“Your students will hate you.”
8/11/2005
One of our recent graduates was in to see me before heading off to graduate school. We got to talking about a number of things, and I shared with her my every-semester self-inflicted agony over selecting which books to order for my class(es). Before I became a dean I taught several classes each term and so the pain was multiplied. But now, even teaching only one, nothing on my desk fills me with sheer terror more than that dreaded single piece of paper, that terrible blank mocking accusatory Book Order Form. (Many faculty, it turns out, are afflicted with this same malady. We therefore have support meetings where, sitting in a circle, we say things like "Hello, my name is Jeff, and I haven't chosen my books yet." Hi Jeff.)
So what's my problem? Ordering books for a class is a sacred act—telling a student that these texts are worth their time and energy. One cannot take this decision lightly. It's also a huge risk. What if they hate it? Isn't it a sinking feeling when you spend time selecting what you think will be the perfect gift for a friend only to discover that s/he hates it? The gift after all isn't just an object; you're contained in it too somehow. It's the same with teachers and our books.
Anyway I told our former student what I was thinking of using in my Freshman Seminar on Dimensions of the Self: Thinking for Oneself. (Yes I know the irony of it all. "Thinking for Oneself" yet I cannot for the life of me make up my mind on the books. And to make matters worse this stuff was due last May! My poor colleagues in the Bookstore. What a lousy example I'm setting for other faculty. I've got to get better.) One of the books gave her pause. She thought about it, smiled, and said: "Your students will hate you." That book is too demanding. She read some of it later in her time at Dominican, but to assign the whole thing to freshmen—I must be crazy. It's Plato's Republic.
Stunned and chastened, I continued to procrastinate. I went on vacation with my family to a cabin on a lake, did some fishing, watched an eagle circle overhead and a heron sitting on the dock, felt the bats crashing into the fishing line while trolling late at night, and kept thinking about those poor unsuspecting students, most of whom I'd met over the summer during advising, and how I was going to make them hate me.
I'll risk it. The book order has been sent. But I'm about to augment it. I think it's time to hit a Homer as well.
One of our recent graduates was in to see me before heading off to graduate school. We got to talking about a number of things, and I shared with her my every-semester self-inflicted agony over selecting which books to order for my class(es). Before I became a dean I taught several classes each term and so the pain was multiplied. But now, even teaching only one, nothing on my desk fills me with sheer terror more than that dreaded single piece of paper, that terrible blank mocking accusatory Book Order Form. (Many faculty, it turns out, are afflicted with this same malady. We therefore have support meetings where, sitting in a circle, we say things like "Hello, my name is Jeff, and I haven't chosen my books yet." Hi Jeff.)
So what's my problem? Ordering books for a class is a sacred act—telling a student that these texts are worth their time and energy. One cannot take this decision lightly. It's also a huge risk. What if they hate it? Isn't it a sinking feeling when you spend time selecting what you think will be the perfect gift for a friend only to discover that s/he hates it? The gift after all isn't just an object; you're contained in it too somehow. It's the same with teachers and our books.
Anyway I told our former student what I was thinking of using in my Freshman Seminar on Dimensions of the Self: Thinking for Oneself. (Yes I know the irony of it all. "Thinking for Oneself" yet I cannot for the life of me make up my mind on the books. And to make matters worse this stuff was due last May! My poor colleagues in the Bookstore. What a lousy example I'm setting for other faculty. I've got to get better.) One of the books gave her pause. She thought about it, smiled, and said: "Your students will hate you." That book is too demanding. She read some of it later in her time at Dominican, but to assign the whole thing to freshmen—I must be crazy. It's Plato's Republic.
Stunned and chastened, I continued to procrastinate. I went on vacation with my family to a cabin on a lake, did some fishing, watched an eagle circle overhead and a heron sitting on the dock, felt the bats crashing into the fishing line while trolling late at night, and kept thinking about those poor unsuspecting students, most of whom I'd met over the summer during advising, and how I was going to make them hate me.
I'll risk it. The book order has been sent. But I'm about to augment it. I think it's time to hit a Homer as well.
