Why Goofing Off in Class Can Be Good, or, My Hippie Creed

The most influential professor of my life is a woman named Sharon Morgan who works at a small university in southeastern Idaho and who doesn't have a PhD, but who did publish her memoirs at the start of her career. She is the head of the Writing Center, and I worked for her as an undergraduate. The job required that we enroll in a 2-credit writing seminar taught by Sister Morgan (it was a religious university we attended, where instead of specifying between Dr. and Prof., we were asked to refer to our teachers as Brother or Sister) that included lessons in both tutoring and composition. Our underlives were not only welcome, but demanded. Our knowledge of her underlife was another requirement. She taught personal essays before she taught anything else. Every semester (usually more than once), we would have a big barbecue at her house by a river, where she lives alone with a cat and a dog.

That class mattered. That job mattered. Sister Morgan was our mentor, our respected professor, and our friend. We rode her canoe in the river, we made birdhouses with her on her back porch, we had movie marathons, played cards, and did homework there on weekends. We cried over relationship breakups on her sofa, and we all read her memoir even though she told us not to bother with it.

My point is, we were safe to be goofy, and we were safe to be serious. We had a large notebook that we kept in the Writing Center where we could all leave entries and talk to each other even if we tutored on different days, different hours. Knowing each other was important. We read each others' writing, knew each others' interests. We gave each other criticism because we wanted success for each other. Being one of Sister Morgan's tutors meant giving a part of yourself to the cause.

I've worked at other Writing Centers to know that ours was unnaturally effective. Her tutors became better students in their other classes. Her enthusiasm for the writing process and for literature was not only admirable but addictive. Our work felt important. The students we tutored felt important. Writing was important.

After laughing hard while playing games and tossing frisbees, we would quiet down and talk about all the kinds of serious topics undergrads are supposed to talk about late at night with each other, and we would talk until well into the a.m. at this professor's home. These conversations always felt so important. So vital. So meaningful. We would go home with things we wanted to research, things we wanted to write about.

Yesterday's class was a little silly. My underlife of a GoogleChatter came to the forefront, and my fingers forgot I was in a graduate seminar. But that doesn't mean I wasn't thinking. That doesn't mean I wasn't learning from others. In fact, it reminded me of old times, when "collaborating" wasn't pointed out or scheduled in, but it just happened because I WANTED to hear what these people I loved had to say. I wanted their fingers in my brain/heart clay, and I wanted not a grade, but to BECOME someone educated, strong, and eloquent. Embrace the underlife, I say, in all it's multitudinous forms. Care about where your students are coming from, and don't let them mark you as a robot. What the hell is this all for if the only thing I want from my students is to make them do what I say? That's not why I'm in this gig.

Here's a couple of us painting Sister Morgan's walls after a Pre-Professional Writing Conference she encouraged us all to read essays at (which we did):