Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Back Again, and Some Ideas About Teaching as Performance

Well, folks, I'm back again after a longish absence. As Motherbuster (that motherfucker) has pointed out, I'm am, in fact, a "ding dong hole" for leaving y'all hanging here. I can only say that, through a combination of laziness, burnout, and other things I've been doing, I've been lax in posting. Well, I shall endeavor to do better, by and by.

Oh, and, by the way, I shaved my beard and moustache for the first time in eight years. It's fucking weird. I look younger by about 8-12 years, and I've discovered there's a fat bastard living underneath all that hair. Not sure I like him much. Freaked out my 4 year old daughter, too. She's never seen me barefaced. But there were reasons. The real one is that I did it for my wife, for Valentines Day. She hasn't really complained, as such, but I've been getting kind of a vibe about it for about the last two or three years. So I did it. I was also kind of curious, so there's that. Obviously, that led to the situation where I got to teach students who had seen me in both states, as well as colleagues, family friends, and others. I hated that. I don't like being scrutinized like that, particularly when I can't really say, "What you lookin' at, bitch," or some other clever rejoinder. However, I found myself thinking about a sort of top-ten list of reasons my face is now bare. Here are a few:

So I can lie better.
My bald dome got jealous.
I like to feel my lover's balls on my chin.
So I can pick up teenaged chicks.
To free the furry, woodland creatures living there.
Kept getting mistaken for Vlad Lenin.
Too fat to be mistaken for Stone Cold.
What do you mean? I never had a beard.

And so forth. Oh well, I can grow it back later. We'll just have to see about that. But I digress...

So much of being a professor is being on stage in front of others. I mean this in the sense that Erving Goffman suggested. A dramatistic approach to cultural analysis assumes at least that there are "frontstage" and "backstage" areas in our lives. There are both public and private parts of our lives and selves. There also are a range of culturally acceptable and unacceptable roles to perform. As a professor, I am often in performance situations. I mean this in the sense that people expect certain things from me. Also, I am self-aware of my performance as a professor. I have to navigate a variety of topics, and a lot of them are political. I've become increasingly wary of pissing off random conservative fucktards who might object to the terms and content of my analysis of those topics. I also want to teach some lessons about being an educated person. How to become a good writer and speaker. How to think things through. What it means to be a leader. What it means to be a professional. What it means to be a citizen of a community. Finally, I am a bit vain. I like to ham it up a bit. I feel like I can get some extra energy from the audience. I feel I'm better able to reach people and get into the learning. As a result, I've become increasingly sensitive to my "mojo" in public spaces. I think there are days where I feel like I must have some sort of extra pheromones going or something. People are very attentive and positive to me and what I say. They're into it/me. I am the center of the universe. Other days, not so much. I feel all but invisible. I can't control these things particularly well most of the time.

All in all, teaching is both rewarding and exhausting. Performing is fun and terrifying, too. So, I find myself doing about three or four different things during a lecture or class activity. It's hard to keep control over what's happening. I have little faith in over-preparation. It tends to make my performance more canned and boring. I try to have a good grounding in what I'm talking about, a rough lesson plan, and then I just go from there, working with my class in order to get somewhere valuable with the lesson. I don't always try to control where they destination is, but try to move intutively from class discussion to something that I can give back my classes. I try to put myself in a good position to drop some knowledge on them. When it works, it's like... hard to describe. Exhilarating. Like driving fast. Like riding a roller coaster. Maybe not that intense. It's a sense of flow, of connection. That's mostly what I mean, but also very energizing. Sometimes the energy lasts after you're done, and sometimes you feel drained. I think the emotional tone, positive or negative, has something to do with that, but I'm not really sure.

On top of it all, you also must do it. You have no choice but to do your job. You have to teach and deal with colleagues, and do all of the things you must. I don't always feel like me, if you know what I mean.


Anyway, I'm back.

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