Whitworth Frosh Begin Juggling College Life Orientation Has Share Of Learning Curves

On Sunday, Bob Woodburn was to teach 400 Whitworth College freshmen the secrets of life and juggling, but he couldn’t resist indulging in a little mischievous wackiness first.

Standing on a portable stage before the crowd of tan, healthy looking freshmen, Woodburn (himself rather tan and healthy looking, but with less hair) said the magic words: “Button frosh.”

At the sound of the words, a group of students stood, put one hand on their heads and jumped around in small circles while yelling.

“It’s part of frosh initiation,” explained Dave Pluister, a senior sporting a nose ring. A few minutes before, Pluister had indulged in saying the powerful words. Freshmen must do the dance whenever an upperclassman says “button frosh.”

There are other words and other dances and Woodburn went through them all before addressing the seemingly impossible task of teaching 400 people to juggle simultaneously.

Learning to juggle - or anything else - is about attitude, Woodburn told the crowd. He gave them the following chant to repeat whenever he described juggling as scary: “So what! Who cares! I can juggle!”

There was more concrete advice as well: details on how to keep yellow, blue and red beanbags aloft at the same time.

When everybody got going, the air above the students’ heads buzzed like a bag of spilled Skittles.

Near the back of the crowd, freshman Matt Ebel had moved beyond beanbags to a trio of multi-colored clubs. He had been trying to get the clubs to cooperate and finally they did.

“I got it, now I don’t know how to stop,” he said, juggling successfully. “Give me the torches baby.”

Others weren’t as advanced, but were still having a good time. Lance Sinnema could loft the three bags into the air in the correct juggling fashion, but beyond that he stalled.

He tried again and again. Then he had it, the pattern started to repeat.

“It’s in the counting,” Sinnema said. “Just getting it out of your head. Just verbalizing it and acting it out.” Sinnema wasn’t sure that method would work on his first exam, but he sincerely pondered the possibility for a moment.

As Woodburn’s lesson wound down he tossed another piece of advice to this group of future test-takers, midnight crammers and deadline essay writers: “This is about learning. There’s no such thing as a mistake.”

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