Students

The end of a semester is always both a relief and a time of mild melancholy. It's a relief obviously because it opens time up to do other things than teach, and academics, of course, must research, write, have lots of meetings, and find time to take tapdance lessons. But the melancholy comes from having had a several month long discussion with a group of inquirers that comes to an official end. There's always more to discuss, there are always new things to learn in our intellectual pursuits in the course, the intellectual branches a course generates, and about each other. I've taken up several of the lessons one of my great professors also taught -- the importance of following students through their further pursuits. Sometimes they need help -- reference letters or job contacts or even personal issues when they have no one else to talk to. Sometimes they want to continue some of the ideas and continue the dialogue informally. So, classes are not really endings, at least not for the truly interesting grad student minds I encounter where I teach (they're better than most of the other faculty). But the official ending is nonetheless somewhat melancholy.

I'm not sure why this is, frankly. Perhaps it's simply the passing of seasons. Perhaps it's a paternalistic or maternalistic impulse of wishing the best for students' further pursuits and wishing to provide further guidance, in some cases which is sought, in some not. Perhaps it's because of those students you enjoy but know you'll never see again. Perhaps it's all the things that remain to be said and thought about -- I always end the semester remembering things I wish I had said or ways I wish I had explained something or things I wish I had elicited from students. Perhaps it's losing the "audience," for there's a fair amount of the theatrical performance that goes into teaching and students are in a rather forced situation in which they're obliged to laugh at your jokes, enjoy your weekly one-act plays, fall silent in those Emersonian preacher moments, cringe at warnings about deadlines and requirements. Perhaps it's losing the other participants, since my one-act plays are run in a Ionescian participatory way where the jokes, punchlines, criticism, ironic play with the prof's authority of artifice, and attempts to remold the class in their own interests is all part of the play we carry out on a weekly basis.

Now it's back to writing and book editing. Some Christmas shopping. Catching up on letters and emails and little annoying realities that the semester has helped to conceal. Energies are placed in different sluices. And maybe we even get some sleep.