I was visiting my brother at Deep Springs college this past week. On one of the days I was there, I asked my brother William if I could really get my hands into the labor. He set me up to join the “dairy boys” for the 4:30 PM milking. Two kids, 18 and 19, herding the cows in. It smelled like farm. It stank. They walked me through the whole procedure. Checking for mastitis, pouring the chemicals, squirting, going through each step. When it came to actually milking, they explained the technique: you hit the top of the teats to get the milk flowing, the same way a calf bumps its head against the cow. They guided my hands, let me do parts of it, double-checked my work. At one point the cow pissed right behind me. You just move, make sure the bucket stays clean, and keep going. I was being taught how to milk a cow by an 18-year-old from New York City.
Deep Springs is a two-year college on a working cattle ranch in the California desert, a few hours from Mammoth, in the middle of nowhere. About 26 students total. They govern themselves, do rigorous academics, and work the land alongside all of it. A lot of them transfer to Ivy League schools after. Some start companies. Some stay and become farmers. The school has been around since 1917 and there is nothing else quite like it. My brother William goes there, which is the only reason I got to visit.
Nobody cares what you’re wearing. You’re there to ride horses, chase cattle, fix machines, milk cows. You wear boots so you don’t hurt yourself. That’s it. Coming from New York, where what you wear signals everything, watching those markers just fall away was its own kind of relief. You’re just a person trying to be useful.
And then there’s the lunch table conversations. These same kids who’d just walked me through a milking procedure were sitting there pulling apart Fukuyama’s end-of-history argument, talking about Hegel, getting into biosemiotics. Dense stuff. I just had to sit there and listen. Sometimes, the conversation shifted: transfer applications, college essays, what problems they wanted to work on. And I felt it. The urge. I’ve been through all of this. I know something here.
But I held back. Asked a few questions, said “I remember that” a couple times, but mostly listened. Because the honest truth is these kids didn’t need my advice. They were already thinking more carefully than I was at their age. Probably more carefully than I do now on some of this.
The teaching on humility this week talks about taking up the right amount of space. Not too much, not too little. What Deep Springs reminded me is that I probably know less than I think I do. Funny thing is, these kids are figuring out what’s next too. Different stage of life, same uncertainty. And somehow they had more clarity in the moment than I did.
You can learn from everyone. Including an 18-year-old teaching you not to let the milk bucket fall in the cow piss.