Tears, Hugs, and End of Year Honors

The end of the school year breakfast is short on speeches and long on recognition. After brief remarks by the president of the college and presentation of a list of retirees and service certificates, the rest of the program focuses on a half-dozen awards given to staff members for service to the college, their colleagues, their students, and to the profession.

This year, I noticed that every award winner protested their recognition. Over and over again, they said, "I can't believe I'm getting this award. I'm just doing what I love to do. I'm just doing my job." They honestly did not believe their efforts merited this recognition because, in their minds, they were just doing what everyone else was doing. In their minds, they were doing nothing special. That, in my opinion, makes them even more deserving.

These folks quietly, effectively, and consistently do their job. They are colleagues, collaborators, and, on occasion, co-conspirators. They represent the best among us. They attend meetings, respond to emails, come to work early, stay late and bravely try to keep up with the latest version of Blackboard.

I suppose just "doing the job" may seem an old-fashioned idea in today's world. If you're not self-promoting on YouTube, you're not real, right? Getting up, going to work everyday is not sexy enough for some (not these) who mark their progress on a self-centered scorecard. Doing the job you were hired to do, doing it with pride and doing it to the best of your abilities, is a midwestern value. It's something most of us were raised to do. It's also something the comb-over egos who flit about either coast just don't understand.

Nominations for the awards had been quietly collected months before the ceremony, so the actual announcement is often a surprise to those who receive the honor. Usually, it is not a surprise to the rest of us: we know who are the hard workers. As the honorees come forward, sometimes teary-eyed, their families, who were in on the secret, are brought forward from a side room to share the standing ovation from the college. Tears, hugs, and honors are a good way to end the school year. Recognizing our best, recognizes all of us.