Back to School, Back to School

I actually like the first few weeks of classes. 

The first few weeks provides a new opportunity every semester to establish the tenor of the classroom.  It allows me the chance to reinvent myself as a professor.  It allows me to introduce myself to a new crop of students and hope to win them over to a semester of hard work and major rewards.  And, most important...

It allows the students a clean slate. 

So many of us bring our baggage with us everywhere we go.  In some cases, it's quite literal, like the student one semester who brought a full-sized suitcase to class every day.  In others, it's all the stuff that has bogged us down in the past.  The failed exams, the shame spiral of absences, the attempt at going to such-and-such university, the loss of a job in the workplace.  Whatever we bring with us normally can be set aside in the first few weeks of a new class. 

I often tell my students that what they did before doesn't matter.  I don't care if you flunked Humanities before.  It wasn't THIS class.  And, even if it was, it wasn't THIS semester.  THIS class in THIS semester is our chance to discard all of that baggage.  Those excuses about why it didn't go well last time or what it was that held us back from the desired A+.  THIS class in THIS semester is our chance to start fresh.

What they often don't realize is that we professors, too, have our baggage.  Just before the semester began, I got my evaluations from last semester.  In general, they're good.  But, there's always the few students who circle "Strongly Disagree."  I take those rare bubbles VERY seriously.  I think back on the past semester and about what I may have done to one (or to several) students that would lead them to believe that I wasn't attentive to their grades, or that I wasn't available after class, or that I didn't provide proper feedback. 

And, every semester I change something.  Every semester, I try to make sure that those evaluations do not go unaddressed.  Every semester, I try to make sure that I am a better professor. 

I actually like the first few weeks of classes.