Being the camel

"We're like thirsty beasts gathering around a shrinking watering hole," said a colleague, "and if it keeps shrinking, we'll soon be at each other's throats." 

I was so disturbed by this image that I shared it with another colleague, who offered a different perspective: "If you're a camel, you don't care about the watering hole. You've got plenty of water stored in your hump."

And you know, he's right. I don't want to be the adorable zebra that gets eviscerated by the powerful lion and I don't want to be the lion and I certainly don't want to be the vulture that scoops up the entrails, but I could be the camel, plodding right past the carnage while carrying provisions on my back. Camels may not be as charismatic or stately as lions but they're pretty good at surviving in lean times, and times just don't get any leaner than this. (At least I hope they don't.)

So how do I go about being the camel? I have to carry on my back whatever will sustain me through the desert. I could start with emotional resilience (so I don't get so wrought up over the wrestling at the watering hole that I go home and snap at my loving spouse), which means spending less time doing things that sap my strength (hiding out in my dungeon office, chewing over the latest gossip) and more doing things that feed my spirit: canoeing, gardening, spending time with my grandbaby.

But I'm not just talking about me here. I'm wondering how my department, my discipline, and even my campus will cope with cultural changes that are putting the squeeze on higher education. My canoe isn't big enough for all those people, so we need more than just individual grit and determination. What skill or knowledge base do we possess that can sustain us through lean times?

For me, the answer lies in the variety of academic needs my department can meet and the variety of methods we use to meet them. We equip English majors to succeed in grad school or various career tracks, but we also teach Sports Management majors to analyze rhetoric, Petroleum Engineering majors to write reports, and Biology majors to experiment on poetry to see what it suggests about the human condition. And we're learning to do all that in many ways--both face-to-face and online, through lectures and group projects and online discussions and presentations and papers. I hope our variety and flexibility will be enough to keep our department intact through the desert.

What will we find on the other side? I don't know. I know the crisis will pass and one day we'll get back to normal, but I suspect that the new normal will look very different from what we've known before. But at least we'll survive. The alternative is to keep hanging around the watering hole until we eat or get eaten, and who wants to be the last vulture standing if the only prize is a bunch of bloody entrails? I'd rather be a camel.