In my previous post, I told the story of an exchange I had with a churlish telemarketer. I wonder if I was an unknowing character in a scene of retribution: “Next time, I [churlish telemarketer] am going to tell the person s/he is an asshole!” That thought makes me reflect on answers not given. Monday […]
Teaching
“Today, I Made A College Student Cry”
I am not the “I” in the title of this post. Rather, the title comes from the first sentence of a Facebook post by a staff member at my school. The post moves me and makes me think, and I want to share it with you. Here is her post, and my responses to her, […]
Next Semester
Starting in January, I will be teaching a required course for our sophomore undergraduates. I have 85 students registered for my section. If any Spring ’20 students are reading this, let me know you are out there! I don’t recall having much of an interest in my professors outside of the classroom in my undergraduate […]
Arrivederci Professor Forni
There was an obituary in The Wall Street Journal for one Professor Pier Massimo Forni, “a poet and scholar of Italian literature.” I found this guy to be an interesting choice for coverage in a newspaper focused on business. Usually the obituaries in the WSJ are about people who influenced the economy. So how did […]
No Joking Matter: Feynman on Research (Feynman Part 2)
This post is the second in a series of reflections on Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman, a collection of vignettes by the Nobel-Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman. In the previous post, I had my dander up about Professor Feynman’s ogling of the co-eds. I can see that his creepiness was a distraction—for him and for me—from […]
Chair Evaluation of Teaching (vs. SET)
It’s my third annual evaluation season as chair. I’ve progressed, or at least improved my attitude, since the first year. Our school has a reasonable system in place for the annual evaluation of research, one that addresses a big pain point—consistency across disciplines. But that system is not the focus of this post. (If you […]
Apologies to David Brooks: Students Learn From People Who Love Them
My social feeds are circulating a David Brooks column: “Students Learn From People They Love.” The piece cites research from cognitive scientists about how integrated emotions are with learning. The many comments on the NYTimes site wonder whether Brooks would have more accurately said “respect” rather than “love.” Probably, yes, but my read is that […]
Life Among the Savages
In her memoir of young family life, Life Among the Savages, Shirley Jackson tells the story of the outsize influence of a child’s first grade teacher. We get a delicious profile of her daughter Jannie’s Mrs. Skinner: We had been exposed to Mrs. Skinner from about the third day of school, when Jannie came home […]
