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I agree wholeheartedly with Rick about the difference an interested teacher makes!
I got to thinking about my own teachers, classes, etc. Interestingly, some of the classes I liked the least were the small, seminar-type ones, where there are sixteen people sitting around a table, and there was a lot of group discussion. On paper that all sounds very engaging, but I hated it, mostly because I was painfully shy, and on top of that I was at an Ivy-league school and feeling incredibly intimidated most of the time. I would sit there bewildered and amazed that there were people who could think on their feet, who could respond to questions right then and there. Often there would be one or two students whose breadth of knowledge had them dominating the conversation, pulling connections to whatever we were discussing out of their brains like a string of magician’s silk scarves, red, yellow, purple, sparkling, flaming….”I find that in his earlier works – ”
And I just sit there and wonder HOW THE HELL DID I GET HERE and think I WILL BE REVEALED FOR THE FRAUD THAT I AM VERY VERY SOON…
No, my favorite classes were the lectures. I have to point out that this wasn’t so until I started sitting in the front of the class. In my first year I would hide in the back, and of course my mind would be drifting in the first five minutes. But if I sat in the front row, I was riveted, because those professors styled their talks to carry across a large space, and so the intensity level in that first row was palpable (and yes, sometimes that meant spit-flecks, but dodging them definitely keeps you awake!).
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