Remarks by Dr. Veronica Makowsky
Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education & Regional Campus Administration
February 19, 2009
Congratulations! The freshman year can be difficult at worst and challenging at best, and you have succeeded! I am very proud of you, and I know your family and friends are even more proud than I am.
As we all know, however, challenges never cease and we can never rest on our laurels, and so, due to world, national, and local economic conditions, I can’t seem to get one phrase out of my head: “These are the times that try men’s souls.”
This famous line was written by Thomas Paine, one of the American Founding Fathers—and I guess that explains the sexist language—in December of 1776, a few months after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, by which, in effect the American colonies openly expressed their rebellion against Great Britain and basically declared war. Thomas Paine was one of the most famous writers of his day: his newspaper columns were read avidly throughout the colonies the way you might check a popular blog, and so the phrase with which he opened his column, “These are the times that try men’s souls,” resonated throughout the colonies.
Times were indeed trying in the winter of 1776; in fact, they were really awful. The British Empire was, of course, much bigger and stronger and better equipped than the thirteen American colonies. The colonies themselves were further crippled by an effective British blockade which prevented trade and blocked supplies necessary for both war and for domestic use. The winter weather was brutal. The month that Thomas Paine wrote about the times that try men’s souls, December of 1776, was the same month that Washington crossed the Delaware, and I’m sure you’ve all seen the famous painting by Emanuel Leutze of Washington standing in the prow of a boat, trying to get across the ice-choked Delaware River and surprise the Hessians, the mercenary troops that Britain could afford to pay, but the colonist couldn’t. I think a lot of people in this country now feel the same way that the colonists felt then, caught in a seemingly endless winter, and buffeted by forces that they feared that they could not control.
When Thomas Paine wrote that “These are the times that try men’s souls,” he was not just using the word “trying” in the sense of annoying, as if I said to you, “You are really trying my patience and I can’t stand much more.” Merriam Webster’s Dictionary supplies two more meanings for “try” that I think are more relevant here. The first is “to subject to something (as undue strain or excessive hardship or provocation) that tests the powers of endurance” and the second is to “purify or refine.” Paine was telling his readers that they might actually come out of the frigid winter and the seemingly doomed war better and stronger, or, as the dictionary says, “purified or refined.” In other words, adversity is a test or trial, another meaning of the word “try,” and passing the test or trial isn’t just measured by the actual outcome, like winning the Revolutionary War or staying employed during a Depression. Winning involves using the trying circumstances to improve your character, to be a better and stronger person, like a piece of metal that has been tried in the flame and proven strong.
I think that Thomas Paine’s words and the examples of the Founding Fathers (and Mothers) have particular relevance to you as students and as members, for the most part, of a younger generation. When we think of the Founding Fathers, we think of all those older men in powdered white wigs that made them look even older and more dignified, but a lot of that Founding generation was relatively young during the War, and even the most famous older man, Benjamin Franklin, was, by all accounts young at heart. They inherited from their elders a world that seemed to be an absolute mess, but they took that mess and acted creatively and resolutely to found a new and successful system of government and a prosperous nation.
As some of our best and brightest, you successful students will need to rise to the challenge of times that try men’s and women’s souls. Use your time at UConn to prepare to meet the world and change it. In addition to the studies that you pursue so successfully, challenge yourselves: study abroad; make sure you have enough knowledge of a foreign language to really use it; do undergraduate research; take a service learning course; do community service; take a course in a subject that you know nothing about. Do things that will push you out of your comfort zones and, that will, in effect, try your souls. If you do so, UConn will continue to be as proud of you in decades ahead as we are at this moment.
Congratulations and Good Luck!
