By the time students enter university they are not limited to learning from their professors. They still find information in the classroom, and can mine the textbooks for still more, but much of the learning is done by discussing ideas with fellow students and reading material outside the curriculum. In the humanities at least, this is even more true of graduate school.
The professor exists in the graduate course to guide the conversation more than anything else, and an overly controlling professor is best avoided. The students are serious about what they are trying to learn and appreciate the professor stepping in if the discussion is being sidetracked by a Christian Bök fan, or a student is trying to turn the collaborative environment into a monologue. In this capacity, the professor is more of a traffic enforcer and less of a thought police.
These interested and insightful students are the ideal, however, and as I found out in one of the most important lessons I gained from graduate school, they do not always represent reality.
One of the required courses for my PhD was a research methods course, which was taught by a well-meaning professor who showed much enthusiasm for a topic many of the students cared little about. The students were a varied group, made up of an older woman who took voluminous notes and said little, Donna, whose husband was a contract professor on the department and who had two children at home, Evon, who was a poet and disliked being told what to do, Ross, a rather immature manboy, and miscellaneous others. The crisis in the course came when the professor had to be absent one week for a conference and asked that we conduct the class on our own. This is not as unusual a request as you might think. During a strike months earlier, some of us had met at a fellow student’s house and kept up with our readings and discussion. In the case of the methods course, we knew what material needed to be discussed and prepared, and the professor was only there to ensure we kept on track. In this particular course, it turned out he was needed for more than that.
On the day we met for class in his absence, there was the usual banter before class began, although with perhaps more of a holiday atmosphere. Once it was time to begin I suggested that we start. That’s when I began to learn something about my fellow students. They were all for—especially led by Ross was a careless student in the best of times—going to the campus bar and drinking. I reminded them that we were supposed to conduct the class, and they scoffed and made derisive comments, similar to those you might remember from middle school. But we weren’t middle school students, and that collision between age and maturity surprised me.
While they told me I was a teacher’s pet and looking for brownie points and not to worry that the professor wouldn’t know, I finally took it upon myself to remind them of who they were. “We have certain material that we have to get through by the end of the year,” I reminded them. “If the professor were here it will go much slower, and we can accomplish much more without his interference. Why don’t we go through the material now and get it over with?”
My lone plaints meant nothing to them and although some were quiet, most were telling me I didn’t need to worry about the professor. Finally I’d had enough of that line of reasoning and told them, “I’m really surprised at you. I’m not sure what you came to graduate school for. You realize, don’t you, that you don’t have to be here? No one is making you attend. You can leave at any time you wish. Personally, I am spending a lot of money and time to do my best here and I have no interest in wasting that sitting in a bar with you. If you want to leave, go to the bar or whatever, just go. I won’t tell on you. No one here will tell the professor that you have no interest in graduate school. Don’t worry. But if you’re going to leave, leave now so that those of us who want can get some work done.”
Shamed into a kind of submission, they all stayed while we appointed the older woman as a note taker—since the professor wanted to know what we accomplished when he was gone—and went through the course material. It went much more quickly in the prof’s absence and by the time of the break, we were done all the required material for the day. Then the uproar began again. The same students were all for going home and even some who’d kept quiet just wanted to leave because we had finished what we’d needed to. I reminded them how much more quickly we went through material when the prof wasn’t interrupting and they weren’t posturing for grades. I suggested we keep working and get ahead in the class.
Many of them were outraged. You’d think that I’d asked kindergarteners to give up their candies. They made the same calls as before and Ross just stamped out. He was followed by a couple of others, and I told them to go. “No one will say anything if you leave. If you don’t want to be in class, just go, so the rest of us can get our work done.” The married woman and Evon left in disgust that I would think to command them and soon we were down to half our class. Those who remained seemed interested enough, so we continued and managed to get a bit ahead in class before leaving early.
Before class the following week, the older woman and one other student told me they were glad I spoke up and we were able to have a class. I asked them why they hadn’t said anything that the time but they had no answer. When the professor returned, he praised us that we’d accomplished so much while he’d been gone and told us how happy he was that we were responsible for our own education. Some of my fellow students looked sheepish while others suspected I’d said something to the professor, if I read their glares correctly.
For me the entire incident was a grave lesson. I’d always thought that people matured beyond children when they donned the clothing of adults. I would have thought that graduate students who were paying huge fees to learn would be interested in learning, but I found instead, to my dismay, that they were no different than any child who feels put upon to do something for their own benefit. Even children know to eat their vegetables to build a healthy body, to get a good night’s sleep to ensure alertness the following day, and to treat others with respect if you wish for that to be reciprocated. My fellow graduate students were more like the spoiled brats in American movies who only exist to be a contrast to the good kids.
I now think that people do not mature beyond their teenage years, and I’ve accumulated much more anecdotal information to bear that hypothesis out. I’ve seen adults get angry with a bus door for opening slowly, fight when they are tired and can’t control their crankiness, and be willfully obstinate when the task in front of them is for their own good, or the good of others. I’ve seen meetings of professionals turn into silly pissing contests or gigglefests, and as stolid as an old tree, I’ve stood to watch my peers speak gleefully and derisively of their students, although that said more about them than the students. Perhaps I am too serious. That might have been the problem in graduate school, where I learned to research, and go beyond what was asked, because I took my work seriously, where I found interest in subjects I wouldn’t have when I was a child, and began to realize the endlessly delightful world or learning never slows, and certainly never stops so we can play in traffic or spin bottles.
I’ve returned many times to that moment in class when I am trying to explain to my own students that they had taken on a task and therefore it behooves them to do it, or if they are incapable or unwilling, to at least get out of the way so others may do what is needed. I often mentally compare my students to the mother of two from my class whose husband was a professor and who wanted to escape to the bar. Or the serious poet of renown in western Canada, who had so little regard for a degree she thought was an unfair requirement for her to be a professor. My students do not suffer by the comparison, for even at their most recalcitrant, they show more enthusiasm about their own future and the task at hand than many older people who occupy important positions in government and industry, older people who hold the lives of others in their unsteady hands, and who are so careless with their responsibilities that I begin to wonder what Ross and Donna and Evon are doing now.
