Where have all the students gone?

There was a time, not so long ago, when I started every semester hoping to scare a few students away. On the first day of class, after all the syllabus-related preliminaries, I would give students a poem they'd never seen before and require them to write about it, just to show me what they could do in 20 minutes, and I didn't complain if a few students went right over to the Records Office to drop the class. After all, my courses were generally full and a few drops meant good news for students on the waitlist.

Well, times have changed. I can't remember the last time I had a full class, much less a waitlist, and I've had multiple classes cancelled due to low (or nonexistent) enrollment. This semester I'm teaching American Lit Survey for the 25th and final time, but instead of 20 or 25 students including a swath of English majors, I started with 11 students. One student dropped yesterday, so I'm down to 10--with the drop deadline a full 10 days away.

And English majors? I may have one, unless someone has not yet declared. It looks like most of the students on the roster are majoring in finance or accounting, plus a couple of Education majors and a history buff. I can't afford to scare any of them away or I'll end up with no one to teach this semester, so I'm treading lightly. 

Further, one student made a comment on the first day of class that set off alarm bells. I won't reveal the content, but the comment and attitude put me on alert: if ever anyone was prepared to secretly record my class and post snippets out of context online, this is the one. I have never worried about the Powers That Be trying to constrain or control the content of my courses, but these days nothing scares me more than a student who knows how to record on a smartphone. We're all just one wacky ad-lib away from the wrong kind of notoriety.

But what can they do--fire me? I'm retiring in December. I can't afford to scare my small cadre of students, and I refuse to waste much time letting them scare me. If students can find a way to put up with me for a few more months, I can ride off into the sunset with my wacky ad-libs waving in the breeze.