Effort

Everyone is doing his best at whatever he is really doing. The trouble is that what we're really doing isn't always what we seem to be doing or even what we think we're doing. Sometimes my students seem not to be trying. They do their work indifferently. The do not listen in class, much less participate. Is seems they care about nothing. The truth, however, is far from this. They care very deeply about what they are doing--it's just that in the project of their lives, classwork is only a supporting structure.

Undergraduates are only rarely interested in scholarship. Thanks to degree inflation, an undergraduate degree is really only an extension of high school for most undergrads. They aren't at school because they have a passion for learning; they're here for other reasons. I suspect that for most of them, those reasons are social. That was certainly the case for me. I was interested in my area of study, Theatre, partly because I was fascinated by the discipline, but also because it served as a matrix for my social world. Classes outside my major were, in my view, barely worth attending. I went to class only because I didn't want to flunk out. If I got a C in math or English, I was perfectly happy. A D was less wonderful, but acceptable.

When it came to my social system and the classes that orbited around it, however, I was diligent. I suspect that most of my students are following similar imperatives. Either that, or they have day jobs or family situations that take much of their time. In most cases, I don't get to know that.

Where the rubber meets the road, though, is where this gets complicated. What is my responsibility to them? The lesson here, I suppose, is not about changing how I teach, but in changing how I perceive my relationship with my students. Perhaps I shouldn't get so frustrated when they come to me with a paper that doesn't fulfill the assignment and then tell me they didn't understand, or when they put their heads down on their desks when I'm trying to explain the MLA citation method that they messed up on the previous paper. They'll be O.K. They're doing their best, even if they aren't trying in my class at all.