Little pleasures

Lately, I've been pretty despondent about what I do and why I do it -- the state of the field, the seeming uselessness of teaching already smart and self-motivated Ivy League kids, the grand melodrama that is the perpetually crisis-ridden Humanities. It's easy to feel like it's all a big lie, like there's actually nothing good that comes out of this conveyor belt we've fetishized as "an elite education" except carbon copies of lawyers, junior executives, and investment bankers.

And then last night, on my way back from dinner in Cambridge, I ran into a former student of mine in the subway station -- harmonica slung around his neck and guitar in hand, thrift store work-shirt with sleeves rolled up, jamming in an unlikely trio with an adorable ragamuffin girlfriend and an old homeless guy. I hovered in the shadows and listened to them for a minute, then came up and dropped a dollar in his hat (sign next to which: "Have a nice day!"). When he recognized me, he broke into his trademark smile, radiating the easygoing goodness of an 18-year-old boy who still finds wonder and delight in every nook and cranny of life. "It's so cool that you're doing this," was all I could think to say. He continued to smile and just shrugged off the praise. "I'm here pretty often. Every weekend night, mostly." My train was pulling in and his girlfriend was giving him an inquisitive look, so I bade my farewells, parting in the classic geeky-teacher-trying-to-be-cool mode: "Keep on rockin' on!"

I never thought I'd be one of those educators who got emotionally attached, waxing lyrical on the merits of a particularly smart or cool student. I've had those teachers myself, and I always shrugged off any praise, too, finding it kind of embarrassing to realize that I was viewed as some diamond in the rough. But now that the roles are reversed and I've taught the creme de la creme for two years, I understand the tendency toward gooey joy whenever a kid doesn't stop at rote scholastic knowledge acquisition, but has that rambunctious, questing spirit that gave this country Whitman, Thoreau, and the Beats; that allows for beautiful and strange permutations of cultural production and self-fashioning; and that, in this "challenging economic climate," could use a resurgence in a major way. And while the cynical part of me knows that this spirit is the uneasy marriage of populist values mixed with rich white male privilege, mostly I'm just happy to see someone blithely, confidently take from both worlds, high and low, and forge ahead on a path that's slightly less beaten.