Year in Review: A Year in the Rearview

Have you ever noticed the tiny, nearly transparent lettering on a vehicle’s sideview mirrors: “OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR”? First of all, what a great little rhyme, no? But more saliently, this phrase often rings true when we look back on past events and circumstances in our individual and shared experiences. I often find myself asking, “Did that really happen that recently?” Experiences in my past frequently feel much further away than they actually are. In fact, they are regularly closer than they appear. This past academic year is no different.

It was just nine months ago that the School of Business, Government, & Economics faculty and staff met across the street from McKenna Hall to discuss the, at that point, upcoming academic year. Our main goal was to reprioritize a sense of community and belonging in our school. After all, this was our first full year without various Covid restrictions impacting our daily lives of teaching, studying, and working. Less than a week later, our wonderful students were back on campus to begin classes, without masking and social-distance restrictions. That was just this past year, y’all…

Those first few weeks of the 2022–2023 academic year are a bit of a blur to me now. I was meeting our newest freshmen and transfer students, purchasing an absurd amount of pizza for SBGE’s first annual Open House, celebrating our new Sustainable Management minor, and recruiting more students to study abroad with our newly-minted partner program ALBA Study Abroad in Barcelona. Before I knew it, the academic year – and the tidal wave of events, deadlines, and responsibilities that come with it – was in full effect.

This year’s New Majors Dessert was especially meaningful to me. It’s my favorite event each year, and this gathering marked our first time back in-person for it in over two years. At this year’s event, three of my favorite recent alumni shared their experiences with our newest crop of admitted students. It doesn’t seem like that long ago that these now professionals and graduate students were in a couple of my undergrad classes. But that’s the funny thing about time. Sometimes it feels like things happened much longer ago than they actually did, and other times it feels as if things happened much more recently than they did. It’s as if we need a reminder: OBJECTS MAY APPEAR IN MIRROR SOONER THAN EXPECTED, too.

I wonder how our soon-to-be graduating class feels about the passing of time when it comes to their undergraduate careers at Seattle Pacific. Did it come to a close sooner than expected, or does it feel like it has taken forever to get to this point?

Our School of Business, Government, & Economics is extremely proud of our graduating students! We look forward to celebrating each of them at this year’s SBGE Graduation Open House after Ivy Cutting, on June 9, from 11 am to 2 pm in McKenna Hall. From all the faculty and staff in SBGE, congratulations, class of 2023! We hope that if and when you decide to look in that rearview mirror, you think fondly of the formative time that we shared in SPU’s School of Business, Government, & Economics.

Reflection by Jake Carlson, Assistant Dean of Undergraduate Programs, School of Business, Government, & Economics, Seattle Pacific University.