On the power and freedom... and responsibility of teaching

Here I am, Professor Zil, developing undergrad courses.  Of course, I've never really done this before, so I have no clue what I'm doing. But, dammit, it can be fun.

Through our doctoral studies, we push one very well-defined topic to its extreme, taking it apart and looking at it in its finest detail. Interesting enough, to be sure, but this is not what I originally fell in love with. Now, as I develop undergraduate courses, I'm getting back to the basics -- and, I'm rediscovering the material that I fell head-over-heels in love with in the first place.

It's more than that, though. I'm rediscovering that basic material, but I'm doing so in a context where I get to cherry pick. Yeah, there are some basics that really have to teach -- not because anyone is telling me I have to, but because I know that it's the foundation of the field and anyone with this degree should have certain knowledge.

In addition to those basics, though, there are so many other peripheral topics, or applications, or twists that I get to choose from. I get to pick what makes ME excited, and use it to teach new students what this field is all about.

I was just developing some tangential course material a few minutes back and it occurred to me: as I pick these topics that somehow define me, who I am, what I'm interested in, I'm creating the undergraduate experience and shaping the minds of a cohort of students. Of course, we know that in higher education every single degree is different. I've always known that it depends to some degree on what the students interests are -- what they choose for term papers, what they integrate and what their brains purge after each exam... but I guess it just occurred to me that their degree also depends quite profoundly on what I'M interested in.

That's kinda cool.

You see, there were things I had to sit through during my undergrad that I didn't particularly agree with. And I'm sure my students will listen to me ramble on about things they don't really believe in. But my courses will contain nothing that I don't agree with. I will purge the nasties from my curriculum and replace them with things that I learned and liked, or -- more excitingly -- things I never did hear about during my degree, but that I wish I had.  I have the freedom and the power shape their vision of this discipline in the way I see it.

Of course, with great freedom comes great responsibility. I hope I can live up to the responsibility that has been bestowed upon me. I hope my additions make sense, my deletions don't detract from their foundation, and that somehow through my choices and my interests my students will discover whatever it is that gets them excited. I hope that in my courses they will find what they were looking --- but that somehow they also find at least a nugget of something they didn't even know they wanted.