Question: I am teaching for the first time this year, hired as an adjunct at the last minute. Most of my students are OK (a few are rude), but I'm in intestinal knots before every class. Will I ever be able to teach smoothly, without the roiling and rumbling?
Answer: Ms. Mentor has known a few professors who claimed to have no stage fright. "Mellow," for instance, sat in class with his head down, ruminating and communing with his bolo tie. Students rather liked "Mellow," who gave high grades, but few knew what he said. As he grew older and less "hip" (it was a long time ago), students stopped taking his specialized courses, and he was forced to teach freshmen — who rebelled, shouting and storming. ("I can't get my three credits from some dude who's asleep!") "They need to chill and go with the flow," Mellow sighed, and quit.
Ms. Mentor also knew "Mitch," who bragged that his classes were all prepared a year in advance. He was in charge, he lectured nonstop, and anyone with a question was savaged. ("How ignorant can you be and still be in college?") Sometimes he even took off his hearing aid before class. Students took turns taking notes and texting, since Mitch neither noticed nor cared, and on exams they duly regurgitated whatever he told them. Occasionally there were rumors that he was a space alien.
No stage fright ever troubled "Mellow" or "Mitch." Both knew exactly what they wanted to do in class. And both were terrible, terrible teachers.
Good teachers never lose their stage fright. It is their fuel. But those who think they are perfect are often perfectly awful. When your hands are shaking and your knees are weak, you are showing your fear, but also your high standards. You've been a top student, you're brimming with knowledge, and you don't want to make an ass of yourself in front of a bunch of teenagers. You flash back to those sixth-grade bullies who smashed your lunch and laughed at your T-shirt.
No wonder "Mildred" threw up before every class during her first year of teaching, and intermittently thereafter. She'd done that all through high school, too. She eventually won teaching awards.
Ms. Mentor is not advising you to shrink, shudder, or upchuck until you somehow became suave. Rather, emulate Socrates and know thyself. You do recognize the signs of stage fright: muscles contract, blood vessels constrict, breathing becomes rapid, pupils dilate, the digestive system shuts down (or goes berserk). According to the stage-fright expert Dale Cyphert, you have an adrenaline rush that, primitively, would enable you to "throw a spear at a mastodon."
And so — take deep breaths before you enter the classroom. Stretch your arms; recite nonsense ("My baby does the hanky-panky"). Once you start the performance, as every pianist, actor, or athlete knows, your body will calm down. That's why performers plan grand entrances, and late-night comics do monologues. Start your class with laughter if you can, but weepy or disgusting can also be riveting.
"But I'm a bookworm," you protest. "I don't know how to be the life of the party." But anyone can be a middling raconteur. Your comic timing may be worse than a wart hog's, but you can still read a short and provocative news story or play a tape. You must start with something entertaining. (It doesn't have to be a pratfall, which a famous novelist once used, inadvertently, to open a semester. The students loved her forever.)
After the opening entertainment (also called the hook or the motivation), then you can talk about the assignments, the syllabus, or class logistics. Open every class with a hook, because it saves time: You relax, and the students get settled for business. After the hook, you can have a routine announcement: "Now it's time to turn off your cellphones and put them away for their naps." Then do so yourself.
A classroom routine conceals your stage fright.
Start routinizing the night before: no frantic mornings. Set out your clothes, shine your shoes, wear black or blue all the time if that simplifies your life (looking expensively clothed is gauche nowadays). Wear comfortable garments you won't have to tug at or straighten.
Pack a lunch the night before, unless you have a lunch engagement with someone important. Put out coffee materials. Put everything you need in your bag: laptop, books, papers, flash drives, pens, DVD's, trail mix, extra socks, air horn, your inflatable pillow, your lucky Cleveland Indians key ring.
Fine, fine, you say, but what about the actual teaching, the "professing"? You're having those nightmares again — that it's the end of the semester, and you discover there's a course you signed up for and never attended. Or you have to start teaching astronomy tomorrow, in Hungarian. There's a red stain on your face that won't scrub off, you can't find a bathroom, your legs won't move. ... Ms. Mentor's readers once supplied some 25 or 30 of these, and you, reading this column now, know many more.
You could learn Hungarian, Ms. Mentor supposes, but for tomorrow's class, just be triple prepared. Some claim that you can overprepare and be rigidly locked into a plan and seem like a zombie robot, but Ms. Mentor prefers that to being a blitherer. Write down what you'll cover: the opening shtick, the announcements, the points to be made with your slides, the questions and case studies you'll present. Even in a huge class, students can vote, with or without clickers, on a question ("Could Abe Lincoln have preserved the Union?" "Does Romeo truly love Juliet, or is it adolescent lust?" "Did Socrates get what he deserved?") Polarizing questions like those force students to make decisions and defend their votes.
But when students won't talk, and the silence is excruciating, Ms. Mentor advises you to be ready to lecture. Be systematic and organized, stand up, and speak more loudly than you usually do. Learn students' names. You'll feel powerful, especially when your voice alone can make a roomful of pens and laptops quicken into life.
Only the most self-centered and obtuse performers ever lose stage fright entirely — just as writers never lose the terror of the blank screen. Writers also procrastinate and worry about not being perfect. Even veteran advice givers fret about leaving out something absolutely essential that will change the world.
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Question: My significant other, currently unemployed, has a good job possibility in "Eagleville," but I'm about to get tenure in "Ospreyland." My SO wants me to quit and move to Eagleville, but that would mean giving up a career I've spent most of my life preparing for. Is this even a serious question?
Answer: No.
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Sage Readers: Ms. Mentor, who can rarely answer letters personally, welcomes rants and queries, with confidentiality guaranteed.
