ALUMNI PERSPECTIVES
Dean David Harris, right, converses with a group of students.
What is the greatest life lesson you took away from your professors at Ripon College? A liberal arts and sciences education exposes students to new perspectives, worldviews and a personal understanding of who we are and who we can become. A single sentiment can expand our outlook, summarize for us how we want to carry ourselves through life and keep us going in the right direction. Here, alumni share some of those great words of wisdom learned from Ripon College faculty and staff. Many years ago (1980), I was a budding freshman, new on campus and new to Wisconsin. It was the first big trip I ever made in my life, and Ripon was the chance I took to grow out of my Connecticut roots. One of the first things they did with the freshman class was to split the men from the women so they could meet with the respective deans. I got to meet with David Harris, an older gentleman with wire-frame glasses who was very well-spoken and was a few years away from retirement. In my head I was saying, “What could this old man tell an 18-year-old that will be useful?” I thought it was going to be a boring talk about the College or how to
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behave in class. Boy, was I wrong. Dean Harris instantly captured our attention by saying one phrase that has stuck with me for all these years: “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” We’ve all heard it before and have passed it off as a useless aphorism. Dean Harris made it genuinely come alive in front of 100+ boys. He told us, “Life is hard and that anything important will take determination, resilience and elbow grease.” He said, “The next four years here at Ripon can be happy and productive ones if you work hard — college is not an amusement park ride like most people think.”
That 15-minute speech changed my life. I graduated from Ripon in 1984, went to work for a number of great companies over 20 years, and now run my own highperformance coaching practice. I say those same words to every one of my clients when I onboard them. In addition, my son, Chris, just graduated from Ripon this past year, and my other son, Andrew, is actively applying! Thank you, Dean Harris. You were a powerful dean of men, and a “Marcus Aurelius” who truly changed my life. Rich Gee ’84 Oxford, Connecticut
