Adaptation

by Casey Fedde

Adaptation. That is one of the things I’ve struggled with ever since stepping foot on the university campus as a college freshman. Transitioning from high school to college was like removing a blindfold and breaking the chains of childhood; college is liberating (in more ways than one), but it can become overwhelming very quickly.

One of the greatest academic freedoms of college for me, though, is choosing classes. For the first several semesters, registration was a greatly anticipated day. Since writing has always been one of my passions and talents in life (and pondering the quirks of English grammar an amusing pastime), I very fittingly found myself at home in the English department. However, my university has a small English department, so choosing classes–let alone professors–hasn’t always been in my control. Most semesters I have found myself in a required class for my major being taught by a professor that is…well, to be honest, monotone and terribly uninspiring.

Listening to lectures by professors who failed to deliver the subject matter in an engaging way and struggling to keep up with each professor’s proclaimed “right” way of writing and formatting papers was frustrating. I found myself trying to adjust more to the professor and class than internalizing the material being taught–and that’s the point of college, right? Even though the professors’ teaching style was, as I like to think, inhibiting my learning experience, I discovered that it was ultimately the way I thought about teaching and learning that had to change.

With two semesters left before graduation, I signed up for the fall session this last year excited about all my classes, especially African literature. But as the African literature professor strolled in on the first day of class, I sunk down in my seat with disappointment and frustration. He slurred through his opening lecture with a thick, hard to understand accent, ending his talk with “I don’t know much about African literature.” Well, that made two of us!

While my African literature experience was slightly different than the “boring professor phenomenon,” I still left class knowing that there was a spiritual answer to this problem. My thought had to change about the professor and the class. I prayed throughout the semester to know that Mind, God and its intelligence and clarity are inherent in all God’s children and that I could see it.

Every day in African literature, I strove to be receptive and worked to adapt to my professor’s teaching style. I tried different note-taking methods, read the material multiple times, and even did extra research on African literature to supplement the lack of information taught. But it wasn’t until listening to my honors colloquium professor talk about final projects later that semester that the real answer was exposed.

As I listened to this professor articulate formatting rules for the final term project, I saw that my classmates’ faces were morphing into the same perplexed look as the one on my face. He was telling us formatting rules that were different than what most of us had been taught. My classmates and I calmly informed the professor this, and he immediately listened. Because of the dynamics of the class and the small class size, we–the students and professor–were able to talk openly. He shared how he had been taught. He did not take on an air of authority and rationalize why his teaching was right and our way wrong; he listened. And immediately I felt a sense of harmony. There was no adapting to one another’s right or wrong way, it was just a harmonious exchange of ideas from individuals all receptive to learning and sharing.

When I got home after class, I opened Science and Health and read, “Therefore man, reflecting God, cannot lose his individuality….” And then I saw this, “For true happiness, man must harmonize with his Principle, divine Love.” As I read, I saw how my peers and I harmonized with the professor. We all reflected God in our individual ways, and in doing so, there was no tension or frustration. The professor had a greater understanding of what his peers were teaching, and he was able to show us another way to express ourselves in writing. As long as we were all able to harmonize, the class would be progressive and positive.

I’ve usually seen professors force students to adapt to their so-called right way, if you want to ace their class. And for some, like a required political science class I took, that even means echoing the professor’s political viewpoint. But that day in my honors colloquium opened my eyes to the harmonization that occurs between individuals, in and out of the classroom. We, as God’s children, express an individuality that might differ from one another but will always harmonize. God doesn’t create dissonance, He creates harmony. “The truth of being makes man harmonious and immortal, while error is mortal and discordant.”

The following week I walked into my African literature class expecting to experience that harmony. And I saw an immediate turnaround in the professor’s conduction of the class. Additional reference materials were brought in to help us understand the course literature, and he was more proactive in finding answers to our questions. By the end of the class, the level of frustration from the students had significantly lessened, and we could all see how much we had in fact learned from the class.

I was also able to take that lesson and apply to it my other classes. I had been working so hard to adapt before–to revise my way of writing, to meet the demands of professors over the past semesters–that I’d failed to see how our individuality harmonized with one another. But when one is receptive–and expecting harmony–others can respond in a loving way.

With only one semester left now before graduation, I am excited to continue to apply this lesson and see harmony in my classes. And I know that it will stay with me as I work to make my mark in the world!

This entry was posted on Friday, January 18th, 2008 at 3:09 pm and is filed under College and University. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response.