Surprised by Freshmen . . .

I was dreading the beginning of this semester.

As the summer slipped by, I found new and innovative methods of procrastination to avoid working on the syllabus. Usually, I have at least one upper-division course for English majors or a graduate seminar to look forward to, but this year (for boring reasons) I am teaching two general-curriculum courses: English 102 (the second semester of composition) and the first half of the British Literature survey. The last time I taught first-year composition was before Covid and before the explosion of large-language models made life hell for academics in the humanities. I was certain that I would have to spend most of the semester adjudicating AI cases.

While this fate may still come to pass, the first day surprised me and led me to hope that it may be a good teaching semester after all.

The first surprise was not pleasant: as the temperature outside inched towards 96 degrees Fahrenheit (35.5 C), I found that the air conditioning was not working in the large lecture hall where I teach my 80-seat survey. I kept them for less than a half hour, as we roasted and sweated, and so I didn’t receive a full impression from this large group. I’m sure it will be fine: I have the help of an excellent TA in that class, and I know all of the texts like the proverbial back of my hand.

The real surprise came in my second class. By that time, the AC problem in the building had been fixed, and so the smaller room for my composition class was a reasonable temperature. As I walked into the room to get set up, about five minutes before the start of class, the students were all talking with each other.

Let me write that again: the students were all talking with each other!

This seldom happens in general curriculum courses, especially not on the first day. Usually students are hunched over their desks, staring at their phones, zombie-like, eyes vacant. But these students were animated, and they seemed to be happy to be there.

I can’t adequately explain what a difference this makes to the mood of a teacher at the beginning of a class meeting. I’m enough of a professional that I can grind my way through a class full of apathetic students and still do my job well, but I don’t enjoy it, and it drains me. A room full of enthusiastic, curious students, on the other hand, is like jumpstart to my dying battery.

A couple of factors may have worked in my favor here. First of all, these are English 102 students in the fall semester, which means that most of them were bright enough to have placed out of English 101 entering their first year. Also, these particular students are part of a “learning community,” which means that they are taking multiple classes in common, and so they already know each other to some extent.

I expected to have to spend the first day of class prodding my students into consciousness and delivering stern warnings about attendance and late work. But this was not the case at all.

Another bit of serendipity: our online composition textbook had not been working for me for the past couple of days me because of a technical glitch, and so I had only the first couple of weeks of the class schedule worked out, other than due dates for the major papers. On the syllabus, I had simply written the rest of the schedule would be forthcoming. But the students were all so engaged, and so apparently interested in what I had planned for the opening two weeks, that I decided to tell them that after the first unit, we would collaboratively build the rest of the schedule, that we would populate it with readings and discussions based on where our collective interests direct us through the first couple of weeks.

They loved this idea. I told them that I would endeavor to be the most benevolent dictator possible. They laughed, and one student called out: “You’ll give us the illusion of choice.” And another replied: “Kind of like capitalism.”

Yes, despite the systematic assault on higher education nationally and in my state (as our board of trustees is likely to abolish our faculty senate this fall), and despite the tech billionaires who would love to make my job obsolete and replace me with something that they can monetize (because all of the money in the world is not enough for them)—despite all of this, there may be some joy to be found in teaching this semester.

Thanks for reading, from my fancy internet typewriter to yours.