{"id":1434,"date":"2004-06-05T19:01:09","date_gmt":"2004-06-05T23:01:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/nateptest\/2004\/06\/05\/what-i-wish-my-students-knew\/"},"modified":"2004-06-05T19:01:09","modified_gmt":"2004-06-05T23:01:09","slug":"what-i-wish-my-students-knew","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/2004\/06\/05\/what-i-wish-my-students-knew\/","title":{"rendered":"What I wish my students knew"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name='a338'><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Jon Stewart gave <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wm.edu\/news\/index.php?id=3650\">the commencement address at William and Mary<\/a> (which I found via <a href=\"http:\/\/www.makeoutcity.com\">Jay<\/a>).&nbsp; <\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span><\/p>\n<p>\nWhen I left William and Mary I was shell-shocked. Because when you&#x2019;re<br \/>\nin college it&#x2019;s very clear what you have to do to succeed. And I<br \/>\nimagine here everybody knows exactly the number of credits they needed<br \/>\nto graduate, where they had to buckle down, which introductory<br \/>\npsychology class would pad out the schedule. You knew what you had to<br \/>\ndo to get to this college and to graduate from it. But the unfortunate,<br \/>\nyet truly exciting thing about your life, is that there is no core<br \/>\ncurriculum. The entire place is an elective. The paths are infinite and<br \/>\nthe results uncertain. And it can be maddening to those that go here,<br \/>\nespecially here, because your strength has always been achievement. So<br \/>\nif there&#x2019;s any real advice I can give you it&#x2019;s this. <\/p>\n<p>\nCollege is something you complete. Life is something you experience. So<br \/>\ndon&#x2019;t worry about your grade, or the results or success. Success is<br \/>\ndefined in myriad ways, and you will find it, and people will no longer<br \/>\nbe grading you, but it will come from your own internal sense of<br \/>\ndecency which I imagine, after going through the program here, is quite<br \/>\nstrong&#x2026;although I&#x2019;m sure downloading illegal files&#x2026;but, nah, that&#x2019;s a<br \/>\ndifferent story. <\/p>\n<p>\nLove what you do. Get good at it. Competence is a rare commodity in this day and age. And let the chips fall where they may.\n<\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I wish that I could convey this to my students.&nbsp; No amount of<br \/>\ndemonstration or explanations seems to convince them otherwise than<br \/>\nthat they will be tested and graded on life itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jon Stewart gave the commencement address at William and Mary (which I found via Jay).&nbsp; When I left William and Mary I was shell-shocked. Because when you&#x2019;re in college it&#x2019;s very clear what you have to do to succeed. And I imagine here everybody knows exactly the number of credits they needed to graduate, where [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":709,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ivorytower"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5G3PH-n8","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/709"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1434"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1434\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}