Although I fumbled in my first days as a teaching assistant at Elite National University, I had high expectations for the graduate classes I took. The professors at my alma mater, Flyover College, had been reasonably good, so I assumed that faculty members at a well-known university would be outstanding. In fact, I expected them to be benevolent geniuses eager to reveal to their apprentices the passwords and secret handshakes of literary studies.
A professor’s response to my first graduate paper revealed that benevolent geniuses do not share their passwords and handshakes readily. That first paper was an interpretation of The Sound and the Fury for a “20th-Century American Novels” course taught by “Dr. Jason.” When I got the paper back, I saw that the grade was a B+ and the comment a single sentence: “You argue well within your own limited means.”
What did that mean? It looked like a polite way of saying, “You’re not thoroughly stupid, but you don’t belong in grad school.”
I showed the comment to “Marcus,” a more-experienced doctoral student in the program. Marcus smiled: “Coming from Dr. Jason, that’s a compliment. Ask him what it means.”
Asking Dr. Jason sounded like good advice, especially since he was my adviser, so I went to his office and asked. He growled, “A talented undergrad could’ve written that paper. Do something at the graduate level next time.” At that point, he dismissed me.
Because Dr. Jason never explained what “graduate level” meant or how a person might reach it, I assumed that he expected me to improve my performance through intuition. To be fair, he did at least point me in the right direction, and not all professors managed to do even that. The most interesting case of cloudy communication involved a Renaissance specialist, “Dr. Benjamin.” A jolly little man, he spent class periods scampering about, chattering, chuckling, and chalking words and arrows on the board. He had his own theory about literature, a big, big theory, and he applied it with hyperactive glee. Every once in a while, he halted and exclaimed, “That’s what’s going on!”
I’d write in my notes, “That’s what’s going on.” But what?
One day, while moping in the cafeteria with several of my fellow students, I asked, “Does anyone understand Dr. Benjamin’s lectures?”
“No.”
“Nope.”
“No idea.”
“What should we do?” I asked.
“Lucy,” a brave young woman with glasses that looked like welding goggles, said, “I’ll ask him to explain his theory.”
At the beginning of a session devoted to Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, Lucy asked, “Could you please explain your methodology?”
“Of course.” Dr. Benjamin beamed. “The Faerie Queene works just like King Kong.” The good doctor explained that over the weekend he’d watched the 1933 film about the giant ape and realized that it called out for his interpretive talents. He scattered words such as “ape,” “island,” “boat,” “skyscraper,” and “blonde” across the board. Then, drawing arrows and squiggles, he shot into supersonic lecture mode. Toward the end of his monologue he made gestures toward Spenser’s poem. At the conclusion of the period, Dr. Benjamin announced, “So you see, you can use the same methodology to interpret King Kong and Spenser’s epic.”
I made not one connection between the two, nor could I duplicate Dr. Benjamin’s methodology. After class I went to his office and found him fidgeting with papers and paperweights.
“I want to write a paper about The Faerie Queene,” I said.
“Wonderful,” exclaimed Dr. Benjamin. “What do you want to explore?”
Since Dr. Benjamin liked King Kong, I chose the closest thing to a giant ape that Spenser offered. “The dragon.”
“Terrific!” Flailing his arms joyously, Dr. Benjamin proceeded to draw and quarter Spenser’s dragon. I found his exuberance contagious, but not enlightening. I nodded a lot and pretended to take notes.
After a time, his battery ran down. I thanked him and left.
I ran my experience past my fellow grad students, who abandoned all hope of passing the seminar. I knew, however, that Marcus had dealt with the hyperactive professor the previous semester, so I said, “I’ll ask Marcus to show us the paper he wrote for Benjamin.”
Marcus gladly produced the passing paper. I expected a document that bounced around like a hamster on drugs, but the paper simply plodded through a series of sources and then offered Marcus’s own interpretation of one of Donne’s sonnets. The only thing that made me frown was Dr. Benjamin’s comment at the end. When I graded papers as a teaching assistant, I made two or three suggestions about how the student could do better, so I imagined that the restless Dr. Benjamin would comment on every paragraph, perhaps every sentence. But on the very last page of Marcus’s work, in tiny blue scribble, sat only one word: “Excellent!” The grade: A.
I handed in a straightforward analysis of Spenser’s dragon. When Dr. Benjamin returned the paper, I smiled at what he had written on the final page: “Not Bad!” The grade: A-.
Although no grad student could comprehend Dr. Benjamin, I was all alone in misunderstanding another professor, “Dr. Quentin,” who taught a “British Novels” seminar. On the first day of a session devoted to Joyce’s Ulysses, Dr. Quentin began by saying, “Describe your reading experience. Please feel free to tell me what it was really like.”
“I felt in awe,” said Marcus, who sat at Dr. Quentin’s immediate left. “Joyce is such a genius. His mastery of language and craft is unsurpassed.”
“The best novel I’ve ever read,” said Lucy. Her comment struck me as odd, because in the cafeteria earlier that day she’d called reading Ulysses her worst experience ever.
And so it went.
I didn’t doubt Joyce’s genius, but the comments of my colleagues annoyed me. Dr. Quentin had asked us to discuss our reading experience, not dance like the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders. I assumed he wanted a serious discussion of the challenges that the novel poses for the first-time reader, so I said, “Joyce is clearly brilliant, but if we are discussing the reading experience itself, I didn’t enjoy Ulysses at all.”
Dr. Quentin’s mouth fell open. So did the mouths of all 11 of my fellow graduate students. No one made a sound until Marcus said, “Henry, I don’t know quite know how to interpret your statement.”
Marcus was tossing me a life preserver, but I swam farther out to sea. Since Dr. Benjamin had used King Kong to explain The Faerie Queene, I assumed I could do something similar. “If I had to choose between rereading Ulysses or Tarzan of the Apes, I’d go for Tarzan.”
Excruciatingly calmly, Dr. Quentin said, “You and I will talk after class.”
The rest of that session involved unrestrained cheering from the others and disgusted silence from me.
After class, when every other student had left the room, Dr. Quentin told me about his love for Joyce’s work and revealed that he had written his dissertation on Ulysses. He finished by saying, “As a reader, you are certainly entitled to your personal response. In the professional study of literature, however, there exist certain standards and customs that must be observed. You need to develop an informed opinion before you express yourself.”
In other words, in graduate school, students should lie to their professors.
Dr. Quentin’s advice didn’t startle me. In my undergrad days at Flyover College, I’d learned that the surest way to an A was to absorb whatever the professor thought and give it right back in class discussions, essay tests, and term papers. When an instructor said, “Tell me what you really think,” that phrase meant, “Tell me that you agree with me.” The more fervently the person holding the grade book insisted on getting my opinion, the more desperately that professor needed his or her own ideas parroted right back. Following the parrot principle earned me many an A on the way to my B.A., but for some reason, that day in the “British Novels” class, I assumed that a graduate seminar worked differently from an undergraduate one, so I gave Dr. Quentin the answer he asked for, not the one he wanted.
That incident with Dr. Quentin made me realize that I was a victim of an academic bait-and-switch, just like the freshmen I was teaching in first-year composition courses. They came to Elite National University assuming they’d be taught by professors, but they got me instead, just as I came to the university expecting professors to reveal passwords and secret handshakes but ended up with a man who expected me to intuit skills, a man who inhabited his own world, and a man who asked to be lied to.
When it came time to write a paper for Dr. Quentin, I should have raved about Joyce’s novel, but instead I went for The Way of All Flesh. I recalled comments that Dr. Quentin made in class about Samuel Butler’s contempt for social hypocrisy, and I crafted an interpretation that simply elaborated on the professor’s opinion. When I got the paper back, I flipped to the end and saw Dr. Quentin’s only comment: “Good job!” The grade: A.
Perhaps Dr. Quentin had revealed the passwords and secret handshakes after all.