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| Jonathan Twingley |
i recently finished teaching
my last section ever; and, like Cincinnatus, I now plan
to retire to my farm, at least until student evaluations
come back. Section, for those of you lucky enough to
have graduated in the golden age before student-teacher
interaction was valued, is the extra hour or so associated
with a three-hour-a-week lecture class during which
students have the opportunity to discuss informally
the issues raised in lecture. The session is typically
supervised by a graduate student whose job it is to
respond to any questions left unanswered by the professor.
No other Stanford institution (except maybe Hoover)
inspires such justified dread.
The goal of section, and here I’m paraphrasing
the Student Handbook, is to learn the art of concealing
one’s ignorance. As with most things, students
are several steps ahead of their section leaders in
this area, having mastered several rhetorical techniques.
These include the Unnecessary Supporting Clarification
(“Following up on what Mike said, I agree that
slavery was due to, as well as the result
of, a combination of economic and cultural factors”),
the Unassailable Emotional Declaration (“I just
find it really hard to relate to Genghis Khan”)
and, most devastating of all, the Redirected Question
(“To thoroughly answer that, I’d have to
know more about religious affiliation in late-19th-century
England. Could you talk a little about that?”)
Faced with these tactics, the section leader has countermeasures.
No graduate student worth her salt is unfamiliar with
the Specific Example Query (“Which economic and
cultural factors exactly, using the texts from
this week’s reading?”) or the Awkward Segue
(“Speaking of Genghis Khan, we’ll have a
short nap time.”) Of course, the section leader’s WD-40 is the Pathetic Waffle and Resort to Irrelevant
Information You Actually Know (“Theoretically,
of course, everyone in England was a member of the Anglican
Communion, which, interestingly enough, reminds me of
a situation very similar to that faced at one time by
the Pueblo peoples of the American Southwest, whom I
happen to be studying . . . ”).
A large part of section’s awkwardness is due to
its peculiar atmosphere of forced interaction. Students
are expected, and sometimes required, to speak: their
grade often depends on participation. In case you’ve
forgotten what this feels like, try filling a lull in
dinner party conversation this weekend by asking “to
hear from anyone who hasn’t said anything yet.”
Despite all this, there is such a thing as a good section.
Graduate students have been known to while away the
wee hours in their filthy garrets by compiling “section
all-star teams.” This is more complicated than
it seems: the perfect section consists not just of the
best students (too many of these, in fact, and there’s
the potential for mutiny, particularly during spring
quarter) but also the rare lunatic who adds spice (my
go-to guy was a poli sci major who believed that the
moon landing was a hoax perpetrated by Fidel Castro
and the Masons) and a curmudgeon (often, an older “nontraditional” student who can be counted on to sneer at references
to popular culture, thereby usurping pariah status from
the section leader).
As both a Stanford undergraduate and graduate student,
I’ve had the opportunity to suffer through section
on both sides of the conference table. If I’ve
learned anything, it’s that the section leader
governs best who governs least. Some of my finest sections
were the ones in which I hardly said a word, when the
students simply took over, taking apart arguments and
challenging conventions as if engaged in a real conversation—smart
people discussing ideas intelligently, as if this were Stanford University or something—and
all I had to do was turn off the lights and lock the
door when it was over. It gives me great pleasure to
think that right now, somewhere on campus, such a section
is meeting, and I have absolutely nothing to do with
it.
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