Back to school resolutions: fresh clean paper and newly purchased pens…
I know that most people make New Year’s resolutions for the actual first day of the new calendar year. The night before January 1st we promise ourselves we will drink less, exercise more, read "great books" improve our French (that’s the anglo-Canadian version), etc. With the wretched excess of Christmas in the past and the nice new shiny spring in the future, people dream of being better selves in the summer months. They imagine standing on the beach, in skimpy bathing suits, sipping club soda, partaking in urbane conversations, in French! But not me. The bitter blah sun deprived months of January and February seem like bad times to practise deprivation but January 1st also doesn’t feel like anything "new" at all. same students, same colleagues, mid-year, work goes on.
For me, the real new year is September 1. Since pre-kindergarten (1968) to present day, September 1 means back to school, the real new year, the beginning of a new school year. And as a professor now, no longer a student, the year is new in a different way. Each year I get the thrill of meeting hundreds of first year university students. Often living away from home for the first time, their minds slightly more open than they were as a high school students and than they will be as career doctors, lawyers, bank tellers, journalists, sales people etc. They meet me for the first time and so I get a chance each September 1 to be new and improved, a better teacher, to a brand new class of university students. And so inspired not by Christmas excess but rather by the lazy less structured summer months, thoughts fueled by cold white wine and grilled veggie burgers, I turn my mind to the matter of my new year’s resolutions. Here is the first one:
1. I will learn and use my students’ names and care less that I can’t know all of them. Teaching large undergraduate classes (80-400) means that I cannot learn all of their names but I do learn some of them. In past years I felt bad not knowing all of them and felt that I shouldn’t refer to those students I know by their names. It showed favoritism. And of course, given who I am it showed a certain kind of favoritism. My university is a conservative place and those professors teaching non-conservative classes get a certain kind of student. When I taught my Death class to 200, I think every brave differently pierced, tattoed, hair-dyed, black wearing gender deviant student on campus was there. I knew all of their names. But the frat boys with ball caps and rugby shirts and the young women in yoga pants and ponytails? Not a hope. No way. Really, really, they all look the same to me. Try as a might I couldn’t tell "Mitch" from "Josh" or "Joe" from "Peter." Ditto Amber, Madison, Leslie, Becky, and so on. This year when I teach a course on global justice to 100 or so, I will use the names of the dozen or so radical students whose names I know, likley from past courses in past years. There are few rewards for looking different on this very conservative campus of mine. Having me know your name is a pretty small one in the scheme of things. I also know the names of students who participate, whether sorority sister or goth punk, whether by talking in class or by email. Given that students like to have their professors know their names, maybe this will encourage participatory behavior on the part of the look alike crowd. Either that or they will dress less conservatively. Either way it’ll improve my day.
