Dr. Hanstedt: What I Want

In his latest radio essay for WVTF Public Radio, Roanoke College English Professor Paul Hanstedt responds to the frequent student plea ... "Just tell me what you want!" Professors and teachers, as well as students and parents, can relate to the good advice he offers. 

Two Roanoke College alumni were on hand for the production of the "Open Mic" segment. Steve Mason '91, owner of Red Velocity video production company, filmed a video of Dr. Hanstedt recording the audio at WVTF's studios in Roanoke. And WVTF News Director Connie Stevens assigned News Producer Kelsea Pieters '13 to produce the segment for the station. 

What I Want

Classes are starting, which means that I'm likely only weeks away from that moment-as inevitable as first-week crushes and pasta-bar hangovers-when a student walks into my office, paper in hand, and says, "I don't know what you want.  Just tell me what you want. "Usually, at moments like this-it often happens the day before a paper is due-I resist giving students a pat answer, pushing them to take some initiative and figure things out for themselves.  But after twenty-five years as a professor, I'm thinking maybe it's time to come clean.  You want to know what I want?  Here's what I want: 

• I want you to come to class. 
• I want you to come to class on time.
• When you don't come to class, I want you to be honest with me about why you weren't there.  Please note:  a lot of grandparents tend to die around midterms.  I've noticed this trend.  Just saying.
• I want you to accept responsibility for any work you've missed.  Whatever you do, I don't want you to ask me if you "missed anything important."  I want you to understand how insulting that question is.
• I want you to do the reading.
• What's more, I want you to think about the reading.  How does it relate to everything else we've read and discussed in class?  What do you find intriguing?  Why? What startles you?  Why?  What challenges you?  Why? 
• I want you to ask why.  I want you to ask this of yourself, of your classmates, and yes, of me. 
• I want you to be gracious as you do this.  Because being gracious is rare these days, and I want you to be a rare person.
• I want you to have some fun.  I really do.  I want you to go to parties and fall in love and indulge in some of the things that college students have indulged in since the beginning of time-or at least since the late 1960s.
• And I want you to come to class on time, have I mentioned that?  Even when class is at, say, 8:30 on a Friday morning.
• I want you to take some risks.  Raise your hand even if you're not entirely sure you're right.  Ask the questions that get us all thinking.
• I want you to fail. 
• I want you to not give up when you fail.  I want you to step back, reconsider, think about what happened. 
• Then I want you to try again, more thoughtfully this time.
• I want you to study abroad.  I want you to wake up in a foreign country and be confused and have to learn your way.  I want you to learn that you are capable of doing this.
• I want you to push yourself. 
• I want you to push the world.
• I want you to look at what's not right and change it.
• I want you to push me to do the same.  Years ago, I was at a workshop when someone said, "Well, obviously we don't want our students to be line workers:  we want them to be line managers."  I didn't say anything at the time, but what I thought was, "No:  I want my students to walk into the room, look at the line workers and the line managers and say, 'There's got to be a better way.'  And I want them to have the courage to act." 
• I want to see you walk across the stage at graduation. I want to barely recognize you, because there's a light in your eyes that changes the way you look, a light that tells me that you've found something-a poem, a social issue, a question in the sciences-that keeps you awake at night, that tells you who you are, what you value, what really matters in life.  I want to see that light, and I want to see your face, and I want to shake your hand. 
• That's what I want. 
• But in the meantime, I want you to write that damn paper and turn it in.  Preferably on time.