Especially because the OWU magazine feature had me thinking about why I push students to improve rather than tell them what they want to hear, I was reminded of this video interview conducted by the English Department at Ohio State a couple years ago. They tracked down a student who had taken my version of the writing class that gives English majors a foundation in theoretical approaches to the study of literature. This was a pleasant surprise, largely because it does not give potential students any false impressions about my being “cool” or “understanding” or “nurturing.”
I hope you’re encouraging the young people in your life to see value in the teachers and professors who challenge them. Think about how much easier a teacher’s job is if they avoid letting the student know how their skills could be stronger—and there’s always room for growth. Yep, just think about it.
The professors I remember from college are those that pushed me–the one’s that told me to go do it again–better this time. They are the one’s I not only remember, but to whom I am forever grateful. I would have loved taking a class from you, Koritha–I have no doubt. And I would have been better educated for it.
Thank you so much, Norma! I’m hoping this post will encourage people to share those kinds of testimonies. The more we tell that kind of truth, the more parents and mentors might pause before assuming that professors are just trying to stress out their students.
Stories about the benefit of being challenged need to circulate among adults, too. I’m discouraged whenever older people go back to school and treat getting a degree as simply something to check off. They act as if the degree isn’t supposed to actually MEAN something beyond the credential. The more I see this mentality among adults returning to school, the more it makes sense that their children think of college as a place (magically apart from “the real world”) where strange people called “professors” care about things that simply are not meaningful.
I will definitely keep sharing, Koritha. I have long suspected– and it could be that I’m just wrong or arrogant in thinking this–that the majority of people do get degrees to check off a box. Working in the Anthropology program office for several of the years I was in college, I typed up the student evaluations and listened to the professors vent their frustrations–both with the students who refused to apply themselves, and with the academic system that made it difficult to hold them to a higher standard. It was the students who really wanted to be there, to learn, grow, and be challenged that were the exception. Maybe that was part of the attraction for me–I wanted to strive because I realized there was a real opportunity to become more than the status quo right in front of me if I would just grab it. ~N
Yes, yes, yes!