Now and then

Returning to the future

Today’s thoughts are quite personal: how does one lecture in a hall where one first sat fifty years ago in August? Well, Cynthia, one does it as one does any other lecture, of course.

Not so much.

I have given thousands of lectures over my career, some good, some bad, one awful (best learning ever for me: either know you topic or not but do not ever think you can make do it as others are listening), and so on.

But most of the audiences for the lectures over the past thirty one years included primarily adults. Today I will actually talk to folks who are perhaps a year or two further along in their courses than when I walked into the same lecture hall. The students today, if my recent limited experiences are accurate, are much more critical and demanding than adult audiences. Certainly my own two, even a decade older, are much more demanding. Students recognize the trade offs they make, financially and in time, by attending universities, a phenomenon my generation and sociology-economic class generally did not. You simply advanced as a result of college so there were few conversations except how to pay for the tuition.

Today’s students feel empowered and needing to push back more directly and quickly. They expect to hear value for the exchange of their time. They are impatient with platitudes and gratuitous generalities. The one time I lectured here several years ago, a Hispanic American student was completely uninterested in what I was selling, as she saw it, because I taught at the National War College and she knew the military had stolen half of Mexico in the War of 1848.

Ok. Not relevant to my topic on U.S.-Latin relations but I got it immediately.

I may face a completely different experience today but I take nothing for granted. My role is to provide information via a coherent argument to expand students’ knowledge of what confronts China domestically. I may encounter fifteen bored folks or fifteen thoroughly energized inquisitors but I will also carry the knowledge of how things are changing. That doesn’t mean I will likely change my lecture per se but will expect a reaction different from others.

Stay tuned.

Thanks for reading this today. What experiences have you had with university students recently? Any thoughts welcomed.

A local joint I am sure students use for caffeinating runs. Uh, we didn’t have stand alone coffee places in the dark ages. Most didn’t have a car yet for years.

Be well and be safe. FIN