The second experience was a seminar for first-year undergraduates that I ran in the same week (as a ‘guest lecturer’) – on essay writing. It went pretty smoothly as far as I could tell, but I couldn’t help noticing that it didn’t leave me buzzing like the café conversation just described. The setting was bizarre: a cramped square room at the university, packed with computers on long grey tables (known appropriately as ‘the workstation room’).
Several other factors contributed to a mild sense of dissatisfaction. Before the seminar I had spent considerable time and thought on preparation; not so much what I was going to tell the students, but what activities I could offer them and which questions might stimulate their thinking. At the appointed time (11am), only one student was in the room; the others arrived in dribs and drabs. So I waited about 15 minutes before beginning, by which time about a dozen had turned up (out of some 20 on the course).
I started by offering them a wide view of writing, quoting one of my favourite authors (Verlyn Klinkenborg): "Talking is natural, writing is not". As I spoke, I noticed that some of the students looked alert, others gave the impression they hadn’t slept enough. And when I posed questions, some spoke up while others remained quiet. As I walked back to my bike afterwards, I noticed that, although I was reasonably pleased with how it had gone, I wasn’t feeling especially inspired or energised by the experience.
The following day I went to my desk in the morning, as usual, and wrote freely about these two experiences, using just pen and paper, without pausing to correct anything. I could have just thought about these two human encounters, or discussed them with someone else, but the exercise of reflective writing (and rewriting) clarified and developed my thinking. It reaffirmed to me that, given a choice, I will nearly always choose an informal conversation with a colleague over the alternative of standing in front of a class. My reflections also helped me work out what I might do differently in future, and even what really matters to me in life. If I choose to continue teaching, I will try to make it as much as possible like a café conversation.
There is of course nothing new about reflecting on experience. 16th century essayist Michel de Montaigne described how his own mind’s “principal and most difficult study is the study of itself”, adding:
“For anyone who knows how to probe himself and to do so vigorously, reflection [méditer in French] is a mighty endeavour and a full one… The greatest of souls make [it] their vocation, ‘quibus vivere est cogitare’*; there is nothing we can do longer than think, no activity to which we can devote ourselves more regularly nor more easily.”
*'For them, to think is to live' (Cicero)
Related reading
"Several short sentences about writing", by Verlyn Klinkeborg (2013)
“On three kinds of social intercourse” (“De trois commerces”), essay by Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592)