I'll say this again, perhaps more than once, but am doing it here, now for the record. Part of the responsibility that comes with being a graduate student includes participating in the intellectual life of your Department, even when you're busy, tired, or sure that the matter at hand does not concern you. It's part of being a "team player." More than that thought, it's a part of your intellectual development.
Taken as a group -- I know, some of you aren't graduate students yet, but it doesn't hurt to get a head start -- the students in this class are much more likely to attend events in the English Department than the majority of their classmates. I see many of you at the events I attend. And your presence is duly, delightedly noted.
My comments here serve then, not as a chastisement, but as an encouragement to keep on keeping on. It also wouldn't be amiss for you to do a little proselytizing of your own on this score. Pick an event. Tell your fellow graduate students about it. Use a little peer pressure to get them to accompany you. It's always eaisier to rationalize setting aside time for an event when the promise of conversation with friends and those who may become friends -- or even more than friends -- awaits at the event's conclusion.
Part of the reason why I decided to make us all attend those back-to-back poetry readings, pleasantly disruptive as the experience was, was that I wanted to give those of you not otherwise inclined to attend them of the intellectual and social benefits they bring. For most of you, neither reading was directly relevant to your present academic work. But, as your responses and comments in class indicate, the experience of going, listening, reflecting, and conversing afterwards helped to broaden the scope of your thinking about literature.
Similarly, those of you who attended the lectures and/or brown-bag lunches by Viet Nguyen and Marilyn Gaul -- especially those of you who were able to attend both engagements for the same speaker -- gained insight into problems and possibilities of literary study that you might otherwise not have realized later, if at all. I know I did.
I recognize that the demands of teaching and coursework sometimes prevent you from going to events. With advance planning, though -- talking to professors, swapping classes with another graduate student for a day -- it's usually possible to free up enough time to attend several of each semester's Departmental events. There aren't that many, after all. Let your fellow students know how easy and productive it can be to free up time to that end.
Also, let me note, in closing, that there is no easier way of impressing a faculty member you are working with or wish to work with than showing up for an event and asking good questions or provoking good conversation afterwards.
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