The last seed dropped into Michigan soil three days ago. The same weekend, thousands of caps flew into the air across campus as the Class of 2025 walked across the stage. Two major chapters of my year closed simultaneously, leaving me in that peculiar space between completion and anticipation—a space I’ve come to recognize as sacred.
The Quiet After
There’s a distinct quality to the quiet that follows completion. In the fields, the tractors are silent, the implements cleaned and stored. The earth holds its secrets now—seeds resting in darkness, beginning the slow work of transformation we can’t see but must trust. On campus, residence halls empty, libraries grow still, and the pathways that buzzed with purpose now echo with memory.
Both environments share the same strange mixture of exhaustion and hope. The work is done, but the real work—the growing—has only just begun.
For the students who graduated last weekend, this is the threshold moment. Four years of structured learning, clear expectations, and defined progress markers have ended. Now comes the uncharted territory of building a life, much like how our soybeans must find their own way to sunlight through soil we’ve prepared but can no longer control.
The Invisible Work Continues
What strikes me most about this parallel timing is how both transitions rely on invisible processes. The campus may look quiet, but beneath the surface, our teams are already preparing for fall. We’re upgrading systems, reviewing processes, planning improvements. The infrastructure that will support next year’s students is being quietly strengthened during these seemingly dormant months.
Similarly, while our fields appear static, an intricate dance of biology is beginning. Root systems are establishing, soil microbes are awakening, and the foundation for fall’s harvest is being laid in ways too subtle to observe but too important to ignore.
This is the part that doesn’t make headlines or graduation speeches—the patient, persistent work that happens between the moments of visible achievement.
Growth Without Audience
Perhaps this is what I find most profound about this seasonal overlap: both recently planted fields and newly graduated students must do their most important growing without an audience. The seeds don’t have daily encouragement or progress reports. The graduates don’t have professors grading their life choices or parents tracking their development through transcripts.
Growth becomes an act of faith—faith in the preparation that came before, faith in the process itself, and faith that what’s planted will eventually find its way to light.
I think about the students I’ve worked with over the years, the ones who’ve graduated into uncertainty but carried with them the tools we helped them develop. Like seeds, they take what we’ve given them and transform it into something we couldn’t have imagined when we first planted the idea in their minds.
The Long View of Seasons
Working in both agriculture and higher education teaches you to think in seasons rather than moments. The corn we planted last week won’t be ready until September. The freshmen who arrived last fall won’t graduate until 2028. Success in both contexts requires patience, trust in process, and the willingness to invest in outcomes you won’t see for months or years.
This perspective changes how you approach the work. Every system we build, every process we improve, every small innovation we implement is really an investment in students we haven’t met yet, supporting learning experiences that haven’t been imagined yet.
Just as every seed we plant is an act of faith in favorable weather, adequate rain, and the continuation of natural cycles beyond our control.
Preparing for What’s Coming
While others see summer as downtime, we see it as preparation time. The fields require monitoring, the systems need updates, and the foundation for next year’s success is built in these quieter months.
This is when we test new approaches, refine existing processes, and strengthen partnerships. It’s when we prepare for the intensity of fall semester the same way we prepare equipment for harvest season—with careful attention to every detail that will matter when the pace picks up again.
The Continuity of Cycles
Standing at the intersection of agricultural and academic calendars, I’m reminded that both are ultimately about continuity. Each graduation class makes way for the next. Each harvest prepares the ground for the following season. The work is never truly finished—it’s renewed, refined, and passed forward.
The Class of 2025 joins a long line of graduates who’ve left Michigan State to grow in ways we can’t track or measure. The seeds in our fields join countless seasons of crops that have fed communities and sustained the land.
In both cases, we’ve done our part in the preparation. Now comes the patient work of growth—theirs to do, ours to trust.
Between Chapters
This moment between chapters—between planting and emergence, between graduation and career, between completion and beginning—is where faith lives. It’s where we learn that the most important work often happens in the spaces we can’t see, guided by principles we can’t control.
As I walk the quiet campus these days, then drive home past fields that look dormant but pulse with potential, I’m grateful for the privilege of witnessing both kinds of beginnings. The rest is growing season—for seeds and souls alike.