When I introduced myself in my first column, I was unaware that my humble tale of frustration with the quality of my students would provoke such a wide array of responses. As an assistant professor of music at a community college in the East, I described my chagrin at dealing with students who cared little about my subject, who seemed to expect music courses to be mindless, and whose written work was shoddy at best.
Thankfully, only two people sent howlers, though what they lacked in number they made up for in vitriol. One was so blistering that even now my computer occasionally belches piteous wisps of smoke bearing the faint smell of scorched circuitry. The other sarcastically hoped I would not have the misfortune of encountering any of my Neanderthal students during a visit to my undoubtedly pretentious local coffee shop -- excuse me, "shoppe."
The vast majority of correspondents were appreciative and empathetic, but I was dismayed by the number of people, many from prestigious universities, who said they had the same problem with unmotivated students as I had. Apparently, my situation is not unique to me or my institution, a discovery that gives me a personal sense of validation, but that makes me uneasy about the prospects of solving the problem by finding a different position.
Regardless, there are other mounting signs that it's time to move on from my current tenure-track job. I don't want to stay another year at an institution where management's response to faculty complaints about students parking in the faculty lot is to remove the signs that designated the lot as faculty parking. It is definitely time to get out of Dodge, but in terms of locating a college with a truly receptive and inquisitive student body, I'm learning it may be more difficult than I had thought.
My suspicions about that were raised by my first campus interview of the hiring season, at a small liberal-arts college in a nearby state. On paper, both the job and the college seemed ideal.
As fate would have it, though, on the day I was to drive up to the college, the area was hit by a fierce blizzard (which meteorologists in several states gleefully dubbed the "Storm of the Century"). The search committee seemed anxious to squeeze all finalist interviews into the last few weeks of the fall semester, and I assumed they wanted to have everything resolved by the beginning of winter recess. Under the circumstances, rescheduling the interview did not seem feasible.
So into the teeth of the storm I traveled, facing perilous road conditions behind the wheel of a decrepit vehicle, with neither human habitation nor cellphone service for miles -- surely someone is aching to buy the movie rights to this epic journey, even if it's only the people from Hallmark Hall of Fame. I can see Mary-Louise Parker playing me, biting her lip as she peers pluckily through the frosty windshield into the pelting ice, her delicately furrowed brow gently illuminated by the rosy glow of the "Check Engine Soon" warning light.
When at last I stumbled through the front doors of the hotel, I could barely stop myself from dropping to the salt-stained lobby floor and covering it with kisses.
The interview itself, on the following day, was fairly routine. The committee members were delightful: mostly young, very friendly, and clearly excited about their disciplines. The fly in the ointment did not appear until midafternoon, during a brisk jaunt around the campus (about which I remember very little except for the blinding snow and wind that encased us in a white fog; I think they have some buildings there, but the exact details remain a mystery). In an unguarded moment during this little excursion, the department chairman casually let fly the single most important sentence of my entire interview: "Well, you know, it took me several years after I started teaching here to get over how uncurious the students were."
Were it not for the risk of death from hypothermia, I'd have stopped in my tracks right there. Uncurious students are unmotivated students, and I have plenty of those in my current position.
I drew him out further on the subject in hopes that the multiple layers of Thinsulate around my ears had caused me to mishear him. Sadly, his description of the average student at Storm-of-the-Century College mirrored that of my own students at Eastern Community College, and I saw the proof for myself when I did my teaching demonstration. Only four students showed up, and while they were friendly enough, it was difficult to engage them in academic discussion about the topic at hand. Afterward, a committee member told me I had done well to get them to respond as much as they had.
I had naïvely assumed that the lack of motivation I perceived in my own students was a local phenomenon -- a peculiarity of the community-college environment, in which many students enroll not necessarily because they have chosen that college over all other options, but because it is the only one in the area that they can afford, or the only one that offers classes that fit into their work or child-care schedules, or, frankly, the only one that they could get into.
Storm-of-the-Century College is virtually the opposite -- a small four-year residential college with a religious affiliation that attracts students with good SAT scores and charges them a sizable tuition bill for the privilege of floundering around campus in 18 inches of snow. Those students had other options, but they chose that particular college, many coming from out-of-state to attend -- yet they still seem to be just passing time.
I understand a little better now that lack of motivation and curiosity is not restricted to any particular kind of college -- urban or rural, two-year or four-year, public or private.
The knowledge that lazy students will almost certainly be lying in wait wherever I go hasn't changed my desire to keep working in academe -- at least, not yet -- but it does mean I need to lower my expectations.
Meanwhile, the ups and downs of the search process are definitely taking their toll. One day, within a span of three hours, I received a crushing rejection letter from a national journal and an enthusiastic invitation for a campus interview at a state college. I hardly know whether I'm coming or going, or whether my evening martini is meant to be consoling or celebratory. Sometimes I have two, just to cover both bases.
I had put a lot of hope into Storm-of-the-Century College, but in the end I realized it would just be a lateral move. I haven't had the chance to communicate my regrets to the search committee, however, because I haven't heard a peep from them, and it's been a full two months since my campus visit.
Several things could have happened: The college hired someone else, or there was an unexpected problem with the financing for the position ... or they're all still frozen in blocks of ice up there, waiting to be rescued by whiskey-toting St. Bernards, bravely led by Tom Selleck, Mary Steenburgen, and an entire crew of Hallmark cameramen.
