In a series called “What Matters to Me and Why,” select Beloit College faculty, students, and administrators are invited to reflect on their values, beliefs, and motivations through informal lunchtime talks on campus.
Reminiscent of National Public Radio’s popular “This I Believe” program, the well-attended presentations have been held since the fall of 2006. Students working with the College’s Spiritual Life Program organize the series, which is intended to bridge the gap between intellectual life and personal and spiritual issues, while offering insight into the lives of people who influence students the most.
On this page, we’ve collected summaries of a handful of the provocative talks that have occurred so far in this series. Some are written in the first person by the presenters, while others are reported by listeners.
Just like the lunchtime crowd on campus, you may read them and learn a thing or two about someone you thought you already knew, or you may marvel at the tenacity, thoughtfulness, or ingenuity of someone at Beloit you have never met.
“What Matters to Me and Why” continues this spring, with 12 speakers on the docket for the semester.
What Matters to Me and Why:
Literature and Identity
By Tamara Ketabgian
Assistant Professor of English
I was born and grew up in Southern California, in a tightly knit community of Armenian Americans. Both of my parents immigrated to the United States as students—my mother from Istanbul, Turkey, and my father from Aleppo, Syria—and they brought with them the profound trauma of their parents’ persecution as ethnic and religious minorities in the Middle East. My paternal grandfather was a survivor of the Armenian genocide in 1915 in Eastern Anatolia, and my mother’s family was somewhat luckier, finding tenuous refuge in Istanbul, a city with more international observers. As a child, I heard many of these old stories and was alternately attracted and repelled by their powerful aura of guilt, fear, and estrangement. Only recently have my parents returned to the Middle East and come to terms with this painful family history.
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What Matters to Me and Why
By Pablo Toral, Assistant Professor of Political Science and Mouat Junior Professor of International Studies
This essay was adapted from an article by Caroline Delbert’07 that originally appeared in the Round Table.
Both ugly and beautiful is how Assistant Professor of Political Science Pablo Toral describes his hometown in the Asturias region of Northern Spain. Its natural surroundings were beautiful, and Toral and his father often went on walks through the nearby mountains.
The city, though, was a polluted mining town. This, Toral explains, fostered the root of one of the things that matters to him: preserving the fragile natural environment.
The pollution in the city was severe enough that a white shirt would turn gray during a walk through its streets. Toral says children and others with bronchitis or asthma could barely breathe, but to speak out against coal in a mining town was imprudent.
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Why Constantly Risking Absurdity Matters to Me
By Lynn Franken, Professor of English, Dean of the College/Vice President for Academic Affairs
Constantly Risking Absurdity is a poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, an American poet who calls himself a Bohemian and who certainly meant to challenge the soft satisfactions of the intellectually comfortable life.
Ferlinghetti’s poem compares the poet’s quest to that of an acrobat, who constantly risking absurdity/and death . . . climbs on rime/to a high wire of his own making. The acrobat’s goal is to catch Beauty when she leaps— her death-defying leap: And he/a little charleychaplin man/who may or may not catch/her fair eternal form/spreadeagled in the empty air/of existence.
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What Matters to Me and Why
By Adam Weitzenfeld’07, student activist
Since all my values would have been impossible without others and diverse experiences, I’d like to give a narrative account of how they developed.
I was born and raised in the northern suburbs of Chicago. I inherited the Jewish values of education and justice along with my father’s valuation of critical thinking and my mother’s modeling of compassion. Through my life, these values have been the bedrock for the speciation of new values.
As a child, I was stricken by the wonders and diversity of plants and animals. I developed a sense of empathy with them and a conservationist ethic. I was also fairly open-minded and strongly believed in equality.
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What Matters to Me and Why
By Olga Ogurtsova, Adjunct Associate Professor of Russian
As told to Susan Kasten
Olga Ogurtsova’s family, a World War, and her experiences growing up in the Soviet Union have shaped what’s important to her.
Peace. Family. Honesty. Friendship. Teaching and knowledge. These things matter deeply to her.
A professor of Russian at Beloit since 1991, she was born in the Soviet Union just five days before Stalin died.
As a wife, mother, and professor during the Chechen War, she left her home to teach in America to save her son from being drafted. The sacrifice was great; it meant living apart from her husband for what ended up being 12 years.
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What Matters to Me and Why
By Tom McBride, Professor of English, Gayle and William Keefer Professor of the Humanities
What matters to me now is a matter of personal evolution. It’s a question of wisdom, but I can’t say that it’s all that hard earned. It was just something that happened to me over time. I’d like to say that it was entirely a matter of experience, but it’s not only that. It’s also a matter of just getting older and losing some energy. This seems to help generate more reflection.
What matters to me now are family and friendship. This was not always so. When I was younger, I was determined to be the most ambitious, the best teacher, the smartest faculty member, the most dominant personality. It’s not that I didn’t care for Beloit College, but to me my own interests and those of Beloit were absolutely one. It was like one of President Eisenhower’s cabinet members once said: What’s good for General Motors is good for the United States.
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What Matters to Me and Why
By Bill Flanagan, Vice President for Students Affairs and Dean of Students
This essay was adapted from an article by Caroline Delbert’07 that originally appeared in the Round Table.
Bill Flanagan’s family, his job as dean of students at Beloit, volunteer work, and a sense of balance matter to him.
Flanagan says he developed his values through memorable people, experiences, and opportunities. In each case, there are multitudes of examples, often a mix of “plusses and minuses.” For instance, Flanagan admired and looked up to his father, but also realized he didn’t wish to emulate everything about him.
Flanagan and his two siblings grew up as low-income, first-generation Irish Catholics, with a father who was not educated in the institutional sense, but who was street-smart and wise. He may not have taken himself seriously, but he took his family very seriously.
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