A couple of weeks ago I became upset with the students in the Freshman Composition class I teach at one of the local universities. As I explained the necessity of using action verbs and sensory details to evoke a dominant impression for the reader, and pointed out how vividly the sample essays in the text used description to this effect, I realized from the expressionless faces in front of me that not a single one of my students even vaguely shared my enthusiasm for good descriptive writing. It was evident, too, that they neither read those assigned essays nor cared to discuss them. To them this was all a bunch of pedagogic hooey!
That prompted the usual diatribe with my colleagues about how today’s students are unprepared for college, lack critical thinking skills, and suffer through general education courses like Composition not because of the value of the skill learned, but because the course is required for their degree, et cetera, et cetera.
As I mulled this over throughout the day, my rant gradually turned into an epiphany of sorts. I realized that when I was a freshman in college – nearly forty years ago – I thought this stuff was a bunch of crap, too. Like the aspiring artist who fails to recognize the need to know the mechanics of drawing before attempting abstract paintings, I saw little connection between the drudgery of learning the tools of composition and the great stream-of-consciousness novels I was certain would soon be flowing from my pen. Likewise with the other courses I’d enrolled in – Biology, German, American Literature, and Trigonometry. With the exception, perhaps, of the literature course (though I found several of the authors on the syllabus dry and tedious reads), I was convinced that my professors had no clue as to the sort of education a wannabe writer required. Instead, I set my own curriculum, one that consisted mostly of skipping classes and writing poor imitations of whatever author I was into at the time. The result was a much less than stellar first semester – two B’s (Freshman Comp and Literature), a C (German), and two Incompletes (Biology and Math).
I finally wised up – after two false starts at college and a stint as a Hospital Corpsman in the Navy – and recognized the importance of those basic courses I’d naively thought a waste of my time. And I realize now that, as I did, most of those students who stared blankly at me, bored out of their skulls, during that class period a couple of weeks ago, will sooner or later “get it”, too.
So… to the students of my English 101 class: I absolve you of your Sin of Disinterest that morning. Sometimes, alas, it seems professors forget that they were once freshmen, too.
That prompted the usual diatribe with my colleagues about how today’s students are unprepared for college, lack critical thinking skills, and suffer through general education courses like Composition not because of the value of the skill learned, but because the course is required for their degree, et cetera, et cetera.
As I mulled this over throughout the day, my rant gradually turned into an epiphany of sorts. I realized that when I was a freshman in college – nearly forty years ago – I thought this stuff was a bunch of crap, too. Like the aspiring artist who fails to recognize the need to know the mechanics of drawing before attempting abstract paintings, I saw little connection between the drudgery of learning the tools of composition and the great stream-of-consciousness novels I was certain would soon be flowing from my pen. Likewise with the other courses I’d enrolled in – Biology, German, American Literature, and Trigonometry. With the exception, perhaps, of the literature course (though I found several of the authors on the syllabus dry and tedious reads), I was convinced that my professors had no clue as to the sort of education a wannabe writer required. Instead, I set my own curriculum, one that consisted mostly of skipping classes and writing poor imitations of whatever author I was into at the time. The result was a much less than stellar first semester – two B’s (Freshman Comp and Literature), a C (German), and two Incompletes (Biology and Math).
I finally wised up – after two false starts at college and a stint as a Hospital Corpsman in the Navy – and recognized the importance of those basic courses I’d naively thought a waste of my time. And I realize now that, as I did, most of those students who stared blankly at me, bored out of their skulls, during that class period a couple of weeks ago, will sooner or later “get it”, too.
So… to the students of my English 101 class: I absolve you of your Sin of Disinterest that morning. Sometimes, alas, it seems professors forget that they were once freshmen, too.
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