An experience I cherish, and a metaphor for something I love about teaching.

When I was growing up and music was the glue of youth culture, I always looked forward to marathon sessions of music sharing. My friend (it was usually one-on-one) would bring over a stack of records, and I’d have my latest acquisitions, and for several golden hours we’d play songs for each other. By the end, I’d have had a full run of sharing and learning in about equal proportions, and with about equal intensity, so much so that sharing and learning became two versions of the same thing.

At times, teaching is like playing records, even though (or perhaps because?) I’m now the one with the huge “collection,” much of it unfamiliar to students, and most of it something they’re paying to find out about. I have a good deal to share, but I still like to be shared with as well, and I’m always thrilled when a student responds to something I’ve said with “hey, that’s interesting; have you read (or seen, or heard) this other thing too?” I’m especially taken when the exchange happens in a surprising context. Some of that serendipity factor: not random, but not predictable either.

So today as I’m leading a consideration of Leo Braudy’s essay on “Genre: The Conventions of Connection” (in our Film Theory and Criticism reader), and suddenly a student asks if I’ve read a book by Chuck Klosterman called Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs and proceeds to summarize the book’s initial arguments regarding conventions, genre films, and their role in shaping our internal narratives as we try to find meaning in experience. She was kind enough to go get her book and loan it to me to read. And now a whole new set of connections awaits me.

And now I share the sharing with you.

“Free as solitude, yet neither is alone.”