As I drove up Highway 280 on my way to Alumni Day, the weight of winter semester began to lift. I teach at a community college in Southern California, and my patience with student excuses was running thin. I cringed at stories of emergency hospitalizations of relatives, which seem to occur with greater frequency during midterms and finals. I greeted late arrivals with a glare and scolded the more blatant tardies—those accompanied by bustle and noise and not the body language of abject apology—about disrupting the flow of ideas. As for ringing cell phones, suffice it to say that if I were tenured, murder might seem the perfect solution.
The czar of classroom rectitude, I had launched a zero-tolerance crusade. I would never be late or miss an exam, I grumped.
Maybe it was in the spirit of re-experiencing studenthood that I set off for Alumni Day, where I could be the perfect pupil taught by perfect professors.
I got on the road later than intended that morning, but with plenty of time, I thought, to get to the 10 a.m. class. When I exited at Page Mill, things looked vaguely familiar but not familiar enough. After a series of wrong turns, I somehow made my way to campus. However, I’d left behind the information on where to register. For the first time, I understood my students’ refrain, “I don’t know—it just happened.”
I decided to head for the Alumni Center. After getting lost three more times, I stumbled across it. By then it was 10:50, and biologist Paul Ehrlich’s lecture was just ending. As my students say, “I was so late, it didn’t seem worth going in.”
Feeling sheepish, I joined the other alumni at the coffee break. “What did he say?” I asked, the slacker trying to crib notes off the stars. “Nothing earth-shattering,” a man replied. “Mostly about overpopulation and how we have about a century to turn it around.” I mentally filed this away in case anyone asked me later.
Determined not to be late for Elizabeth Tallent’s lecture on creative writing, I arrived 10 minutes early. Seats were filling fast at the long seminar tables.
“Uh-oh,” I thought. “We have to talk in this one.”
Elizabeth asked us each to write the first sentence of a novel. “I can do that,” I thought. Then she added, “...a sentence about the person to your left, avoiding words like pretty, beautiful, young—a sentence so irresistible that the reader is compelled to go on.”
Whew. I looked at my neighbor. An elegant woman with wavy dark hair, she wore a colorful scarf and comfortable shoes. I put on my paper, “She is determined.” Then I read it over, realized it met none of the requirements, and crossed it out. “She is determined, as though she had driven...” That sounded too much like “It was a dark and stormy night.” I started over. “She gazed around the room as if it were the first time she had been there, even though she had been there more times than...”
“Time’s up,” Elizabeth announced. We reluctantly put down our pens. She asked for volunteers to read their sentences. I avoided her gaze, as my students do mine.
A pretty, young woman (sorry, Elizabeth) sitting in the corner raised her hand: “She woke up this morning, painted her toenails a bright blue, and debated whether to apply a second coat.” Applause and laughter. Another woman read: “This is an account of Pamela’s dating life as an undergraduate.” More laughter. Pretty soon, everyone relaxed. A spirit of generosity filled the room, as if we were all in this together. I felt exhilarated, and humbled.
The following Monday, as students drifted into my morning class 10 minutes late, I told them that I had been a student over the weekend. They became very quiet, unsure where this was going. I told them that I had mistakenly missed the first class. I recounted my cheap attempt to get notes, and my apprehension during the writing assignment.
They began to laugh. One latecomer raised her hand and asked why I was telling these stories. I said I felt—hoped—that the experience had made me a better teacher. Then I told them to turn off their cell phones.
Dorothy Chin, ’85, has just received tenure as a professor of psychology at Santa Monica College.
