Nov 06 2008

I must be a truly post-modern professor

Category: humorharmonicminer @ 1:26 pm

A former student wrote on my Facebook wall recently, and said:

You were by far the most brilliant, confusing, and memorable professor I had.

My reply to him (a touch tongue-in-cheek, perhaps):

Confusion is actually a sign of great wisdom, since nothing is really comprehensible, and so if you THINK you understand, you’re almost certainly wrong.

Does this mean I am a successful post-modern prof?

This raises all kinds of questions:

If I was brilliant, how did he know, since I was confusing? Maybe I was just wrong, or stupid.

Ah, but perhaps the real issue was that OTHER people said I was brilliant, but only HE found me confusing.  In which case, it would seem I was not a brilliant teacher, and he is taking on faith, based on the testimony of others, that I have some other kind of brilliance.  Something besides the light shining from the top of my head.

The memorable part is interesting, since the implication is that perhaps I succeeded in manipulating the power relationships to get his attention, a fairly post-modern thing to do.

Was I memorable because I was brilliant?  Or memorable because I was confusing?

Sigh

3 Responses to “I must be a truly post-modern professor”

  1. Daniel Semsen says:

    Or were you confusing because you were brilliantly memorable?

    Or brilliant because you were memorably confusing?

    OR were you confusingly memorable and brilliantly confusing?

    Ahhh…teaching is hard. Are these kids really learning anything???!!?!!? I DON’T KNOW!!!!

  2. enharmonic says:

    Actually, it was your emerging brilliance and confusing emergence.

  3. amuzikman says:

    Funny – All I get is “Thanks for nothing!”

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