Was a complete mess. It’s Spring 2023, I co-teach Phil 117 Nature and Environment with Prof. Mitchell, and I am about to take over my first section of the course. I would lecture on Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s 2nd Discourse. I was relaxed and nervous at the same time. Relaxed because years ago I already taught, successfully so. I knew I was a good speaker, I knew I could break down complex arguments and concepts and I knew I could guide the students through the text. And I was nervous because – who wouldn’t be? The first time teaching not just a tutorial, but an actual university class, at a good university, together with a world renowned scholar. And of course I would place high standards on myself.
Well, I turned out being an absolute nervous wreck. Of course my internal experience was way worse than what the students ended up seeing and I think ultimately they luckily lacked the experience to really tell when their professor is having a very hard time. Or maybe they just didn’t care. In any case, they didn’t really make it hard on me. They participated, and 2 questions, or rather the way that I responded to them, were my death sentence in my professor’s eyes.
The first question criticized Rousseau for making bad arguments based on bad premises, along the lines of: who is he even to take make these claims and take them for granted? And I matched the student’s vibe, joked with them, and ended up very openly undermining and challenging Rousseau’s claim to authority on that matter. Professor did not like that at all. And I understand why. Basically, his argument was along the lines of: you gotta build up these authors and their insights before you can take them down. Also, if you, as teacher, don’t respect the author, why should the students? And I get it.
The 2nd question could have been answered if I had already re-read the last part of the discourse. I hadn’t at that time. I was swimming, trying to follow the author’s current line of thought to provide an answer. I don’t think the student knew that they would find the answer later on, but Prof. Mitchell did. And so even if the student didn’t, he saw right through me: I was not prepared, or at least not as good as I thought I was, and not as good as I should have been.
The conversation that followed afterwards, after the class when we met to exchange feedback, was very tough. A metaphoric slap in the face or punch in the guts because I didn’t do a good job. It was hard to face the truth, but ultimately he was right. I could and should have done better.
For the next class, I made a 180 turn around. I was on top of my shit, I calmed down my nerves, did a way better performance as teacher and was able to access and employ all of my skills that I had acquired years ago. Prof. Mitchell was impressed: „Not once in my 15 years of teaching have I seen a student come around and improve in such a short amount of time. What was it, 4 days?“
Ohhhhh, did I ride that high! From then on, it was smooth sailing. Sure, I had days that were better than others, but none of my following classes had fundamental flaws.
In any case, I want to share the notes I took from my initial feedback session:
digital grad notes 