All Posts Tagged With: "interest"
Am I interesting enough, yet?
Professors try to be engaging, but students have to meet them in the middle.
Some comments on an earlier post led me to thinking about a question that all professors face: how interesting do we have to be?
Of course, it goes without saying that instructors have a basic responsibility to present course material in a way that’s reasonably clear and comprehensible to the students in question. I’ve known only a few professors who actually dislike teaching, but even they go that far. But are there obligations beyond that? Does a professor have to be, dare I say, entertaining?
Many professors actually try not to be too interesting in the way that they think students mean it — funny, relevant, high-tech — because they think to do so would be to compromise the integrity of the discipline they are teaching. They don’t mean that the discipline itself is uninteresting, but that when the material is taught accurately and fully, a certain number of students will never be interested. And even then, in order to get to the exciting parts, one sometimes has to stroll through some pedestrian stuff in order to get there. To paraphrase Samuel Johnson’s remark on Paradise Lost, a palace must have corridors as well as ballrooms. These profs fear the rise of so-called “info-tainment” whereby the deep thought is obscured by flashy gadgets, dumbing down, and lame attempts to make the material relatable.
To some extent, I sympathize with this view, but, naturally funny and steeped in popular culture as I am, I really can’t help imparting a certain amount of ‘tainment to my info. I do worry, however, that the perceived need for professors to be interesting does a lot to absolve students of responsibility in the classroom. Many students seem to feel that if they are not interested, it’s because the prof isn’t interesting. No doubt this is sometimes true; to be sure, I have passed by classrooms where the droning voice of Professor Monotone or Dr Unvarying was pouring into the hall and felt sorry for the poor students inside. Still, being interested sometimes requires an act of will by the student, especially when the class is being guided down one of those Johnsonian corridors.
Put another way, while the professor should make a reasonable effort to offer something interesting, students must make a reasonable effort to take an interest in the material. It is not going too far, I think, to suggest that students make an investment by listening deliberately, even when the material is not compelling, that they literally pay attention and receive information and insight and profound questions in return. At the very least, they get the promise of a payoff in the future.
Academic knowledge is complicated. It often requires mastery of numerous details, and its conclusions are not always intuitively obvious. Making sense of it means diligence and even tedium. You can’t always sit back and wait for it to get good. I sincerely believe that there are times when the difference between a semi-colon and a comma is utterly fascinating — but you’re going to have bear with me.
Pick classes with the most girls
Careful analysis might not be the best way to design your university career
I had always planned to take time off after high school to travel and work. I wanted to gain some life experience before deciding what I wanted to study for four years, I suppose because I subscribed to the “major = career” theory. The circumstances at the time didn’t let me do that, and here I am heading straight into university. While I’ve come to understand that your major certainly doesn’t have to equal your career, I still don’t know what I want to study or what kind of career I want to have. And I think taking time off would’ve helped me get a better idea of both of those things. So, if you can, I suggest taking some time off between high school and university.
If that’s not an option, you have to figure out some means of choosing courses (and yes, eventually, a major), that you find interesting and enjoyable and that hopefully lead you to an interesting career.
My method of choice, being an analytical, planner personality type (according to this impressively accurate personality test), has been to carefully consider what kind of lifestyle I want in the future and what kind of work I find rewarding and fulfilling, and to work backwards from there in terms of what kind of jobs offer those things and then what qualifications are needed to get those jobs. Kind of a painstaking process, but it’s the best I’ve been able to come up with.
Despite this reasonably thorough investigation, I still don’t really know what I want. I have a lot of ideas, but there are pieces missing. So, today I went to a professor and businessman I know seeking advice. He leads a lifestyle I think I would enjoy, he works on interesting and important projects, he’s very opinionated, and I respect his judgment very much.
Instead of the careful analysis I expected from a distinguished academic, his advice was refreshingly different, with an understated wisdom that I suppose is often overlooked by us analytical types. Simply, he said, take courses you will enjoy. Take the courses with the most girls in them! It’ll be fun. An undergraduate degree should teach you how to think well and communicate well; the content is less important.
So now I throw these factors into the mix. Follow your interests, have fun, and try to choose courses (or at least sit in on lectures) with professors who have a reputation for the way they think and teach – not necessarily what they teach. Along with a little careful analysis of your own, I think that’s a pretty good balance.
