I enjoy finding a metaphor that clarifies a concept in this way. I've sometimes talked with students about how much the present shapes not only our view of discrete memories from the past, but also their importance. Had I become a professional baseball players, as I once dreamed of doing, then my Little League memories would seem paramount. Having become a teacher and a father, other memories such as gardening and my solitary reading habits in a home where most modern entertainment was discouraged feel more significant. Genealogy is a different matter entirely, since the truth is even more approximate and is shaped more by what one wants to see rather than what likely was true.
Every time I read about your experiences in academia I'm struck by how similar they are to mine in medicine. Which, of course, is more art than science no matter what the algorithms and evidence based medicine and quality metrics say to the contrary. I think that concept of avoiding destroying the possibility of epiphany rather than the creation of magic is relevant to medicine and throughout the culture.
That's so interesting, Amy. Perhaps you know that my research area was medical humanities? Atul Gawande is a good example of someone advocating for standardization, and in some sensible ways. There are some obvious best practices, such as handwashing. But it seems there is constantly a desire among medical students and practitioners for giving voice to more than data. I'd enjoy hearing more about your discontents with evidence-based medicine. I'm mindful that evidence-based teaching is not nearly as scientific as it seems. Most of what is not measurable necessarily gets pushed out of the equation, even if that is where the most long-lasting learning happens.
This is apropos of nothing, really, but my sixth-grade teacher insisted that we ask to use the bathroom and to sharpen our pencils in German. It was perhaps a combination of the oddity of that request and repetition of it that made it lodge immovably in my memory. Quirks like that are part of how we come to love our teachers, and affection is a powerful influence on actual learning. I think the same is true of trust in the doctor-patient relationship. But perhaps you meant something else?
I think you mentioned that before. Did you have a specific area of focus within medical humanities? One concept of Atul Gawande’s (not standardization related) that I really value is asking the question “What does a good day look like?” in the context of end of life care, but I think it can be expanded more broadly to everyone, “Given the limitations I have and cannot change, what does a good day look like?”
I think standardization/algorithms are immensely valuable in high stress situations where the adrenaline, fear, whatever short circuits cognitive processes. Then you can rely on “muscle memory” to do the right thing. I think the challenge is that often we aren’t teaching how to know when to break those rules.
My grievances with evidence based medicine are more in the application than in using data to guide decisions. As you mentioned, oftentimes evidence based medicine leads to a logical fallacy that if it can’t be measured, it doesn’t matter, which is just do demonstrably false, particularly in medicine. Similarly, academic research usually reports its results in such a way that you know how the average person responded, but how to translate that back to the individual in front of you based on their values, goals, unique life circumstances is not as straightforward as just doing what worked for the average person.
The way I interpreted what you said about magic was that, oftentimes people want to know the specific steps they need to take to get the magical results so they can repeat them, but that usually it is more subtle than that, that you remove the things that impede the epiphany/desired outcome, but you have to let the practitioner use intuition, improvisation, experience to guide things from there. Like education, our actions in medicine suggest that we view the ultimate good in healthcare as cost effectiveness and efficiency, at the expense of the secret sauce of tending to people and witnessing their suffering, amongst many other priorities that should be ranked above efficiency. That went on a bit longer than I meant it to, but I write about medicine breaking my heart quite a bit, so these topics are often on my mind.
Love this -- spot on: "Like education, our actions in medicine suggest that we view the ultimate good in healthcare as cost effectiveness and efficiency, at the expense of the secret sauce of tending to people and witnessing their suffering, amongst many other priorities that should be ranked above efficiency."
My dissertation was "The Re-imagination of the Scientific Physician in American Literature, 1850-1930." That project combined medical history and literary history. I coined a rather pretentious phrase, the medico-literary dialectic, to explain how public perceptions of medical science are influenced by popular writing.
When I left academe I'd turned to the neuroscience of creativity. Willa Cather is so faithful to the inner lives of her artist characters that many of her works pose testable hypotheses about brain science and imagination; in fact, her depiction of epiphany maps very well on to current research. Perhaps you've seen this one.
Oh, that’s interesting. I supposed I knew that was when the physician became known as scientist, with the Flexner report and all, but hadn’t really thought about it that way. I have been thinking just this week about how media representations of doctors likely impacted my ideas of what the job would be like. Part of it was the idealism of media portrayals, but I think part of it is dramatic changes in the field over the last 30-40 years.
Teaching is a spiritual activity for its goal is some type of transformation through the wisdom and knowledge which is shared. When removing the spiritual component, and relying purely upon technique and knowledge, teaching loses transformative power.
So much of what you shared resonates with me. Thank you for sharing!
Well put! Yes, transformation is the goal. I think this is true in any discipline, but moreso in the social sciences and humanities. Glad it landed with you.
I, like others, love the waterfall metaphor. And my imagination continued on it with images of words splashing up into students, then becoming those decorated cards.
I confess, that there was a place within your essay where I stopped reading because I want to interact with you.
You have spoken before of your proclivity towards negativity, and I hear that in the voice used within this essay.
I wish to pause and ask you what is within your power to change?
Surely it isn’t the entire educational system, which has sadly descended into parent pleasing and rote memorization styles to “get good grades” instead of what I always hoped it could be: a place where kids are enticed to become learners…. That they can be exposed to a variety of thought, and then follow up in depth with those things that call to them.
I didn’t “need” to study the differences between algebra and geometry to know I was excellent at math. No one took into account that I was a visual learner, thus learning to spell by seeing the words written out in my mind’s eye. I did not need to remove all my emotion from an essay in order to improve grammatically perfect syntax.
All those things were measures that a system imposed to decide whether or not I was smart. And had nothing to do with creating a life long learner within my being.
All this to say… I suspect that any structured learning system will have you irritated by the system. Why not slightly shift your viewpoint to what is possible instead of what is wrong with the way things are? (I bet that you and I could have a lively discussion on this topic).
One of the reframing techniques I have taught over the years is to demonstrate to my clients the way that anything that makes them feel crummy is not the focal point of change. Instead, they will succeed through finding a different pathway to achieve their goals.
First, solve what it is that you truly want, and observe whether or not you have a snowball’s chance in hell of achieving it.
Second, observe if there are any ways within the current system to accomplish the outcome you hope for. If not, then you can either change what you are seeking, or find a new pathway to achieve it. No need to bash one’s head against what is broken.
In your particular frustration, I have trouble imagining that any existing school structure will change quickly enough to allow teaching to feed your soul.
Thus my curiosity focuses on how you might change the circumstances around your assumption (teaching within in an existing school system) to give you the potential for a successful outcome (you obtaining joy from the work you are called to do).
Phew.
That was a mouthful, but it is the direction my brain veered off to.
If this isn’t helpful, please feel free to not reply or just delete this.
You are an educator, a teacher… I am a remover of obstacles to joy.
All good points. I have indeed taken action to remove myself from two systems that were relentlessly negative. Sometimes I need reminders *not* to reengage with a broken education system, and this essay serves as that kind of reminder. As for teaching, your recommendation is more or less what I'm doing as a coach, defining a new pathway. It's not the same as the intimacy involved in a course that meets 2-3x per week for a semester, but it is a way of holding on to my idealism and marshaling what control I can. There's still some grieving involved and some realism required in accepting a more modest realization of joy. It's not quite what Godfrey St. Peter says at the end of Cather's "The Professor's House," where he must learn to "live without delight." But it's not quite (not yet) the something splendid that Claude Wheeler desires.
Thanks for a lovely essay -- there is a lot here that I need to follow up on and read. I think teaching is a science too, and that you need both aspects, the art and the science. But in these days of metrics, and technology that can tell you if your pupils are concentrating or not (which I don't believe, but what a useless teacher you'd have to be to need technology to tell you!), some people seem to forget the art aspect. In my opinion, the most successful teachers are the ones whose love of their subject and the joy of imparting their knowledge are the most important things, not test scores!
Glad it resonated, Terry. I'd be interested in hearing more about how you see teaching as a science. Most of the examples I've seen that pertain to teaching humanities content strike me as ham-handed and difficult to customize to individuals or to the unique culture of a discreet class. Perhaps you've had the experience of teaching the same content in more or less the same way to consecutive groups and having one soar and the other crash?
I've been thinking about this lately regarding the nature of science itself. The scientific method has been one of the essential structures of our contemporary world. However, the context in which that method is applied is never objective. The way peer review works, the way funding for scientific research works -- all of this is ripe for critique. And that's for science that ought to be measuring more concrete things than learning.
We agree here: "In my opinion, the most successful teachers are the ones whose love of their subject and the joy of imparting their knowledge are the most important things, not test scores!" Love of subject is often discounted as insignificant, but it's often what motivates a committed teacher to keep probing the nuances of student engagement, following up that intuitive sense that a group is tuning out with more finely-tuned strategies for connecting.
I have a very mixed view of teaching as a science. For the most part, I think the science-y aspect is a way that, if necessary (if quizzed by an inspector, say) I can justify approaches that (a) seem to me to be common sense and (b) I've always found successful. For example, Ausubel's concept of advance organisers, Bruner's spiral curriculum and Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development. Just to be clear, I've never said "OK, I am now going to see how to teach X by applying Bruner's ideas...". I am deeply suspicious of approaches supposedly based on neuroscience because (a) it's the new kid on the block, and next year or the year after there will be another 'flavour of the month' so to speak; (b) the true scientific method is never applied as far as I can tell, probably because it can't be strictly speaking, and (c) because if I can't see how I can use it to teach Year 11 on Friday afternoon then it is, for all practical purposes useless. A good example of this IMO is the current craze for Cognitive Load Theory. The findings were based on small samples, in a narrow range of subjects, and have been treated as though they apply across the board ie to all subjects and all students. But when you look at the recommendations, which basically comes down to: don't give the kids too much to think about at once, it's impossible to apply (what is 'too much'?). I've written more about here: https://terryf.substack.com/p/some-notes-on-memory. I agree with all you've said about peer review etc. I reviewed a book called Science Fictions that's pretty disturbing from an seeking truth point of view https://terryfreedman.substack.com/i/83982654/science-fictions-exposing-fraud-bias-negligence-and-hype-in-science
Thus I think on the whole I agree with you, about teaching being an art rather than a science, but that some theories, such as the ones I've mentioned, do have interesting and useful things to say.
To me, one of the things teaching is all about is shown in this video. It's a bit naff, a bit shmaltzy, but the sheer exub erance of the children and how caring their headteacher is is a joy to watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itSbV3YiRkI
Absolutely -- theory is a cousin of art. But I suspect that even theory begins with a hunch. I never fleshed this out, but I remember thinking, whilst being steeped in Derrida in graduate school, that reality could not possibly consist solely of linguistic constructions. My half-baked idea, which I think is now being borne out by neuroscience, was that the physiological process of homeostasis showed that the body had a certain grammar, a way of making meaning without language, that was not thoroughly subjective. Tilt too far from homeostasis, and it's checkmate. That, I suppose, was common sense. And one would need to labor through the logical labyrinth to translate it into a viable theory. But theory is often borne of intuition, and I think good teaching is, too.
Another way to put it: when I write, I often begin with the thought and see if it can find its way into language. Teaching is similar, only the subjects are living and breathing in front of you. If you're taking no risks, you're not growing as a teacher. And yet the science of teaching, as it pertains to the inspectors you mention, is largely about reducing risk and minimizing subjectivity.
So I think we quite agree! Thanks for your links; I've subscribed and hope to keep in touch.
I think you're right about intuition and homeostasis. Definitely agree about taking risks. A couple of my most successful lessons were those in which I basically broke the rules. Any inspector in the room would no doubt have failed me, but I would have taken that as proof that he or she had no idea what they were doing! I shall have to write about these I think.
Thank you for subscribing, and for the recommendation.
Beautiful essay, indeed. I am moved by the wrestler's release of his latent spirit!
I, too, remain stuck at the waterfall. How those early drops break apart and transform into new shapes and colors, redefining the original memory into multiple new ones before each becomes a part of a current.
Well said, Tej. This student is but one of many who discovered that approaching creative writing as a fine art with the goal of mastery was much more rewarding than completing a writing chore with the goal of credit completion. I think of the student whose lyric essay began with a childhood scene with an Etch-a-Sketch, then moved to a vignette on cleaning out a dorm room before graduation, then to an Iowa landscape after fresh snowfall. In that case, the method was William Carlos Williams's idea that there are no ideas but in *things*. The Etch-a-Sketch became the metaphor through which that student saw other erasures or new beginnings in her life. There is a misconception about lyrical prose (also about poetry), namely, that it is more profound if you have to somehow read the writer's mind to make sense of it. The best lyricism is there in plain sight, accessible enough that the reader can incorporate it into his/her own life, as this metaphor seems to have allowed you to do.
Every time I read about your experiences in academia I'm struck by how similar they are to mine in medicine. Which, of course, is more art than science no matter what the algorithms and evidence based medicine and quality metrics say to the contrary. I think that concept of avoiding destroying the possibility of epiphany rather than the creation of magic is relevant to medicine and throughout the culture.
A beautiful essay. I'm still at the waterfall--my new favorite metaphor about time and memory.
I enjoy finding a metaphor that clarifies a concept in this way. I've sometimes talked with students about how much the present shapes not only our view of discrete memories from the past, but also their importance. Had I become a professional baseball players, as I once dreamed of doing, then my Little League memories would seem paramount. Having become a teacher and a father, other memories such as gardening and my solitary reading habits in a home where most modern entertainment was discouraged feel more significant. Genealogy is a different matter entirely, since the truth is even more approximate and is shaped more by what one wants to see rather than what likely was true.
Every time I read about your experiences in academia I'm struck by how similar they are to mine in medicine. Which, of course, is more art than science no matter what the algorithms and evidence based medicine and quality metrics say to the contrary. I think that concept of avoiding destroying the possibility of epiphany rather than the creation of magic is relevant to medicine and throughout the culture.
That's so interesting, Amy. Perhaps you know that my research area was medical humanities? Atul Gawande is a good example of someone advocating for standardization, and in some sensible ways. There are some obvious best practices, such as handwashing. But it seems there is constantly a desire among medical students and practitioners for giving voice to more than data. I'd enjoy hearing more about your discontents with evidence-based medicine. I'm mindful that evidence-based teaching is not nearly as scientific as it seems. Most of what is not measurable necessarily gets pushed out of the equation, even if that is where the most long-lasting learning happens.
This is apropos of nothing, really, but my sixth-grade teacher insisted that we ask to use the bathroom and to sharpen our pencils in German. It was perhaps a combination of the oddity of that request and repetition of it that made it lodge immovably in my memory. Quirks like that are part of how we come to love our teachers, and affection is a powerful influence on actual learning. I think the same is true of trust in the doctor-patient relationship. But perhaps you meant something else?
I think you mentioned that before. Did you have a specific area of focus within medical humanities? One concept of Atul Gawande’s (not standardization related) that I really value is asking the question “What does a good day look like?” in the context of end of life care, but I think it can be expanded more broadly to everyone, “Given the limitations I have and cannot change, what does a good day look like?”
I think standardization/algorithms are immensely valuable in high stress situations where the adrenaline, fear, whatever short circuits cognitive processes. Then you can rely on “muscle memory” to do the right thing. I think the challenge is that often we aren’t teaching how to know when to break those rules.
My grievances with evidence based medicine are more in the application than in using data to guide decisions. As you mentioned, oftentimes evidence based medicine leads to a logical fallacy that if it can’t be measured, it doesn’t matter, which is just do demonstrably false, particularly in medicine. Similarly, academic research usually reports its results in such a way that you know how the average person responded, but how to translate that back to the individual in front of you based on their values, goals, unique life circumstances is not as straightforward as just doing what worked for the average person.
The way I interpreted what you said about magic was that, oftentimes people want to know the specific steps they need to take to get the magical results so they can repeat them, but that usually it is more subtle than that, that you remove the things that impede the epiphany/desired outcome, but you have to let the practitioner use intuition, improvisation, experience to guide things from there. Like education, our actions in medicine suggest that we view the ultimate good in healthcare as cost effectiveness and efficiency, at the expense of the secret sauce of tending to people and witnessing their suffering, amongst many other priorities that should be ranked above efficiency. That went on a bit longer than I meant it to, but I write about medicine breaking my heart quite a bit, so these topics are often on my mind.
Love this -- spot on: "Like education, our actions in medicine suggest that we view the ultimate good in healthcare as cost effectiveness and efficiency, at the expense of the secret sauce of tending to people and witnessing their suffering, amongst many other priorities that should be ranked above efficiency."
My dissertation was "The Re-imagination of the Scientific Physician in American Literature, 1850-1930." That project combined medical history and literary history. I coined a rather pretentious phrase, the medico-literary dialectic, to explain how public perceptions of medical science are influenced by popular writing.
When I left academe I'd turned to the neuroscience of creativity. Willa Cather is so faithful to the inner lives of her artist characters that many of her works pose testable hypotheses about brain science and imagination; in fact, her depiction of epiphany maps very well on to current research. Perhaps you've seen this one.
https://joshuadolezal.substack.com/p/experience-more-epiphanies-in-2024?utm_source=publication-search
Oh, that’s interesting. I supposed I knew that was when the physician became known as scientist, with the Flexner report and all, but hadn’t really thought about it that way. I have been thinking just this week about how media representations of doctors likely impacted my ideas of what the job would be like. Part of it was the idealism of media portrayals, but I think part of it is dramatic changes in the field over the last 30-40 years.
This feels like an email exchange or interview 😊
Haha, totally! It is a complicated topic about which I am very opinionated :)
Teaching is a spiritual activity for its goal is some type of transformation through the wisdom and knowledge which is shared. When removing the spiritual component, and relying purely upon technique and knowledge, teaching loses transformative power.
So much of what you shared resonates with me. Thank you for sharing!
Well put! Yes, transformation is the goal. I think this is true in any discipline, but moreso in the social sciences and humanities. Glad it landed with you.
I, like others, love the waterfall metaphor. And my imagination continued on it with images of words splashing up into students, then becoming those decorated cards.
I confess, that there was a place within your essay where I stopped reading because I want to interact with you.
You have spoken before of your proclivity towards negativity, and I hear that in the voice used within this essay.
I wish to pause and ask you what is within your power to change?
Surely it isn’t the entire educational system, which has sadly descended into parent pleasing and rote memorization styles to “get good grades” instead of what I always hoped it could be: a place where kids are enticed to become learners…. That they can be exposed to a variety of thought, and then follow up in depth with those things that call to them.
I didn’t “need” to study the differences between algebra and geometry to know I was excellent at math. No one took into account that I was a visual learner, thus learning to spell by seeing the words written out in my mind’s eye. I did not need to remove all my emotion from an essay in order to improve grammatically perfect syntax.
All those things were measures that a system imposed to decide whether or not I was smart. And had nothing to do with creating a life long learner within my being.
All this to say… I suspect that any structured learning system will have you irritated by the system. Why not slightly shift your viewpoint to what is possible instead of what is wrong with the way things are? (I bet that you and I could have a lively discussion on this topic).
One of the reframing techniques I have taught over the years is to demonstrate to my clients the way that anything that makes them feel crummy is not the focal point of change. Instead, they will succeed through finding a different pathway to achieve their goals.
First, solve what it is that you truly want, and observe whether or not you have a snowball’s chance in hell of achieving it.
Second, observe if there are any ways within the current system to accomplish the outcome you hope for. If not, then you can either change what you are seeking, or find a new pathway to achieve it. No need to bash one’s head against what is broken.
In your particular frustration, I have trouble imagining that any existing school structure will change quickly enough to allow teaching to feed your soul.
Thus my curiosity focuses on how you might change the circumstances around your assumption (teaching within in an existing school system) to give you the potential for a successful outcome (you obtaining joy from the work you are called to do).
Phew.
That was a mouthful, but it is the direction my brain veered off to.
If this isn’t helpful, please feel free to not reply or just delete this.
You are an educator, a teacher… I am a remover of obstacles to joy.
All good points. I have indeed taken action to remove myself from two systems that were relentlessly negative. Sometimes I need reminders *not* to reengage with a broken education system, and this essay serves as that kind of reminder. As for teaching, your recommendation is more or less what I'm doing as a coach, defining a new pathway. It's not the same as the intimacy involved in a course that meets 2-3x per week for a semester, but it is a way of holding on to my idealism and marshaling what control I can. There's still some grieving involved and some realism required in accepting a more modest realization of joy. It's not quite what Godfrey St. Peter says at the end of Cather's "The Professor's House," where he must learn to "live without delight." But it's not quite (not yet) the something splendid that Claude Wheeler desires.
I LOVE that you are choosing to hold onto your idealism.
Your students/ mentees/ learners will bring more of themselves to this world as you coach them.
It takes time to grow new businesses. Be hopeful, remain steadfast, be patient.
It doesn’t matter how long it takes to establish a business with a healthier learning model, it only matters that you are doing it.
Thanks for a lovely essay -- there is a lot here that I need to follow up on and read. I think teaching is a science too, and that you need both aspects, the art and the science. But in these days of metrics, and technology that can tell you if your pupils are concentrating or not (which I don't believe, but what a useless teacher you'd have to be to need technology to tell you!), some people seem to forget the art aspect. In my opinion, the most successful teachers are the ones whose love of their subject and the joy of imparting their knowledge are the most important things, not test scores!
Glad it resonated, Terry. I'd be interested in hearing more about how you see teaching as a science. Most of the examples I've seen that pertain to teaching humanities content strike me as ham-handed and difficult to customize to individuals or to the unique culture of a discreet class. Perhaps you've had the experience of teaching the same content in more or less the same way to consecutive groups and having one soar and the other crash?
I've been thinking about this lately regarding the nature of science itself. The scientific method has been one of the essential structures of our contemporary world. However, the context in which that method is applied is never objective. The way peer review works, the way funding for scientific research works -- all of this is ripe for critique. And that's for science that ought to be measuring more concrete things than learning.
We agree here: "In my opinion, the most successful teachers are the ones whose love of their subject and the joy of imparting their knowledge are the most important things, not test scores!" Love of subject is often discounted as insignificant, but it's often what motivates a committed teacher to keep probing the nuances of student engagement, following up that intuitive sense that a group is tuning out with more finely-tuned strategies for connecting.
I have a very mixed view of teaching as a science. For the most part, I think the science-y aspect is a way that, if necessary (if quizzed by an inspector, say) I can justify approaches that (a) seem to me to be common sense and (b) I've always found successful. For example, Ausubel's concept of advance organisers, Bruner's spiral curriculum and Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development. Just to be clear, I've never said "OK, I am now going to see how to teach X by applying Bruner's ideas...". I am deeply suspicious of approaches supposedly based on neuroscience because (a) it's the new kid on the block, and next year or the year after there will be another 'flavour of the month' so to speak; (b) the true scientific method is never applied as far as I can tell, probably because it can't be strictly speaking, and (c) because if I can't see how I can use it to teach Year 11 on Friday afternoon then it is, for all practical purposes useless. A good example of this IMO is the current craze for Cognitive Load Theory. The findings were based on small samples, in a narrow range of subjects, and have been treated as though they apply across the board ie to all subjects and all students. But when you look at the recommendations, which basically comes down to: don't give the kids too much to think about at once, it's impossible to apply (what is 'too much'?). I've written more about here: https://terryf.substack.com/p/some-notes-on-memory. I agree with all you've said about peer review etc. I reviewed a book called Science Fictions that's pretty disturbing from an seeking truth point of view https://terryfreedman.substack.com/i/83982654/science-fictions-exposing-fraud-bias-negligence-and-hype-in-science
Thus I think on the whole I agree with you, about teaching being an art rather than a science, but that some theories, such as the ones I've mentioned, do have interesting and useful things to say.
To me, one of the things teaching is all about is shown in this video. It's a bit naff, a bit shmaltzy, but the sheer exub erance of the children and how caring their headteacher is is a joy to watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itSbV3YiRkI
Absolutely -- theory is a cousin of art. But I suspect that even theory begins with a hunch. I never fleshed this out, but I remember thinking, whilst being steeped in Derrida in graduate school, that reality could not possibly consist solely of linguistic constructions. My half-baked idea, which I think is now being borne out by neuroscience, was that the physiological process of homeostasis showed that the body had a certain grammar, a way of making meaning without language, that was not thoroughly subjective. Tilt too far from homeostasis, and it's checkmate. That, I suppose, was common sense. And one would need to labor through the logical labyrinth to translate it into a viable theory. But theory is often borne of intuition, and I think good teaching is, too.
Another way to put it: when I write, I often begin with the thought and see if it can find its way into language. Teaching is similar, only the subjects are living and breathing in front of you. If you're taking no risks, you're not growing as a teacher. And yet the science of teaching, as it pertains to the inspectors you mention, is largely about reducing risk and minimizing subjectivity.
So I think we quite agree! Thanks for your links; I've subscribed and hope to keep in touch.
I think you're right about intuition and homeostasis. Definitely agree about taking risks. A couple of my most successful lessons were those in which I basically broke the rules. Any inspector in the room would no doubt have failed me, but I would have taken that as proof that he or she had no idea what they were doing! I shall have to write about these I think.
Thank you for subscribing, and for the recommendation.
Hi Joshua, sorry for silence. I needed time to cogitate and it's been a bit hectic in Freedman Towers. I hope to give a proper response later today.
Yes! Absolutely, yes! Bring your idealism, and your incessant quest for something splendid in life, keep it with you in every step of your pilgrimage!
Beautiful essay, indeed. I am moved by the wrestler's release of his latent spirit!
I, too, remain stuck at the waterfall. How those early drops break apart and transform into new shapes and colors, redefining the original memory into multiple new ones before each becomes a part of a current.
Well said, Tej. This student is but one of many who discovered that approaching creative writing as a fine art with the goal of mastery was much more rewarding than completing a writing chore with the goal of credit completion. I think of the student whose lyric essay began with a childhood scene with an Etch-a-Sketch, then moved to a vignette on cleaning out a dorm room before graduation, then to an Iowa landscape after fresh snowfall. In that case, the method was William Carlos Williams's idea that there are no ideas but in *things*. The Etch-a-Sketch became the metaphor through which that student saw other erasures or new beginnings in her life. There is a misconception about lyrical prose (also about poetry), namely, that it is more profound if you have to somehow read the writer's mind to make sense of it. The best lyricism is there in plain sight, accessible enough that the reader can incorporate it into his/her own life, as this metaphor seems to have allowed you to do.
Every time I read about your experiences in academia I'm struck by how similar they are to mine in medicine. Which, of course, is more art than science no matter what the algorithms and evidence based medicine and quality metrics say to the contrary. I think that concept of avoiding destroying the possibility of epiphany rather than the creation of magic is relevant to medicine and throughout the culture.