of friends and acquaintances and who might have vastly more social capital than the average bear. You can almost see the wheels turning in students’ heads, with them imagining who the social connectors are on this campus.
A sense of wonder at the breadth and depth of Malcolm Gladwell’s knowledge. He has clearly done his homework on our town and our region, and he has a remarkable talent for being able to cut across a wide swath of history, academic studies, societal trends and contextualize them in new and fresh ways.
I smell…
Honestly? Mostly the inside of my mask. I know you all know that smell ;P
The occasional whiff of perfume as female students walk by. I note no strong cologne in passing men.
OK I lied, this is the Four Senses: since we were all masked because it was indoors, there was nothing I could eat or drink 🙂
What an honor it was to be a fly on the wall in the back of the room. Many thanks to our Face to Face team for bringing this tremendous opportunity to our students. Next Face to Face will be with former Secretaries of State Madeleine Albright and Colin Powell on November 9. If your Deacs didn’t make the Gladwell Q&A, urge them not to miss this next one!