Whitman’s last day of classes is this coming Monday. Since my Computer Networks class meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays, today was our last day of class. This blog post is based on the notes for my farewell speech.
Outline due to Dr. Freda Rebelsky via Dr. Samuel Rebelsky.
- This class was special.
- Keep in touch.
- Take care of yourselves and each other.
- Remember to say goodbye.
Preface
I got the outline for this speech from my friend and colleague Sam Rebelsky, who got it from his mother Freda, who was a professor of Psychology at Boston University. The outline is always the same—and some of you may have heard it before in another of my classes—but the details are different for every class.
This class was special.
It’s been hard and it’s been fun.
It’s been hard.
I heard from many of you that this has been a hard class. I’m curious about that, and I invite you to say more about what made it hard in your end-of-course evaluations.
But for now I have two theories that I want to share with you, and I’m curious if they resonate.
First theory: The material is inherently difficult. I first learned the ideas in this class more than 20 years ago, so I sometimes forget how difficult it is. But I want to emphasize that the material really is difficult, and I empathize.
Beyond the introductory material in this class, understanding the Internet is so difficult that no one completely understands how it works. No one. Not even the people who built it.
And I find that exciting. It’s why, for a time, I chose computer networks as my area of research. I hope some of you find it exciting too.
Second theory: My new approach to grading this semester, based on individual assessments with simple rubrics, detailed feedback, and opportunities for revision, held you accountable for your learning, maybe in a way that you’ve never been held accountable before. I’m very curious what it was like for you as students to be held accountable in this way. I hope some of you will address this in your end-of-course evaluations.
It’s been fun.
Beyond the difficulty, I don’t remember when a class has ever been so much fun, and I hope you had fun too.
Three points here.
First, thank you for your challenging questions – both the sophisticated and the naïve. You know who you are. I’ve discovered that I really like being challenged. And I’m sure it was not only the askers who learned from my answers to your questions.
Second, as I said before, the story of the Internet is, in some ways, the story of my life – specifically, my life from age 15, when my family first subscribed to the dial-up service Prodigy, to 25, when I left computer networks research for human-computer interaction. To put that into historical context, that’s roughly 1992 through 2003.
Thank you for your indulgence in permitting me to share some of my story with you. This was my fifth time teaching computer networks, and somehow it never even occurred to me to share my own stories before. So thank you for helping to create a classroom where I felt safe sharing.
And finally, thank you so much for your jokes and your laughter—including your jokes on the [wonderful] integrative exercises [due to Amy Csizmar Dalal]. This spring we all needed a bit of extra fun in our work.
[I completely forgot to include that never-will-I-ever again teach Computer Networks over Zoom in a pandemic. At least, I hope not.]
Keep in touch.
First, I want to hear your accomplishments and your triumphs. I don’t know if you got this out of the panel on Tuesday, but I am so proud of my former student Nick Hecker—even though he was not an A student at Grinnell. [He gave me permission to share that fact.] I look forward to being proud of you, too.
But I’ll also be here for you if you are facing big challenges in your work and you need advice or just someone to listen. Our use of Zoom this academic year shows that distance is no barrier, and thanks to my presence on the World Wide Web, you’ll always know where to find me.
Finally, if something makes you think of this class—a meme, a song parody, a news story, a problem you encounter at work—please share it with me! I’d love to hear about it, and I’d be delighted to pass it along to my future students.
Take care of yourselves and each other.
The advice I usually give during finals week is as follows.
There’s a lot of work to be done over the next two weeks, but you need to take care of yourselves to be able to do it. So remember to take time to eat, sleep, move your body, and socialize. I hope I don’t need to remind you to brush your teeth and take a shower, but that’s important too. I do want to remind you that taking a walk or a shower can be a really good time to think through a difficult problem, so that can be good for your work as well as your well-being.
And as long as you’re taking care of yourself, it could be a kindness to remind your friends and classmates to do these things too.
But, we are still in a pandemic.
First, I want to remind you to be careful socializing in person. Follow campus policies about meeting in small groups, wearing masks, and maintaining physical distance. We are so close; let’s not blow it now.
Second, I want to inform you that the faculty have been instructed to be generous in accommodating students’ needs for extra time this finals week, whether due to vaccination side effects or trouble at home. I know some of you have been affected by each of those things. So please don’t hesitate to reach out to me, or to your other professors, if you need more time to do your best work.
Remember to say goodbye.
This is the thing from Freda Rebelsky I never would have thought of on my own. But it’s especially important in this socially distanced world.
I hope that many of us will be back in Olin this fall. But some of us will not be, and for good reason. Graduating seniors, could you please give us a reaction so that everyone can see who you are? [pause for reactions – from 🎉 to 😭]
Everyone else, I’m giving you an assignment. I’m not going to grade you on this. But I want you to reach out to the seniors to whom you want to say goodbye. I’m putting this on you.
I’m going to give you some time to do that now, either through private messages in Zoom chat or through self-assigned breakout rooms. [This worked really well.] And I would greatly appreciate it if each of you would take a moment to say goodbye to me, as well – if not now, then sometime before Commencement.
And that’s all there is! This concludes the formal portion of our programming.