Regurgitation

See, not all puppy pictures are cute. Well, it's that time of year again. Semester is almost over and those of you who know me better (lucky you) know that I've spent the last few months teaching my first course. I won't lie, it was among the hardest things I've ever done, but it was totally worth it. I learned a lot this semester, both about myself and about other people. Rather than drone on about all of them, I'll just share the one lesson that seems most important to me right now.

Early on in the semester I had a student email me shortly after getting his first paper back with a grade of 80. While this might be an acceptable score for some (see: Dieterich, Chris) this dude was not happy. So he actually wrote me an email which read in part "I am a senior majoring in History, so I have written more social science papers than I can recall," as a way of displaying his credentials to me (by the way, I'm a PhD student in Sociology, so I've actually written more social science papers than I can recall). He used this to justify his decision to disregard the majority of the instructions in the assignment. Following them, he said, would just be regurgitation and he told me he thought I was above that. He was actively trying to structure me in a way that would allow him to use his skills at navigating authority and bureaucracy to his advantage, and I was refusing to be used in this way. This ongoing mini-struggle continued throughout the first few assignments until I realized a key thing. Here was a student taking ownership of his education which is more than can be said for many of the students I've encountered in my life, and he was not going to be open to what I had to say as an authority figure for a number of reasongs. So here's what I learned: sometimes, you have just cut your losses. I know, I know. Nothing revolutionary, but it's still a crucial lesson for me to learn in this context because it reminds me that just because teaching is something new for me, I should not abandon the lessons learned in other areas of my life.