A Problem with Professing

My last real semester of college is turning out to be one of the most frustrating of my career. It is influenced, no doubt, by the increasingly growing case of senioritis that has been developing since the first time I set foot on campus. But now, the end is in sight and it cannot come soon enough. However, with just under a month left, the finish line has never seemed further away. In many ways this is the most challenged I have felt on an academic level in some time. And ironically, it is not the academics that are tripping me up. We have all encountered problems we cannot solve, equations that will not balance, and papers that do not meet the desired word count. All of those can be figured out with just a little more effort, though. What do you do when you really believe you are not the issue?

If you have ever taken a college class with a real, elbow patch, same outfit every day professor, then you know how large their egos can be. AND more importantly, you realize that their training is in academia, NOT teaching. Just because you are an expert in an area does not mean that you can teach that to a room full of students and expect them to understand it. And what's worse is that they are too egotistical to even start listening to suggestions on how to improve the class. Professors may have it the easiest of all the people on campus and yet they tend to not want to work harder on the one thing they should be doing best: instructing. Lecture, lecture, lecture, lecture, lecture, lecture, lecture, and yes, more lecture. In a class of hundreds of students maybe this is the only way to present material, but maybe not. Surely in the many many years that these higher education institutions have been in existence there have been some suggestions on how to spruce up the learning process. But undoubtedly in those situations the professors would not want to take away from hearing their voice for less than the allotted 75 minutes.

I want to make a pledge to my future students who walk into my classroom. There will never be a time when my preferences or wants are more important than yours. It does not matter if I think something is interesting, YOU have to find it interesting as well. And if many of you do poorly on a test or assignment I will not be ignorant to the fact that maybe it was because you did not study hard enough, it is probably because I did a poor job of teaching you the material. I will also make it so that grades are not life or death for you and you can focus on improving in progressive steps rather than stressing about acing every single assignment in order to do well. It is a new age. Students care less, they need more effort from all instructors to engage them in the material. If you think that's not a fair deal then do not enter the profession.

December 17th will mark the end of my student career and then I begin the transition into my professional career. I have never been more ready to begin a new journey and to start changing the way students learn. Some may say I am an idealist and what I want to do in the classroom cannot be done due to time and curriculum constraints, but that is when I say to those nay-sayers, it can be done if you try hard enough. It will be challenging for sure, but if I know in my heart that I am doing my best to give my students the most effective lessons possible, then I will have done my job.