Encore!

When it goes right, the end-of-semester ovation for a college professor can be a great tradition. It's one of my favorite things to see a teacher take their final bow and exit the classroom as students applaud, so I make sure never to miss the final lecture of any class that I'm enrolled in. This means that I've also seen my fair share of disasters.

There are two ways that the applause can go wrong, I'm not sure which is more tragic. The first happens when the students simply don't like the teacher. This past Tuesday, my Chinese Economy professor made the mistake of mentioning the final exam towards the end of his final lecture. Students suddenly began to accost him about the extremely unfair midterm. The shouting match ended with the professor proclaiming at the top of his little Asian lungs, "You deserve to fail!"

Moments later he ended the semester to a thick, uncomfortable silence.

The second way that things can go wrong is if the professor doesn't give his students a chance to clap. This happened just today in my music class. Our teacher handed out the student evaluations, and sort of slunk out of the room, clearly expecting some sort of acknowledgment, but receiving none. She made two mistakes. First of all the evaluations need to be done at the beginning of class. No way are students going to clap if they are focused on a Scantron. Second, and please listen closely teachers, you need to end with a flourish. I don't care how marginal the subject you are teaching is, there is no degree of melodrama that won't be welcome in those final few moments of a lecture. I had an econometrics teacher who gave dry lectures that raised the boldly answered the question, "Can a semester of learning be reduced to 400 power point slides" with a resounding "yes". But he knew how to finish. Wrapping up his final lecture to his small audience, he paused for a moment and said simply, "you guys are extraordinary". The 12 of us in the class cheered like our team had won the super bowl.

By far the best final lecture I've attended was given by Uwe Reinhardt, my freshman year microeconomics teacher. In the course of his 90 minute tour de force he didn't once mention economics. The whole thing was about his son who had graduated from Princeton and immediately enlisted in the army. His was the only standing ovation I've seen for a teacher.

In other news the window of opportunity for me escaping this god-forsaken tundra known as the east coast is slowly closing. Not only is a massive storm predicted in the upcoming days, but a transit strike in New York city looms. Will Tom Knight make it home, or will he be left to languish in 0 degree wind chill? Stay tuned to find out.