The shoulds

I got as much done on the promo folder as I could stand--including making a list of all the stuff I have to find/track down/ask for. It's printed out and in plastic sleeves in a ring binder with the appropriate labels on front and spine. Lots of the plastic sleeves just have notes in them (need to get X)--and as I went through the stuff I had, questions arose, which I'll ask in P&B on Tuesday. And now the "shoulds" have set in. I should be grading student papers. I should at least go through them and put them in some kind of order and get the fussing around done (the stuff I always feel like I need to do before I can actually start working). I should double check all the stuff I put together yesterday and make sure it makes sense. Sometimes I used to go on like this talking to my father, and he would remind me that one of his favorite things to say to clients in his psychology practice was, "Have you been should on today?" "Should" doesn't do anything; it's completely counter-productive. Either do something and stop "shoulding" about it--or let it go and recognize that sometimes it's OK to take a little time to breathe. To relax. To turn into a veritable sea cucumber.

As I write this, the sun is starting to go down and there is a beautiful amber light on everything outside. It was a beautiful sunny day today, cool but smelling crisply of fall, and that golden tone gracing the trees, the fence posts, the brick of the neighbor's house, is beautiful. There's a small breeze from time to time--and the light fades as I write. When I get wound up like I have been, in that mania of self-imposed pressure, I forget to notice the world. And it's a beautiful world. We live on a simply gorgeous planet; how lucky we are! Many of my students have the ability to talk about "nature" as something pretty, and soothing--the sentimental Hallmark card kind of recognition of trees, birdies, pretty horses running (all the imagery used in commercials as well). It's harder to get them to see/feel beyond the sentimental, beyond the merely pretty--and beyond valuing the natural world for what it gives us. The much harder task is to deeply care for the nonhuman and believe that it has intrinsic value: not as it is useful to us but simply in that it exists--and because it is utterly different from us, whether it is aesthetically pleasing or not.

As I've been struggling through the promo application, I've had to write out some of my thinking along those lines, both in describing my interests as a scholar and in explaining what I do with students and why. I just had a flash of realization (the thought has probably occurred to me before but it's never landed quite so clearly): students complain about what I have them read because they can't "relate"--and yet I only teach material to which I can "relate." Well, not entirely true. There are times when I've had to teach the American modernists, for instance, and purely personally, I am underwhelmed by their style and literary aims. But I understand both style and aims (and the interaction between the two), and I can teach those writers when I must. But I have always believed I teach better when I use material I care about. Now I begin to wonder. Maybe my frustrations would be less if I were to teach topics and readings I didn't care about so much; maybe the lack of interest and/or comprehension from the students wouldn't be so painful.

Nah, probably wouldn't help. Paul and I have talked about this a lot: I think it was two summers ago, we were sitting in a little park here in town, trying to figure out why we both felt so ground down, why we felt such profound frustration--even that word is insufficient to express what we felt. Finally Paul nailed it. We see where our students are, in terms of their intellectual preparedness as well as simply their mechanical skills. And we see where--in our estimation--they ought to be, even as freshmen, never mind as sophomores. The difference isn't merely a gap; for many of them it is an unbridgeable chasm. Never mind the fact that we only have 16 weeks in which to try to help them negotiate that difference. Never mind the fact that many of them do not believe they have any reason even to want to be where we say they ought to be. All too many of them have been so badly served by their preceding 13-plus years of education that even if we had infinte time and they had infinite desire, I'm not sure we could get them there.

The closest analogy I can think of is learning to speak a foreign language after that magic window for language acquisition has closed. No matter how fluent one becomes, one will be unable to speak that language like a native. One will have an accent, will make basic mistakes. Nonnative speakers of English, for instance, routinely misuse pronouns. When the mistake is pointed out, those who are fluent in the language can see the difference--but they can't hold on to it, and the next time will make the mistake again. Which pronoun to use in what situation is apparently one of those factors in English that one must acquire intuitively; it can't be taught.

And not only is academese a foreign language to many students, the entire set of assumptions that go along with life in academia are opaque to them: that it is good to struggle, that superficial isn't as interesting or rewarding as deep, that some things require a great deal of time--and are worth it. That there is such a thing as "the life of the mind," and that it is a wonderful, exciting, rich part of one's life to develop.

I know most students would rather set themselves on fire than consider their professors any kind of role model. I mean, dear God: we're stuffy and picky and don't measure our status through our material possessions (good thing, too, for those of us still on the lower rungs of the salary scale). But I do know that my students are often intrigued by the fact that I care, that I can get passionate about ideas, about words, about the connection between the two. In the past I've had students who would deliberately look for my "launch" button in class discussions, just because they were amazed and amused watching me go ballistic. I wonder if they've ever seen anyone get truly passionate about ideas (beyond the political chest-beating and vituperation that goes on in the media). I hope that for some of them, my passion gives them an idea that there might actually be something in all this that they want to find out more about.

I feel guilty, often, as I write these posts, because I don't tend to give as much "air time" to the students who have it all in hand: who are smart, and understand the value of genuinely becoming educated, and are interested in ideas, and want to develop intellectually, and are willing to do the hard work that is required of them--and indeed, are unhappy when they have teachers who are too easy, who don't challenge them to reach beyond their present limits. Nassau has plenty of them. I see them in my classes every semester. They are a delight--and without them, I doubt I'd have lasted as long as I have in this profession.

And there are those, too, who are less bright, less well prepared, not really sure what this whole college education thing is about but who will absolutely flay themselves to do well. I often feel terrible for them only because they are so grade oriented: they don't understand that the measure of their success is not the grade but their progress. (Oh, how I would love never to have to give another grade as long as I live! I would be so much happier to provide feedback, evaluation, progress reports instead of having to nail students into those labeled boxes.) But even those students who struggle to get C's--or even D's--I love, because they want to know. They care. They'll try. I've got one young man in 101KC who shows up to my office hours regularly for help. The front of his notebook is covered with affirmations for himself. (I've mentioned him before, because he continually tells me how hard he worked to get into college--and I know he's trying to act as a role model for the rest of his family.) Grade-wise he isn't doing very well at the moment, but I think he's genuinely learning. Indeed, one of the lessons I have to teach him is to stop second-guessing and trust himself. He's so worried about doing well that he ties himself--and his writing--into knots. I am desperate for him to pass--and I desperately want him to earn a C. I won't just hand it to him, but I'll pretzel myself to help him legitimately earn it.

Those are the kids who keep me teaching. They're the ones that make me start each new semester looking for that magic elixir, that golden assignment that will suddenly open things up for each and every one of them. And if I can remember to focus on them--the way I need to remember to notice the beautiful world around me--my emotional equilibrium is much steadier. And that helps everything, including dealing with the "shoulds."