love, etc.

I remember one day, not too far into the quarter perhaps, Marc said, to our graduate seminar of about 12 students from all different departments, something like, “And just because I’m hard on you, that doesn’t mean that I don’t love you.” I remember thinking, he loves us?! Of course he did. I was thrilled by this, and by the realization that this might be the key to a different kind of teaching than I had ever before experienced: start by loving your students as people, as colleagues, as fellow philosophers. I tried to implement the strategy immediately, telling my sections of an English survey course for which I was TA that quarter that I loved them. One girl made a face. Two people wrote on my evaluations that my conduct in class was sometimes “inappropriate”—I can only think it must have been this spontaneous display of affection. But, undeterred, and having Marc as a constant model, as I continued to take seminars from him and work with him in various capacities, I continued to love my students, and what I have found is that it makes me love teaching. I have, honest to God, never had a bad class since. Je t’aime, Marc!