Hugo Schwyzer

A lengthy and typically disorganized reflection on teaching, evaluation and service

There was an interesting piece in Sunday's Los Angeles Times: Student, you're lazy! Professor, you're a zero!  A professor and a student, both from Elon University in North Carolina, share a rather spirited e-mail exchange on the subject of students rating professors (a phenomenon that has exploded on-line) and, now professors rating students.

Though I've known for a while about Ratemyprofessors.com, this was the first I'd heard of the Rate Your Students blog.  RYS is a forum for frustrated college profs to vent (anonymously) about the lazy, the uninterested, the unprepared, the rude, the dim, and the grade-grubbing.  It's an entertaining site, with some excellent suggestions to go along with the griping.  One professor writes:

Sure, I have students who drive me mad, and their general poverty of talent for "being students" is frustrating. That's their education. I tell them about this. They perk up. I was not always a perfect doll as an undergrad myself -- and now, I'm on the other side of the desk. Asked about me at 18, most of my profs would likely have just crossed their fingers, rolled their eyes, or held silent. I was not a treat. I earned the grade. But I was not a treat...

Bitch, moan, vent, shake fist at heavens. Please do. Because teaching is a human interaction and it affects us just like any other human interaction. But then get on with it, stay open to them. We're the experienced adults in this context. We've been on both sides of the desk. We were not all perfect at being students when we were young. But, we caught the bug, fell in love with learning, and here we are. The ones with talent, and dedication, and drive, they need and want our guidance, advice ,and tutelage. Ratemyprofessors.com is proof of that. It's also proof that some people are vindictive and vengeful and spoiled. What, really, is new? Vent away.

I'll be the first to admit I vent about the lazy and the unprepared and the impolite.  Like professors everywhere, my colleagues and I swap war stories.  We sometimes play the game of "worst student ever", and trade hilarious (and often, sad or scary) anecdotes from our classes.  That's necessary and normal behavior; we who teach are human beings, after all, and as liable as other folks to get exasperated at work.   Few among us have vast reservoirs of patience, and even those of us who do are unlikely to squander our reserves on the unimaginative and the dishonest!

Unlike most folks, I never had any illusions about college professors.  I grew up with a father who was a philosophy prof at the University of California, and a mother who taught philosophy and humanities full-time at a community college.  The adults whom I saw regularly were my parents' colleagues.  Teaching at a college or a university was what virtually every grown-up I knew as a child did, and so I never had the profession on much of a pedestal.

But despite this familiarity with those who teach, in my own college experience, I found myself idolizing a number of professors.  Now, twenty years on, I remember that the profs who captivated me the most were not the easiest or the funniest, but the ones who were most passionate and most certain.    I liked best the professors who brought their personalities and idiosyncrasies into the classroom, even when those idiosyncrasies included odd biases and beliefs.  I especially admired the professors with whom I intensely disagreed, because so often, they forced me to do more work to try and prove them wrong.  And, like many students, I responded best to those who could craft their delivery well -- even if the content of what they were delivering was facile or redundant.  Students, of every generation, like a show!

My own teaching style comes from many different sources.   I grew up hearing both my parents give lectures, and so part of my delivery is patterned upon theirs.  As a child, I took drama classes from age seven until I graduated from high school, and so my ability to lecture without ever using notes (after the first time I teach a class) came from the years of being trained to memorize.  And along my way through Berkeley and UCLA, I picked up little habits and tricks from a dozen different professors.  Even now, while lecturing, I'll think to myself "Hugo, you sound just like professor X", or "You're trying too hard to imitate old professor Y".   I've been full-time for a dozen years, tenured since 1998, and I still am aware of how much of my lecture style is derived from those in whose classes I was an engaged student.  If there is anything unique about my teaching, it is only the manner in which I have blended the various styles of the many men and women (starting with my parents) who taught me.

I have "good" classes (talkative, filled with energy) and "bad" classes.  (I wrote about this in December '04.)  I of course prefer the good classes, and I love the students who want to come and talk to me about ideas and how they intersect with their own lives.  But I don't expect most of my students to be active and engaged.  I remember how self-absorbed and distracted I was as an undergraduate -- and I went to school full-time without having a job or dependents.  Most of my students work, many have children or spouses or other demands that occupy them. I don't grade them any easier because of their burdens, of course -- that would be patronizing.  But I don't expect them all to be fascinated by me and my material, either.

I pray for my students quite often.  Sometimes, these prayers are prayers of frustration: "Oh Lord, why must they lie so often?" "Father, please help them to remember that a sentence has a subject, an object, and a verb!"  Other times, my prayers are for their inspiration.  For those who seem lifeless or lost, I often pray "Lord, grant them inspiration.  Grant them passion for something beyond the immediately pleasurable.  And if it be your will, Father, help me to be a catalyst in their lives."  And still other times, my prayers are very simple indeed: "Lord, grant me the strength to refrain from strangling Johnny in the back row, who persists in believing that I can't see him text-messaging  his friends while I'm lecturing."

But in the end, to be very honest, my self-esteem as a teacher doesn't hinge on the individual performance of my students.  I'm not important enough in the lives of most to play a truly memorable role.  I'm delighted when I do form a connection with a particular student, and I'm moved and gratified when they tell me that I've had a positive impact upon them.  But though my students are important to me, I don't just teach to them.  When I lecture, pacing around the classroom, I'm conscious of another audience -- an internalized "cloud of witnesses", made up of all of those who have passed on to me the craft of teaching and the love of history.  How I measure up to their collective standard is of greater concern to me than the successes or failures of any one student sitting before me. 

This doesn't mean I don't care about "my kids" -- I do, very much. I just don't tie my sense of competence and professionalism to their individual performance, or their judgments about me.  If you visit the RMP site, you'll notice that I've been rated more often than any other professor at Pasadena City College.  I'm by no means the highest rated, mind you -- nor the lowest.  I do read the comments from time to time (and am convinced that some of my friends, enemies, and blog readers are rating me as well as my students).  But while some of the praise is pleasant to read, and some of the criticism is hurtful (and the comments about my clothing bizarre), I've learned not to attach too much importance to what is said there -- or in the more closely monitored in-class evaluations.   

Though I won't lie and say it isn't nice to be liked, the real group I'm trying to please isn't made up merely of those who listen to me lecture and whose papers I grade.  Somewhere, deep inside of me, is an omnipresent awareness that I'm serving something bigger.  That something is partly the institution of the college;  partly Clio, the muse of history; partly all of those who worked so hard to teach me; and, ultimately, God himself.  It's difficult for me to be more precise than that.  All I know is that I'm almost always aware that my teaching is a form of service, and not merely to my students themselves.

Otis Chandler

The deaths they do keep coming...

Otis Chandler, whose family played a huge role in building Los Angeles, and who himself single-handedly transformed the Los Angeles Times from a fourth-rate right-wing rag into a world class paper, has died.  A very long obituary (much of it obviously written some time ago) is here on the Times website.

The LA Times is not what it was a few years ago.   Otis Chandler made it a great paper, and his chosen successor as publisher, Tom Johnson, made it a better one.   In the 1980s and 90s, the paper had a series of excellent editors-in-chief, including a very fine man to whom I was once very close, Shelby Coffey III.  Since Shelby's departure in late 1997, the paper has gradually gotten thinner -- literally and figuratively.  Owned today by the Chicago Tribune, there is little sign that the paper's recovery is imminent.  I still read it daily, but supplement it more and more with online visits to the Washington Post and the New York Times.

Those interested in the Times -- or in Los Angeles history -- would do well to read the whole obit.

PCC loses one of its finest -- UPDATED

Third post of the morning already, but this is a sad and important one.  One of Pasadena City College's most famous alumnae has died: Octavia Butler was only 58.  She won the Hugo and Nebula awards, and in the white male dominated world of science fiction, Butler (an African-American lesbian) was an extraordinary figure.  The college at which I teach has produced some fine and famous figures (Eddie Van Halen, Nick Nolte, Jerry Tarkanian, Jackie Robinson), but Butler was a unique and important writer, and she's been lost much too soon. 

Do read this memorable interview with her, and this outstanding bit of advice she offered to aspiring young writers:

I  have to be careful what I say to younger people, because every now and then someone will come up to me and say--"Oh, this touches on reading, but is not just reading." "What should I major in at college to become a writer?" I have to stop myself from saying that it's not so much what you major in at college or even that you go to college. It's that you read. I'm more likely to say, "What you should major in is something like history. Maybe you should take a good look at psychology and anthropology and sociology. Learn about people. Learn about different people. When I say history, I don't mean to tell you just to study the kings and queens and generals and wars. Learn how people live and learn the kinds of things that motivate people. Learn the kinds of things that we unfortunate human beings do over and over again. We don't really learn from history, because from one generation to the next we do tend to reproduce our errors. There are cycles in history. Even look into things like evolutionary biology; that goes back further, for instance, than history, further back than cultural anthropology would go. Learn all you can about the way we work, the way we tick.

Read all kinds of fiction. In school you're going to be assigned to read classics, and that's good, that's useful. A lot of it is good writing and will help you with your writing. But a lot of it is archaic good writing that won't necessarily help you with what you are doing now. So read the current best sellers; read something that is maybe going to spark a new interest in you.

Bold emphasis mine.  Amen, sister Octavia, amen.

From a feminist perspective, it's been a hard past month -- far too many significant figures (Wasserstein, Friedan, King, Butler)  dying far too young.

UPDATE:  Here's a remembrance sent to me by an outstanding former student of mine, Liza Anulao:

I just found out the news about Octavia Butler's death earlier this morning, and was totally blue. It's strange, because it was just last night, before I had heard the news, that I was reading a quote she had written. I had cut out her quote from the paper 10 years ago and had glued it into my ancient organizer. Below the newspaper clipping she had signed her autograph when I had met her at one of her several readings. This is what she said:

"There are three things to forget about...First, talent. I used to worry that I had no talent, and it compelled me to work harder. Second, inspiration. Habit will serve you a lot better. And third, imagination. Don't worry, you have it."

I recall having the privilege of driving her from the Burbank airport to her Pasadena hotel when she came to speak at Pasadena City College for A.W.A.R.E., the feminist organization I was a member of. I was so nervous, because she has been one of my favorite science fiction writers ever since I read her book, Kindred, in high school. She was eager to find a supermarket so she could find foods that had no meat products in them. I was struck by her strength, simplicity, stature, and dangling earrings. She encouraged me to practice everydayness in writing.

I am happy to have been touched by her writing and wish her spirit a fine journey.

A long post about liberal white men and apologies

There's been a lot of discussion in the feminist blogosphere about this February 13 post at Definition: "An Open Letter to All the Liberal, Straight Men."  As the comments below the post make clear, the author struck a nerve.

Most days, I don't like describing myself as "liberal" or "straight".   My background in socialism makes me reflexively uncomfortable with the term "liberal", because I still associate it with 19th century ideas about free markets and the moral superiority of bourgeois capitalism.  In the debased modern sense of the term, I suppose it's accurate enough for me.

I'm even less enamored of the word "straight."  The opposite of "straight" is "bent", or "broken", and I don't like to imply that my brothers and sisters in the GLBTQQ community are either of those things.  And, as my friend and hero Richard Mouw has pointed out, I'm not that sure that when it comes to sexuality, any of us are really "straight"!  When it comes to our sexual desires, most of us have all kinds of nooks and crannies and "brokennesses".  I may be a heterosexual man, but Lord knows, I am not straight.   God writes straight, but I'm just one of many crooked lines he's using to do so, and so are most folks I know.

But I digress.

I had a "yes, no, and hmmm" response to the open letter. Here's what I liked: the author asks men to resist derailing feminist discussions by talking about the various ways in which males also suffer in contemporary society:

So, first of all, it doesn’t all revolve around you. If I am discussing sexism or the unique difficulties women face, I can understand and appreciate the frustrations that men also grapple with in our society. Really, the problem isn’t so much men and women as the fact that all powerful institutions want to make everyone feel worthless, so that we will do whatever they tell us to. But, for now, I am talking about women and women’s unique position in the world, and it is not about the big picture. It is about us. About me. Your tangents derail the conversation and shift the focus so that the issues I want to raise are ignored. This is the problem.

This is symptomatic of a greater issue: the fact that men are trained to keep the focus on themselves. It’s not the conscious insecurity of the male ego which causes this to happen, but rather, the result in living in a culture which focuses on men the majority of the time. When attempting to give women equal time, and an equal voice, the fifty-fifty split (or, since this doesn’t exist yet in reality, even the attempt to approach it) seems unbalanced and skewed to the minds of many men. Women trying to have an equal voice seem to be silencing the men, simply because the men are not the ones currently talking about the current topic.

Resist the urge to assert yourself in defense of the male voice. We’ve already heard it, and doubtless we will hear it again. Save it until we’re finished. Do it somewhere else.

That's right on.  Many well-intentioned "liberal and straight" (and some not-so-liberal or straight) fellas I know do tend to enter a discussion about sexism as if it's an Olympic competition.  If women are to be awarded a "gold medal" for suffering, some men want to ensure that they at least make it on to the podium.   They change the subject of the discussion to the various hardships that straight white men face, and while perhaps acknowledging that these aren't as severe as those faced by their sisters, these guys still demand at least a bronze or a silver medal in the "suffering Olympics."   It's an understandable, but tedious strategy.

One reason why so many "nice and liberal" men tend to try and derail feminist discussions is that they are eager and anxious to prove that they "aren't like other guys."  Too often, young (potential) pro-feminist men seek to establish their bona fides by stressing the various ways in which they happen to be "exceptions to the rule."   One way these guys think they'll establish their feminist credibility is by explaining that they too know what it's like to suffer from sexism and stereotyping.  The goal is not always to derail the feminist discussion, but rather to win approval and acceptance.

But saying "Yeah, I understand, but I'm a victim too" doesn't help the feminist cause.  Men do need to do the vital work of coping with their own very real issues, but we can't do that by introducing them into a feminist setting.  What we need to do is create specific spaces -- like men's studies classes -- for focusing in on the myths, structures, and social obligations that create the "masculine mystique."  We need to find healthy ways to express our very real pain and frustration -- and we need to express that pain to other men.  Too often, traditional definitions of manhood force men to only open up to women, thus burdening our wives, girlfriends, sisters and daughters with doing our "feeling work" for us.  While we should indeed share our truest selves with the women in our lives, we need to do more of our emotional work with other men -- and not make as many demands on the emotional energy of women, energy that might better be spent elsewhere.

So, in a round-about way, that's a big "yes" to the letter.  But I have a big "no" too.  The author writes, near the end of her piece:

If you aren’t guilty of the offenses I’ve outlined, you aren’t defensive about it. You’re one of those guys who reads the whole list and nods along and then genuinely apologizes for your gender (while not feeling the need to defend yourself by insisting you do not represent these men).

No.

I don't believe that any of us, ever, ought to apologize for the actions of others.   I've never apologized for all the lousy things men have done to women, or whites have done to blacks, or what-have-you.   We don't overcome sexism by imposing collective guilt on any particular group.   That doesn't mean that most men don't have plenty to apologize for!  We can apologize for all those times we let a sexist remark go unchallenged, because we were too scared of losing the approval of other guys to speak up.  We can apologize for the times we have failed to listen, truly listen, to the pain and grief and anger that the women in our lives have tried to express to us.  We can apologize for the many things we have done or said that have dehumanized our sisters, and we can apologize for what we have left undone.  Frankly, there's plenty in our own lives for which we need to take responsibility.  But there's no need, not ever, to issue apologies on behalf of an entire class of human beings.   Though as men we experience privilege collectively by virtue of being men, we must accept responsibility for changing our lives individually.  Blanket apologies won't do.

In my opinion, men don't ever need to be made to feel ashamed merely for being men.  We must be quick to identify those ways in which we fall short, and we must be better about taking responsibility for our own actions -- and our failures to act.  But it is no crime to be male.  We are not complicit in the great crime merely because we possess a Y chromosome; we become complicit through our own choices, our own deafness, our own selfishness, our own cowardice.  The pro-feminist goal is to help men feel more powerful, not through their ability to dominate, but through their ability to effectively relate as loving equals to women.

In the end, progressive pro-feminist men need to do a better job of truly hearing what our wives and sisters are telling us.  But we also need to do a better job of identifying the sources of our own frustrations and disappointments, and we need to do that in community with other men.   Adding to the emotional burden that our wives and mothers and sisters already carry is not acceptable; learning to tell the truth to other men is.

Credit card function up and running!

Happy news:

The Matilde Mission, the charity begun by the Blacke family in Michigan and my wife and I here in California, now has a safe and secure credit card donation function up on the website.  Donors can give in amounts from $5.00 to $250.00, and other than the 2.97% deducted by the bank, the rest of your donation will go directly towards chinchilla rescue.  We're very excited to have this up, and Matilde herself is very grateful to Adam Blacke (our webmaster) for his hard work.  We'll keep everyone posted on our progress!

"After the final no there comes a yes": rethinking salvation, and a response to Camassia

Camassia has an interesting post up today, responding to this earlier post of mine about agape and my All Saints youth group.  In my piece, which attracted considerable (if kind) criticism from the likes of Kendall Harmon, I argued for a "here-and-now" understanding of salvation.  I wrote:

In a nutshell, this is what All Saints might understand salvation to be: the knowledge that God lives in us and we are making His love complete in the world through our actions and above all, through our unconditional agape love for one another.

Kendall called this view "too horizontal", and Camassia suggests -- with some accuracy -- that this is a theology for folks who see themselves as comfortable and powerful.   It is a theology for people who see the problems in their lives as things that can be solved in the here and now.  And to an extent, she's right.  The problems my teens cope with are things like depression, drug use, peer pressure, unrequited crushes, unintended pregnancies, parents divorcing, and so forth.  Those are sources of real pain, mind you -- but they are all problems that can be solved in this world, in the near future if not in the immediate now.

But billions of folks around the world are coping with far more serious, intractable problems: grinding poverty, brutal war, and horrific injustices on a scale that relatively affluent Pasadenans can only vaguely and fearfully imagine.   In youth group, we can hug away the pain of a break-up; but hugs and affirmations -- even when done in the name of Jesus -- don't seem to have the same efficacy in toppling unjust governments, ending genocide, or providing clean water.  For those who are truly suffering, is it not possible that the hope of "another country" where there will be "no more tears, for the former things have passed away", is much more vital and more necessary? 

Camassia writes:

Hugo may regard his kids as “saved” by the warm embrace of his agape love, but what if the authorities decided to come around and start hauling the teens off for torture, rape, and murder, and All Saints was unable to stop it? Would that unsave them? I think that the futurism of the New Testament, the sense that things were yet to come to fruition, wasn’t just from the fact they erroneously thought Jesus would come back very soon (as Hugo told me) but that they were facing persecution. Would it really have been sufficient for them to know that their deaths would eventually enable Hugo to create his loving youth group? I don’t know, but somehow I think they died for more than that.

(Let me be clear that I don't think it's my embrace that saves them; I may be a bit on the narcissistic side, but I'm not suffering from a messiah complex!  What I meant was that in this world, in this time, the best thing we can do to live out our salvation and bring about the Kingdom is to love radically and bravely.  But that love, ultimately, doesn't stem from ourselves alone but from God.)

In any case, it's a good point about persecution.  I've been thinking about it a lot this morning.   A loving community -- even one that loves in the name of Christ -- is not automatically protected from torture, rape, and murder.  And if -- God forbid -- those evils were to come to "my kids", they would need a far stronger understanding of salvation than the one I've been providing.  In the face of unspeakable suffering and evil, Christians need to rely on explicit promises about the next world. And it's because our kids aren't facing that kind of suffering that I can afford to offer a definition of salvation that is very much concerned with sharing agape love.

I've been a youth leader at All Saints for some six or seven years now, but I realize I've very rarely talked about heaven -- and yet, the promise of eternal life is very much a part of my own faith life.  I've had several "conversion experiences", the last and most dramatic of which took place in 1998 after nearly dying from a series of spectacularly bad choices.  Locked in an institution, I felt abandoned and alone and in a state of utter existential despair.  I read the Bible (the one book I had access to in the place I was), and prayed unceasingly for help.  And in the midst of my anguish, a line came to me.  It wasn't a line from Scripture, but (perhaps fittingly for me) a famous line I'd memorized in high school, from the poet Wallace Stevens:

After the final no there comes a yes
And on that yes the future world depends.

And what I understood, at that moment, was that in this "vale of tears", there will always be a "final no" -- what is death but the "final no" to our longing for eternal life?  And what of all the other "no's" we hear in this life, when others leave us or abandon us or betray us or disappoint us -- or when we betray or abandon those whom we love? In my moment of conversion, the poet's line meant that after all of that, in the end, would be God's thundering and everlasting "Yes!"  It would be a "forever yes", one that promised eternal life.  And in that institution, shoeless and beltless and nearly hopeless, my "future world" depended on believing in that yes.

My conversion hinged on a belief in eternal life.  Yes, as a result of my conversion, I have wanted badly to share the love of Christ that I -- on my best days -- feel welling up inside of me.  But while hugs are good and hugs are nice, I know that in my own darkest moment, my life wasn't transformed by a human hug.  It was transformed by a sudden and overpowering belief in the eternal "yes" that transcended all the "no"s of this life.  And I realize I've got to be a bit more explicit with my kids -- in a way that is palatable to my fellow liberal Episcopalians -- about that "yes" experience and the eternal joy it promises.

Friday Random Ten: "I'm a little bit cumbia, a little bit rock n' roll"

Only one song this week from my wife's collection; the other nine are all mine:

1.  "Tuesday's Gone", Lynyrd Skynyrd
2.  "Echo Park", Joseph Arthur  (Just discovered him, thanks to blogger recommendations)
3.  "Human Nature", Michael Jackson  (My favorite MJ song, hands down)
4.  "Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters", Elton John  (My second favorite EJ track)
5.  "Los Caminos de la Vida"  Sabor Vallenata
6.  "Civil War", Guns n' Roses
7.  "I Ain't Ever Satisfied", Steve Earle  (This was my theme song for my entire twenties)
8.  "When I Was a Boy", Dar Williams  (Sometimes I play it to my women's studies class...)
9.  "I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man", Prince
10.  "La Piragua"  Gabriel Romero y su Orquesta

Bonus Tracks, both mine:

"Only Tongue Can Tell", Trashcan Sinatras
"Better is One Day", Matt Redman  (Get those praisin' hands in the air and sway...)

My wife could beat me up: a note on women and muscles

Thanks to the Carnival of the Feminists, I found this wonderful post from Liz on women and weight-lifting.  Liz is 52, and she lifts big weights.  Her post -- illustrated with photos --  begins with a humorous anecdote about the fear her muscles and her strength engendered in one particular young woman.

Liz notes that men tend to respond in one of two ways, by either belittling her muscles or fetishizing them.  Women, on the other hand, often seem to become either defensive or reluctantly admiring; few of either sex express unabashed appreciation.  Liz, however, makes it clear that her own weight-lifting experience is a passionately feminist one.   Her muscles (all achieved naturally, without anabolic steroids) are outer manifestations of her own inner power and strength.  And while she makes it clear that she doesn't believe that feminists must lift or work out, she clearly embraces the cultural subversiveness of becoming a strong, muscular 50-something woman.

In response, The Happy Feminist "weighs in" with her own experience:

Here's the thing.  I want to be as physically strong and fit as I can be.  Due to severe time constraints in my life at the moment, that's not very strong or fit, unfortunately.  But one day I would love to be as strong as the woman (Liz) who wrote the post linked above.  It's not about besting men (although that's potentially a fun side benefit), and it's not about trying to conform to some societal standard of attractiveness.  It's about trying to be as physically capable as possible.  Being physically capable has to be viewed as a good thing for everyone, doesn't it?!?!? To the extent that prejudices and norms of attractiveness discourage women from fully developing all of their physical gifts, I say screw that. 

My wife and I are both committed to working out.  Though I consider myself to be quite fit, my thirty-something wife is, frankly, in better shape than I.  A former competitive triathlete, she and I both do Pilates and take boxing lessons -- and we both lift weights.  I've often gone to the gym with my beloved, and watched the reactions that she gets when she lifts.  Though she is lean and tall (we generally can wear each other's jeans), she's also toned and muscular -- and I've seen the awe (and anxiety) that she inspires in others when she starts lifting "heavy weight".  Most women at our gym stick to the 5-15 pound free weights; my wife goes well above that for a variety of her exercises.  There's little question that she intimidates people.   I'm proud of her fitness and her strength, particularly because I honor her tremendous physical work ethic (an ethic that I share).  To me, she's the most beautiful and extraordinary woman alive, which is how a husband ought to feel -- but she's also indisputably a dedicated athlete, and I have enormous admiration for that.  We are fortunate to share a passion for the physical; given the time and financial resources that working out absorbs in both our lives, it would be a difficult thing indeed if we did not!

Not long ago, someone asked me, half-jokingly, "How does it feel to know that your wife could beat you up?"  Though I'm rapidly learning boxing technique, my wife's progress (we have the same trainer, but meet with him separately) has been exponentially faster.  I'm awed by how crisp and powerful her punches have become and how rapid her lateral movement is.    She and I would never, ever, ever, dream of striking one another in anger.  But it's true that it's an odd feeling to know that if it ever were to come to it, my wife could probably defeat me in a fight! 

It's not that I believe that a husband must always be physically stronger than his wife.  As a pro-feminist man, my comfort in my own identity is not linked to any sense of muscular superiority over my spouse!  At the same time, I'm a product of my upbringing.  I've never been in a relationship with a woman of my wife's level of fitness and power and agility.  It's been a shock to realize that I am frequently judged because of my partner's strength.  The reactions I get when folks see us together in the gym fall into one of two camps: some people (usually men) assume I am "hen-pecked and put-upon", a wimpy victim who is dominated by his wife.  Others assume I must have something very special "going for me" (something not evident to the naked eye, mind you); I must be "extra-confident" to be able to "handle" such a strong woman!

But in the end, while I celebrate my wife's physique, I don't rely on her looks or her athleticism to boost my self-esteem or my feminist credentials.  What makes me proudest about my wife is that I think that she is such a marvelous role model for other women.  Her willingness to tackle traditionally masculine sports, to be unafraid of developing strong and evident muscles, sends a powerful signal about female ability and potential.  Our future children will see in their mother a woman who is very clear about one thing above all else: femininity, ferocity, and obvious physical strength are not mutually exclusive propositions!  And in their father, lord willing, they will see a man who does not define his masculinity by his ability to physically protect his weaker wife.

Thoughts on students and e-mail

There's a lot of discussion in the blogosphere about this article in Tuesday's New York Times about students, professors, and e-mail.

At colleges and universities nationwide, e-mail has made professors much more approachable. But many say it has made them too accessible, erasing boundaries that traditionally kept students at a healthy distance.

These days, they say, students seem to view them as available around the clock, sending a steady stream of e-mail messages — from 10 a week to 10 after every class — that are too informal or downright inappropriate.

"The tone that they would take in e-mail was pretty astounding," said Michael J. Kessler, an assistant dean and a lecturer in theology at Georgetown University. " 'I need to know this and you need to tell me right now,' with a familiarity that can sometimes border on imperative."

He added: "It's a real fine balance to accommodate what they need and at the same time maintain a level of legitimacy as an instructor and someone who is institutionally authorized to make demands on them, and not the other way round."

While once professors may have expected deference, their expertise seems to have become just another service that students, as consumers, are buying. So students may have no fear of giving offense, imposing on the professor's time or even of asking a question that may reflect badly on their own judgment.

As someone who teaches seven classes here at the community college, this rang quite true to me.  In a typical semester, I've got 250-300 students; I can expect to get anywhere from 10-40 e-mails a day.  Some are quite polite, but others are -- as the article suggests -- remarkably demanding. 

Too many of my students tend to think of their professors as being akin to a 24/7 help line.  I've had more than one email, sent on a Saturday night, asking me to look over a rough draft that's due on Monday morning!   I've had students complain "You don't seem to check your e-mail on weekends", as if instant replies to their countless queries were part and parcel of my job description!

Here's an angle that the Times article doesn't explore: the declining number of students who visit in conference hours.  When I first started teaching full-time in 1994, relatively few of my students had access to e-mail.  I had five hours of "conference time" per week, and throughout the semester, I had regular visits from a large percentage of my students.  In those early years, perhaps a quarter of my students would visit me over the course of the term.   They had no other reliable means of getting in touch with me; most didn't have cell phones, and as a result, had difficulty ringing me up during my office hours.  They had no choice but to visit, and visit they did.

With the coming of e-mail, the number of students who take the time to visit me in office hours has dropped precipitously.   In the last seven or eight years, I've seen what must be an 80-90% drop in the number of those who are willing to come and knock on my door.  E-mail is not only much more convenient for the students in terms of time (they don't have to plan their schedules around my five hours of weekly availability), it's also much easier for the introverted and the shy.  I know that some students are terrified of meeting one-on-one with a professor; back in the old "pre- e-mail days", I had some trembling in my office.  The lack of face-to-face contact is helpful for these folks, but it's also ultimately detrimental.  Success in life, I feel, involves being willing to take risks (such as those involved in going to meet with a professor in person).  It's too damned easy to hide behind the e-mail and not challenge oneself to move out of a comfort zone.

I don't accept papers or rough drafts via e-mail.  If a student wants feedback on a paper, they need to come to office hours and meet with me to discuss their written work.  If I were teaching one or two classes, I could perhaps allow students to send their work in -- but trying to download 200-300 attachments of MS Word documents would be impossible.  Besides, I give my best feedback orally -- students will benefit much more from a few minutes of spoken feedback than they will from my chicken scratching on their papers.  But for that, they have to take the same sort of risks and make the same sort of effort that earlier generations of students regularly made.

The fact that so few folks come to visit me in office hours these days does give me more time to blog, or catch up on my reading or personal e-mails.  At the same time, I miss the warm friendships I was able to form with some of my students "back in the day", when professor-student contact was always a face-to-face matter.  I still have a few special folks who come and visit me regularly, both to discuss their work and the larger world of ideas; I enjoy the chance to mentor and connect. I couldn't do it with all of my students, time wouldn't permit that.  But there's no question that e-mail has made my office hours a bit lonelier, and I think it's enabled too many of my students to hide behind their computer screens.  Progress it isn't.

Thursday Short Poem: Duffy's "Crush"

Scottish poet Carol Ann Duffy won the T.S. Eliot Poetry Prize (one of the most prestigious in the UK) last month.  I've read a fair amount of her stuff recently, and this is my current favorite. The last stanza is devastatingly good, of course, but the build-up is excellent as well.

Crush

The older she gets,
the more she awakes
with somebody's face strewn in her head
like petals which once made a flower.

What everyone does
is sit by a desk
and stare at the view, till the time
where they live reappears.  Mostly in words.

Imagine a girl
turning to see
love stand by a window, taller,
clever, anointed with sudden light.

Yes, like an angel then,
to be truthful now.
At first a secret, erotic, mute;
today a language she cannot recall.

And we're all owed joy,
sooner or later.
The trick's to remember whenever
it was, or to see it coming.