[This week marks the conclusion of another Fall semester, my 21st at Fitchburg State. Since we’re all going through it at the moment, I thought I’d share one significant challenge I faced in each class this semester, and a bit about how I tried to respond. Leading up to this special weekend post on my younger son’s first semester!]
As I
highlighted with this
August blog series in particular, my younger son (and phenomenal
Guest Poster) Kyle started his first year at the University of Michigan
this Fall. It was as full and kick-ass a semester as I knew it would be, and
there are countless moments and experiences of which I’m very proud and which
make me even more excited for all that’s next. But for a series on teaching
reflections, I have to highlight two very distinct but complementary and
equally impressive papers Kyle wrote for his tough but fascinating and
rewarding first-year history seminar on the study of deep time:
Toward the
start of the semester, Kyle’s professor asked them to write a personal
observation and analysis of some aspects of the (beautiful) Michigan campus,
tied to the class themes of continuity and change over deep time. He chose to
observe the seasonal pattern of the changing Fall leaves, to connect it to the
cycles of campus construction, and to consider the relationships and contrasts between
these natural and man-mind experiences of the landscape, setting, and time. And
he did so in a style that was equal parts funny and wise, warm and thought-provoking,
very much Kyle’s but also something I hadn’t quite read from him before. My
favorite paper I read all semester, with absolutely no offense to any of my FSU
students!
The course’s
second assignment was a somewhat more typical analytical paper: working with
multiple class texts to develop a thesis about and multi-layered analysis of a
central class question and theme. Kyle chose a complex and important
question/theme about whether and how human progress is possible, and worked
closely and convincingly with a series of dense and challenging texts
(including one featuring the perspective of the legendary Werner Herzog) to develop
a thoughtful and nuanced thesis about different theories of progress as, themselves,
the best reflection of both the limits and the possibilities of such change. If
Kyle continues in his pre-Law path he’s going to have lots of occasions to work
with dense texts to consider big human questions, and this paper made me very excited
for that continued arc—and every part of Kyle’s next steps at Michigan!
Next
series starts Monday,
Ben
PS. What
do you think?
PPS. I drafted this post before Kyle wrote his final paper for the course, a truly stunning synthesis of many different ideas about deep time, both from class readings and (especially) from his own evolving perspective. I could go on & on about that culminating essay and his incredibly thoughtful and multilayered work in it, but I'll simply conclude this post with his banger of a concluding sentence: "Through a collective understanding of deep time, humanity can challenge notions of temporal insignificance and inevitable environmental destruction, pioneering a newfound epoch defined by interrelational mutualism between man and nature, not one categorized by geological antagonism."
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