20140724.0738

Among other things, I gave a tutorial yesterday. One of the students in my literature class last semester has been working to improve upon the paper he wrote for me, one tracing the manifestation of a particular medieval Celtic character in a particular anime series; he means to submit it to a papers for undergraduates panel at one conference or another. It is flattering for me to have a student want to continue to work with me after the semester is done, and it is professionally gratifying (or will be, when it happens) to have a student submit a paper written under my guidance. It is also helpful for other endeavors in which I am engaged, such as the Tales after Tolkien Society. Now, if I can only be sure to guide him well...

Engagement with a project across terms is one of the things that I valued about my college and graduate research experiences. While an undergraduate, I was lucky enough to be able to carry out a project in role-playing games under the kind tutelage of indulgent professors and instructors (something about which I spoke at CCCC earlier this year). In graduate school, of course, there were the thesis and dissertation to do, neither of which was a short-term project; I was on the thesis for two semesters and the dissertation for close to three years, both under the guidance of several excellent faculty to whom I was not always sufficiently grateful and with whom I have not kept in as close a contact as I ought. In all three, I had the luxury of taking time to work on and work out details of the research, uncovering new avenues of exploration and doing much to learn in ways that the classroom could not match. (I must note, however, that the classroom did explicitly and specifically prepare me to carry out the independent research, offering training in methods and providing me places from which to begin useful lines of inquiry. Scaffolding works.)

Having the chance to facilitate such a thing now, even if on a small scale and informally, is proving to be one of the better parts of the work of teaching. Not only do I get the satisfaction of seeing a project take shape under my guidance but without my having to do the work of generating the ideas, I find my own store of ideas growing. The project my student/tutee/mentee pursues now suggests others to me; I have to tear myself away from some, as my work on them would poach upon his, but there are yet others that occur to me as worth undertaking when my current slate of work is clear (so not for a while, but still...). It is the kind of thing that cannot be had from large lecture classes; it is the kind of thing that cannot be had from distance learning; it is the kind of thing that can only be had from direct, face-to-face interactions. It is the kind of thing to which the academic humanities lend themselves, and it is perhaps the kind of thing that can reassert the relevance of the disciplines in an increasingly technocratic world.