May 23, 2009

Great day yesterday, writing, painting (alone this time), finding a few corners in the garden to cram in a few more plants. Sold tickets at Montford, then watched Mike, Cody, and Darren perform The Complete Works of Shakespeare, Abridged, during which I laughed out loud many times. For selling tickets, they placed us on the crest of a steep hill looking down into the glistening twilight foliage of Riverside Cemetery. I need never have moved from that spot.

One of my senior seminar students (she said enough that I knew who she was) gave me a blistering critique for the class. One tries to take those things in stride, but– What she said was both true and untrue, plausible and unfair, and I carried on a disembodied argument with her all day. I would have done all the things she wanted me to do if she had asked me to do them, had it crossed my mind that anyone would need for me to do them. I would have mother henned and overseen had I not thought that would infuriate them as it would infuriate me. I sat in my office with the door open, thinking that those who needed me would come, and those who did not would work in blissful sovereignty. That there needs to be schedules and requirements for help-seeking would not spontaneously cross my mind. I know that my flaw as a teacher, as a member of the university society, is that I do not turn over rocks to find trouble beneath them; I tend to under-instruct when it comes to assignments, having rejoiced in expressive freedom when I was an undergraduate myself. I tend to think that people will ask for what they need (many students in that class did), and I don’t go out of my way to provide what would have been an imposition to me. I understood her critique, but would never have understood those qualities of the class to be faults unless someone complained of them–in time to make correction. She was the only one to provide an interview, so I don’t know if the feeling was general. Can I even learn from this? I am committed to the way of self-motivation, and may not be willing at this point to depart from it. I’m not a good teacher for those who need to be led down the path. Ah, well.