On universityness

I visited the University of Nevada, Las Vegas for the first time in July 2017. My Uber dropped me off for a day of interviews at the “front door” of campus at seven in the morning, and I set out to find the building where my meetings would be, carryon and laptop in tow.

The UNLV campus is 330 acres, and there are more than 4,000 trees. I walked along a sidewalk under a canopy of desert willows, past a rose garden, past sculptures, past the law building, the art building, the theater. The campus was empty. Sprinklers ticked across freshly cut grass. An airplane flew so low overhead that I could practically feel its jet wash muss my hair. I didn’t know what I’d expected, but the campus was so traditional, and beautiful. Also, I was hot, agitated, and wearing the wrong shoes for a walk.

I remember thinking, what am I doing here and at the same time, I want to work here. I can’t quite explain it. It might have been the blend of awe and irritation, like I had something to take, and something to give. It was akin to falling in love.

This is universityness.

Universityness is not a fixed idea. It’s not one thing. Its foundation is a personal memory—a flash, or a fragment—in relation to a university. It’s an observation of the self from the inside, a moment in which you see yourself becoming.

When I’m sitting at my desk writing, universityness feels like what’s missing in the way universities talk about themselves, and has been absent for a long time. When I’m scrolling Instagram, I think that’s silly. I get lost in accounts of young, rich-seeming influencers who, if they are in college, or ever attended, do not advertise it.

When I’m speaking to university administrators, the idea sounds equal parts bold and naïve, as if I’m suggesting abandoning strategy for sentiment.

Except that universityness is evidence that universities work. It is universal. It might present a series of discrete moments that reveals to someone they want to study computer science, or nursing, or entrepreneurship, the way I found I wanted to study literature.

One of my favorite undergraduate courses was Latin American literature, in which I fell for the novels of Mario Vargas Llosa. Our professor was visiting from England, and while I can’t remember her name, I’ve never forgotten how she engaged us. In discussions, when students would struggle to speak their ideas aloud as drafts, they’d often look to her for a rescue: “do you know what I mean?”

She would push back: “No, I don’t know what you mean.” She’d say it with just the right tone—tough, but still open—so it became an invitation to struggle again. I would call this memory—its quality of striving for knowledge and skill just beyond my reach— universityness.

I think it can also represent what looks like nothing but is something. That same year, I took my last math class, and a guy from high school was in it. We each had an hour to kill after class. We’d hit up a soda machine that would dispense two Diet Dr. Peppers for the price of one if you punched the button twice in succession. Then we’d sit on the second-floor balcony of an old stone building, in tiny wooden desks designed for right-handers, even when it was snowing out.

I can’t say why that feels like universityness. Maybe because we shared a secret hack that worked every time. Maybe because our relationship was only contained to that hour, that semester. Then it was gone.

To my knowledge, universityness has never been elevated in the way universities talk about themselves. Decades ago, they turned to brand marketing to answer questions of identity.

I fell in love with branding universities, too. This was 2010. Working with agencies, I began crafting language "promoting “lasting public impact” and “excellence on the world stage.” It felt inspiring, like the answer! Academic jargon was stripped, and research that seemed impossible to comprehend was finally rendered simply. It was all polish and inspiration. This is it, I thought.

But branding can’t capture everything. Its lofty promises can detach from what college is like, what it’s really like, day to day. It can be demoralizing: lonely and expensive. What’s missing isn’t better branding—it’s universityness itself. Branding defines institutional identity; universityness illuminates individual becoming. That’s the register that can close the gap.

Like poetry, universityness resonates when it’s particular, specific. Unlike poetry, which can be entirely made up, it’s rooted in biography. It teaches us how to trust that quiet, internal voice that knows what must happen next. I didn’t love UNLV that morning because it was world class or unique—I loved that it was recognizable to me. I loved that I belonged there.

We enroll in universities hoping to meet ourselves—to become something, even something unexpected.

Who knew I would be a writer? I didn’t. As a literature major, I was required to take one creative writing class, but I’d avoided it out of fear. I didn’t think I was good enough. Finally, I registered for poetry, assuming it would be easy—the fewest words. A poem could be anything.

One day, early in the semester, we read “The Red Wheelbarrow” by William Carlos Williams. A poem could be anything but I didn’t know it could be this … plain, but elegant. It was perfect. Oh my god, I thought. The mid-morning sun spilled across my desk; the window was open behind me. Outside, I could hear people trudging over the last remnants of crunchy, dirty snow. I was so sleepy, fighting drifting off, and then we read this poem. I sat up straight, wide awake. I can do that, I thought. I’d never tried to write a poem before. Nothing happened, and everything changed.

That is universityness.