COLUMNIST KARL LINDHOLM was drawn back into the classroom this fall after 13 years. He taught a class on Black baseball to first-years. The class before his was a senior seminar in math, “Advanced Algebraic Methodologies.” Here he is correcting one of the calculations the professor of that class left on the board.

“I’m Professor Van Winkle — you can call me ‘Rip.’” 

That’s how I introduced myself this fall on Sept. 9 at 9 a.m. to 16 fresh-faced Middlebury College first-year students. I would be their seminar teacher for the fall and advisor for their first three semesters. 

(I then explained who Rip Van Winkle was — not a lot of Washington Irving being taught in America’s secondary schools.)

I retired from fulltime work at Middlebury College on the last day of 2010. That’s right — 13 years ago. I was 65 at the time and the college was offering something called the Voluntary Retirement Program (“the Buyout” as it was popularly called). 

In essence, the college was saying to those who qualified, “If you promise not to work here anymore, we will give you a lot of money.” 

Seemed like a good idea to me! I had teenage kids and a busy wife teaching at the college.

I liked the work, but I took the dough and didn’t look back. 

So then, how did this teaching gig come about this fall? How did this somnolent old fellow, this happy burgher, awake to this scary new world and the adventures to follow? 

I was asked. 

Due to the pandemic, Middlebury found itself over-enrolled for the fall, too many students. There was a shortage of teachers in the First-Year Seminar Program. I had taught a first-year seminar, rotating five different courses, every fall for nearly 20 years. I was good at it. 

A long time ago. 

I hesitated. I asked the director of the program if she knew how old I was and how long it had been since I last taught a semester-length course. She expressed surprise when I told her my age. 

Then she made everything 10 times worse. She said, “But you’re so spry!”

Spry? 

Grandma Moses was “spry!”

“You know, we’ll pay you,” she said, and told me how much, and I paused. It was a sum that could buy me a new old secondhand truck, or at least get me close. An old man in Vermont needs an old truck to ride around in — with his dog. 

So once again, I took the dough.

The course I chose to teach was “Segregation in America: Baseball and Race,” a course essentially on the Negro Leagues. I had taught it before and thought the material didn’t need a lot of retooling and updating. 

I also like to proselytize. Any serious baseball fan should know about Black baseball during the 70 years the game was segregated. Baseball provides a dramatic representation of the mechanics and outcomes of segregation in America during that time. 

And now, four months later, I’m done. Cooked. Classes over, final essays evaluated and commented on and returned, grades submitted, and I am a busy retiree again. 

• • • • •

I am asked regularly, “How’d it go?”

I answer, “I don’t know. Ask the students. I survived.”

Then I’m asked, “Did you like it? Did you have a good time?” 

I answer, “I found it challenging. But I knew it would be.” 

“Are you glad you did it?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Will you do it again?”

“Not likely!”

The semester was something of a roller coaster of emotions from me. When I had a good class, students were engaged and responsive and ideas made smooth flight from my brain to speech, I was euphoric. A class that didn’t go that way ruined my day.

I was not done any favors when I was assigned a classroom in the math building. I was teaching our newest students: The class before mine was a senior seminar for math majors, Advanced Algebraic Methodologies. (I got a C in Algebra I in high school!)

The professor of the class routinely filled up and then failed to erase the six discrete blackboards with his hieroglyphics. These scrawlings greeted me, saying “interloper,” “has-been!”

I had trouble, as I knew I would, with the technology that supports teaching these days. That weakness is not just generational with me, it is inherent. My adult children are amused by my ineptitude, but it is a real limitation in today’s classroom. 

On three occasions, I had to call the media services emergency line so some smart (young) person rushed over as my class began and advised me to do this on the computer and then that — and voila, I had sound with the YouTube video I was showing that day.

THE COLUMNIST RIDES with his wingman, Paco, in the vehicle that teaching a first-year seminar enabled him to buy: “An old man in Vermont needs an old truck to ride around in, with his dog.”

Middlebury aspires to be a paperless campus and I am still stuck in a print world. I like to read books, books that I hold in my hand and can festoon with annotations. Students now order their own books. The Book Store at the college sells sweatshirts. The reading in courses is largely on screens. I made students write “papers” — that is, essays on printed paper. 

So many of the practical matters that required face to face interactions are now done online, even “remotely,” with a miasma of non-intuitive links, just to get to get the right form to fill out. 

I didn’t imagine that A.I. (Artificial Intelligence) would have any relevance to my teaching: Star Wars hocus pocus. In the third week I received a paper from a student on the play “Fences”; it was apparent to me they had not written the paper.

It was impeccable: not a single typo or misspelling. Not just that either, the diction and syntax were also excellent, and the thesis well-argued. I went through the familiar steps, without success, to find the source. 

When I described the situation to a colleague, they said simply: “ChatGPT.” 

I won’t tell you the whole story. The student acknowledged the use of ChatGPT, “but only for ideas,” and “Grammarly” to clean up the grammar and other problems. 

What’s left?

I was sent a two-and-a-half-minute clip of Neil DeGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist and public intellectual, from the Stephen Colbert Late Night Show. Tyson’s an unequivocal proponent of A.I. Here’s what he said to Colbert: “Nobody freaked out and ran for the hills until A.I. figured out how to write a term paper. Then all the liberal arts folks pooped their pants!”

Well, I’m a liberal arts folk, and didn’t poop my pants, but I did run for the hills. I took the easy way out. I told the class “No more” and prohibited the use of A.I. on their papers. If I were ever to teach another course, clearly I would have to be much smarter about A.I. and its constantly evolving implications and applications.  

I had 16 bright kids. I loved getting to know them. Alas, only one is considering a major in the humanities. It’s all STEM and the hard social sciences now (economics, psych, political science, geography). The four best writers in the class are all intending to be science majors.

But . . . I have a cohort of students whose careers at Middlebury I can follow. That makes me happy.

Once again, I am retired. 

Want a ride in my truck, with me and Paco? Maybe go to the transfer station?

It’s inspected. Radio works. Runs good.

—————

Karl Lindholm Ph.D. is the Emeritus Dean of Advising and Assistant Professor of American Studies. Contact him at [email protected].