Rejoinders and rejoicers

I'm back--that's the rejoinder. Looking forward to retirement: that's the rejoicer.

Only now thinking about retirement from teaching, and discovering that I can't go out quietly. I have to blog out loud. This is from the community college--not the cockpit or the lookout, but down in the engine room, where we try to get the gears and pistons working: i.e., jumpstart the intellectual life of students who (like I was at their tender age) haven't had too much intellectual life, or are still in their cloud of unknowing.

This is all provoked by seeing a new-minted teacher panicked about an upcoming class, preparing like mad. My advice: take it easy, do something that interests you. No matter how you try to psych out the students, only some will be interested; others will go along for the ride because they have to fulfill requirements; others will drop out for any of a number of reasons, few of which have to do with the professor. Some are there because they need to qualify as their parents' dependents for tax or health-care purposes. At any rate: don't blame yourself for those students who don't seem interested. Although administrators like to claim that every student can be motivated, what they leave out of this high-sounding imposition on a professor's time, energy, creativity and conscience is that not every student can be motivated in every class. The combination of subject, professor, and student is a strange and unpredictable brew, sometimes bubbling, sometimes exploding, other times going flat like grandma's dumplings and sinking right to the bottom of the pot. It's affected by all kinds of other uncontrollable contaminants, like time of day, job demands, family demands, weather, health, hunger, sobriety, the position of the stars, the stock market, the success of favorite sports teams, a pet's health--who knows what? We do our best and are thrilled when there are a couple of students with whom our best seems to take.