Our department had a colloquium speaker this week who was exceptionally unqualified on the substance and well below average on style. Throughout the speech, I was waging an internal battle between thinking cathartically vicious and contemptuous thoughts and making an effort to learn what I could from the talk.
The thing that pissed me off the most was that I had specifically encouraged my freshman students to attend the talk. “This field is more than this intro class, you need to get a big-picture perspective on it to figure out if it’s for you,” blah, blah, blah. And it blew up in my face. My department chair suggested that I just tell them it was a disappointment, which I kinda balked at because I could just envision “Prof. Asterisk said…” getting around to whoever booked the speaker. Luckily, one of the students had been to last semester’s colloquia and could testify to the others that this one had been atypical. My hands are clean :)
As this incident illustrates, this goal is partially about the internal benefits of a more positive outlook and partly about the external effects of phrasing things diplomatically rather than just going off. But it’s still an intellectual reflex for me to dissect things that disappoint or anger me, and it’s a difficult pleasure to pass up.
