Listen to me

One of the most satisfying as well as enlightening assignments I give my communication skills students, is to listen to someone. In class, we talk about the distinction we’re all aware of: the mechanical hearing compared to the perceptive listening. Then I tell them that for an hour or two, they need to listen.

“This isn’t something that you want to do with a person you don’t care about,” I say. “This might be short, but it’s probably going to take more time than you thought it would.” Their assignment: find someone they consider worth the listening time (a commentary on how busy we consider ourselves, and how we insulate our emotions), and to listen. “You do not need to ask any questions. You do not need to find a specific answer. All I need you to do is listen.” Their faces tell me that they are humoring the instructor. Just listen? “Afterward,” I continue, “I want you to write a short essay about what happened. You’re not telling me how to listen; you’re telling me what happened in the listening assignment.”
“What if they don’t want to talk with us?” someone asks.
I smile. “That will be the least of your problems.”

The next week when we meet for class I do not need to remind them of the assignment. They compare results with each other. “I thought he’d never shut up.” “I learned things I never knew about my parents.” “It was crazy.” “It went on for hours.” Their universal response is a mixture of disbelief and awe. How could something as simple as listening create such a powerful response? Who would have thought that listening, simply listening to someone, was so important?

Remember what we learned, I tell them. We don’t feel listened to. If we are bosses, someone will follow our directions. When we tell the deli clerk to give us a pound of this and a half pound of that, we get what we’ve asked for. Our family members give us a mumble when we pointedly wonder, “How was your day?” But we do not feel that someone gives us that incredible gift of concentrated listening. Eye contact, quiet, and an open soul, tell us that we are worth listening to. Such listening changes more lives than only the one who is doing the talking.

Observations on life and literature from students

In “A Good Man is Hard to Find” the family was killed. This was not a good outlook on it.


They were murdered, not on purpose but on accident.

A basketball game ends with the buzzard.

You underestimate onions.


Rude people eaves drop.

Synthetic motor oil works better. Don’t ask me why. It just does.

In the older cinematic versions, there was a hero whose job was to go and save the young girl from the vampire’s layer.

Near the end of the play [Othello] Desdemona excepted her fate.

Gregor [The Metamorphosis] has a tough time in his relationship with his family. Being a bug doesn’t help either.

You're a Failure: Fate and Grades

We are discussing “The Judge’s Wife” and it’s prophecy that Nicholas Vidal is destined to lose his head over a woman. He does: he falls in love or in lust (take your analytic choice) with the widow of his nemesis, and refuses to flee from his fate of capture and execution. Such is the power of love. Or of the cages of custom and society (as Heiko points out) that populate the story. Or of belief in self-fulfilling prophecy.

One of my relatives was greeted by the teacher the first day of class with, “Sit down. I can see you’re going to be trouble.” Now, this was not in a small school where everyone knew everyone. This was not a person notorious by second grade. No, it was a bright, articulate person, who was apparently typed by his teacher the first day. By what he wore? How he walked? His name?

Certainly, teachers do talk with other instructors for survival, basic information, helpful interactions, to be alerted about students’ particular issues. Also certainly, with our students, our friends, our loved ones, we don’t want to touch the points that hurt.

Vidal's prophecy and its fulfillment reminds me uncomfortably of some religions that state the believer’s fate is predestined. If we are bound to fail, then why try. But in a universe that encourages choice, if we don't try, we do fail. What kind of universe do we, or Vidal, believe in? Fate? Calvin had one monopoly on it, or believed he did. Hitler and his followers had another. Did Dick and Jane have a third? Or nth?

Last week I shared another of those Let’s look at where your grade is for the semester talks with a student. He initiated it. His analysis was, “I’m twenty-one. I screwed up once. I don’t want to miss this chance. How can I do better?” My answer was, “Follow directions. Get your assignments in on time. Participate in class. Let us see the thought you seem to have put into your essays when you take part in the class discussions and in-class writing.” Is he capable? I think so. Will he produce the above average work he says he wants to display in the class? I hope so.

Who succeeds? Getting where we want is not only turning it stellar work; it’s staying the course. Literally the course: 17 weeks at 3 hours of seat time per week, 2 potential hours of homework time per week; it’s showing up on time to hear those announcements that happen in the first five minutes of class.
Figuratively the course: this course, and the next, meeting the deadlines for registration, returning those library books, showing up for labs and exams.

Long ago someone said, “When the alarm goes off in the morning, nobody has a career. Everybody has a job.” It’s only when we’ve gotten ourselves out of bed and bleared at the mirror, that we remember we do have a career, life goals, and inspiration. There are mornings I heartily disagree with the career and job assessment; there are mornings when I’ve been up with children several times during the night, that I need to agree. I don’t want to go to work; I want to go back to bed. Instead, I go to work.

There are no fated failures. There’s only potential. Some exceed it. Some use it. Some put it under the alarm and choose not to set the clock.

Response

I like to hand back essays to students in class, before I post those grades online. This way, the people who are going to go to pieces over their grades can do so in context. It’s difficult to provide explanation though, when students skip class and then attempt to assess their progress by looking at the online postings.

“Call me,” Janice said on the recorded message. “I checked my essay grade and I can’t figure out why I got a 60.”
Janice had left class early (for the fifth time). She missed the discussions we had at the end of class; from students on how the essays could be developed; from me on how the essays were graded. She asked me to call her back, but left no callback telephone number. When I finally reached her, and identified myself, she said, “I can’t talk now, I’m just walking out the door.”

My notes on her work state that she wrote a “C” level essay. However she did not submit the required outline (-10 points) or provide the works cited page (-10 points). The online system allows me one slot to enter numbers. Explanations I write out, in complete sentences, on the essays, which I hand back at the end of the class. If Janice had been in class to listen to instructions, to ask questions during the writing of her work, or even pick up her essay, I could have explained the grade to her.