Score one for the humanities

It was one of those days when I really ought to have been given a prize for refraining from throwing any students out the window: a bleak, damp, cold Monday morning when three freshman classes before noon just felt like too many freshmen, when an entire class expressed ignorance of a major assignment we've been talking about for two weeks, when a student asked a question so ridiculous that I didn't even have to answer because the rest of the class rose up as one to respond--loudly.  The kind of morning that makes me wonder why I didn't pursue a career in welding or glass-blowing or bead-sorting or anything involving inanimate objects that can't talk back (which is a pretty good description of a few of my students yesterday)--the kind of day, in other words, that makes me wonder why I keep banging my head against the same brick wall semester after semester. 

And then I opened an e-mail from a student--not even a current student but a student I taught a few years ago, who later transferred to another school. So I haven't seen or heard from this student for three years and I probably haven't thought about him either, but here he is suddenly in my inbox thanking me for urging him to pursue an English major.

It took me a few minutes to remember this kid, but he included a few clues in the message and then it all came flooding back: a student determined to pursue a major in engineering even though he hated his intro-level engineering classes, who wrote elegant papers analyzing literature with a depth of insight rarely seen in freshman writing, the kind of insight that screams "English major." I remember meeting with him to hear him list all the reasons he hated engineering but felt that he had to major in it anyway, and I remember urging him to major in English or, if that wasn't possible, to take as many courses as he could in the humanities and try to squeeze in an English minor.

All these anguished meetings may have felt like a total waste of time three years ago, but today I have in my inbox a message explaining that he's sick of engineering and wants to pursue his passion, so he's switching his major to English, even though this will delay his graduation by three semesters. "Engineering has never been my passion," he writes, adding, "Already, I feel much happier thinking about studying something more enjoyable."

In the midst of a chorus of complaints about how unreasonable I am to expect students to find six sources in only three weeks or to read a five-page story before Wednesday's class even though it's incredibly boring, consisting, as it does, of too many big words, I celebrate a student who applies the word "enjoyable" to the study of literature. Please send me more of those students! Otherwise, one of these days I won't be able to stop myself from throwing someone out the window.