Today was my very last day of regular classes. The 38 remaining students in philosophy gave short oral presentations on their own definitions of romantic love, comparing their views to one of our writers. I loved hearing their ideas because they gave me a vision of how much the culture has changed since I started the course. There were far fewer people this quarter who expressed a belief in "the one" than there used to be. Also far fewer of them express belief in the value of marriage than did thirteen years ago when I created the course. And I was happy to hear so many references to Emma Goldman and Simone de Beauvoir.
I've really been impressed with this final philosophy class, especially their willingness to grapple with ideas. Almost every day I had them work as pairs or teams to answer questions related to the readings of the day. While I won't claim that all of them actually completed all the readings, I will say that many of them did dig deep and almost all of them thought through the core concepts after they were laid out in class.
There must have been something good about the way I ran the class this quarter because I had only two drops -- so I have 38 final papers to read as well as 38 short answer final exams.
Add to this the 5 team and 27 individual final papers in the Small Group Communication Class and the 20 final papers in interpersonal and I'll be busy this weekend.
It will be good to finish up the quarter with my least favorite aspect of teaching, the grading. Because if I were to actually finish with one of my favorite parts, witnessing students presenting their heartfelt understanding of the world, I would just be far too sad at graduation, my last working day.
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