Concerning Teaching: Goodbye to All That

 My emotional experience of teaching goes like this:  at the beginning of the semester, you stand nervously on the top of the white cliffs of Dover. At the starting gun, you jump off into the choppy Channel and start swimming as hard as you can. The water is freezing and rough but by now you are an experienced swimmer. At mid-semester break a sea captain pulls alongside and lets you rest against the gunwale, spooning warm broth into your mouth. Then for the last lap, you use your remaining reserves of strength until finally, your stretching fingers touch the coast of France. Exactly where you end up is a mystery—you might have swum in a straight line directly to Calais, but strong currents or the wake of sea traffic might have deposited you anywhere from Dunkirk to Cherbourg. With shaking limbs you climb out . . .  and get ready to do it all over again.

This image captures the can’t-turn-back/must-press-forward stress of guiding a class through the material. 

 What it doesn’t capture is the joy of teaching.

In 1981, I taught my first class (a Freshman composition class) as a graduate student at Stanford. As a baby-faced twenty-five-year-old, my students mistook me as one of their fellows, as opposed to their instructor. This fall, I will be teaching my last Vassar classes, on Romantic Comedies and Emotional Engagement with Film. (For the latter, I am blessed with a companion, Prof. Dara Greenwood, from Psychology.)

 I have loved teaching. The most wonderful aspect my profession is that my joy in the material is triply enhanced by sharing it. I know movies—fantastic movies—that students have never seen or even heard of and I can pull them out of my sleeve like a magician and to a degree, change their lives. (For wasn’t your life changed subtly but forever by His Girl Friday or Johnny Guitar?) Similarly, when we discuss film history and theory, when I lead students to examine arguments and appreciate interconnections, to probe beneath the surface, I feel as if I am introducing them to the deep pleasure of the life of the critical mind.

I’ve also loved my students. They are so eager, so receptive, so smart, sometimes rocking me back on my heels and making me examine my own preconceptions. Through the magic of social media, many have stayed in touch and let me watch their lives unfold. If some days students have broken my heart by not doing the reading or not being receptive to a film I adore (the class that didn’t appreciate Moonstruck still boggles my mind, as does the group that didn’t do the reading from Victor Navasky’s Naming Names), I’ve learned to swim on through these choppy patches.

If I love teaching so much, then why have I decided to leave Vassar in my early sixties? Many faculty members stay on well into their seventies. Financial incentives encourage one to do so.

First, because I have this new career as a novelist. It is exciting to open a new chapter of my life and I want the freedom to give it all my time and attention, not sneak it in during summers or breaks. Life is too short for one career, one big adventure. Starting over constitutes renewal.

Secondly, because I am now decades away from my graduate school training and generations removed from current students’ popular culture and taste. Although I have striven to keep up, increasingly I sense a gap. Academia is refreshed by younger faculty members who are abreast of the current theories.

So I know that I have made the right decision for myself and Vassar. After years and years of swimming that Channel, I shall paddle in other waters on different schedules. But I start this last semester thinking, “This is the last time I will show a class It Happened One Night, Roman Holiday, A Separation, and Dr. Strangelove.” 

If I am teary-eyed in the corridors of the Vogelstein Center for Drama and Film, please pay it no never mind. The hallways just throng with ghosts—of cherished movies, students, and colleagues—and I'm having a little trouble pushing through them as I rush back to my office to prepare for the next class.

Portrait of a (younger) professor with a graduating senior, Ms. Jennifer Romero, Vassar ‘01