I'm less desperate now to express what's inside me, that's true - I act these days because it keeps me awake and interested, an eternal student.
As I continue to teach, I have more to offer my students, and as I continue to teach, I have more to learn from my students. I do know some writers who feel very drained when they leave the classroom, and for me this would be a sign that maybe it's time to take a break or refocus because I always leave the classroom even more excited than I was when I walked in.
What I don't like today is, to put it coarsely, the phony Hasidism, the phony mysticism. Many students say, "Teach me mysticism." It's a joke.
I don't see the junk youth. I only meet students, and even those who are not formally at the university, if they come to listen to me, they come to read me, it means they are not junk students.
Personally, as a student who loves words, who loves texts, I am concerned with finding something in the text from within.
Sometimes you get lit students that know a lot about the canon but virtually nothing about contemporary poetry and vice versa. I like to mix things up.
There's been no poet, no great poet in the history of poetry who hasn't also been a great reader of poetry. This is sometimes distressing to my students when I tell them this.
The students of biodiversity, the ones we most need in science today, have an enormous task ahead of molecular biology and the medical scientists. Studying model species is a great idea, but we need to combine that with biodiversity studies and have those properly supported because of the contribution they can make to conservation biology, to agrobiology, to the attainment of a sustainable world.
Pity wraps the student of the past in an ambrosial cloud, and washes his limbs with eternal youth.
The students always, always surprise me.
I also have my backpack of the tried-and-true, and because it is new to [my students], it becomes fresh to me again as well.
I was a great student at a great school, Wharton School of Finance.
The students who work with me believe in science in service of society, not science in service of career building.
Of course, all students should learn African history, as they should learn the history of other continents and major civilizations. But this history should be taught accurately and based on the best scholarship, not ideology or politics.
I was a film student. I became an actor but I thought I'd be pursuing filmmaking originally.
When I made my student film, a feature, nobody wanted to talk to me and I was, like, in the desert for 12 years.
I wasn't the best student. I wasn't stupid, but I wasn't paying a lot of attention.
I didn't do improv in college, I never performed, I didn't do theater either. I was in student government, I was a history major.
I was a good student when I was a kid, and I did everything I was supposed to do, and I got A's.
All of which suggested literary translation, and Korean seemed a good bet - barely anything available in English, yet it was a modern, developed country, so the work had to be out there, plus the rarity would make it both easier to secure a student grant and more of a niche when it came to work.
I strive to find materials that will engage students, expand their capacities as critical readers and thinkers, and feel immediately relevant to their daily lives and future work in court and social service systems.
One demonstrable effect this type of work can have is in its viral promulgation. Take Kathy Acker for example: her work exists mainly through academic channels. Students are exposed to her novels, and some read her, then, on their own, but some also go to grad school: teach her, write about her, keep her going.
I found great value in teaching students from the outset of their studies how to draw very realistically. Otherwise, you're starting deep into the alphabet instead of having started at the start. If you discard essential things like drawing, design, color and so on at the beginning, then you're just sort of floating out in space, without any basis to work from.
I've given some money to the scholarships in the District of Columbia, to the best students in D.C... many of the students have written me letters telling me they could not have afforded to go to college without the scholarship and money I've given them.
I can't stand callow amateurs who aren't sufficiently interested in the craft of advertising to assume the posture of students.
