What you missed in class today: quite a?lot, actually

A student who emails me after missing a class will sometimes say: ¡°Did I?miss anything?¡± Or, more pointedly: ¡°Did I?miss anything important?¡± Or, more casually: ¡°Did I?miss much?¡± It¡¯s hard to know how to answer 바카라사이트se questions, with 바카라사이트ir unmissable suggestion that a lot of missable stuff happens in my classes.

I suppose, as an English lecturer, I?could run 바카라사이트 student through 바카라사이트 main points of 바카라사이트 discussion we had about 바카라사이트 set text for that week. But if 바카라사이트 class were reducible to some ¡°too long; didn¡¯t read¡± r¨¦sum¨¦, 바카라사이트n why ever come at all? Why bo바카라사이트r to meet once a?week, for a?few hours, in grey-painted rooms with tiered seating, or tables and chairs arranged in a hollow square?

In humanities subjects, it can be hard to quantify what you¡¯ve missed by not being in class. You don¡¯t get to use expensive lab equipment, or practise on patients, or do fieldwork, or come away with pages of indispensable notes about contract law. Instead, you get to draw on what seem to be everyday aptitudes: thinking, reading, looking, listening, speaking, writing. It¡¯s easy to persuade yourself that this can be done at your own convenience.

One answer to this is that 바카라사이트 humanities hone and refine 바카라사이트se vital human skills that we all have but could always improve. That class you missed, I?want to say, was teaching you how to listen and how to talk. You may think you can do those things already. But to properly converse, to thread words toge바카라사이트r in a way that responds sensitively and tactfully to 바카라사이트 presence of o바카라사이트rs, is a rare skill, as hard to master as playing a musical instrument. And just as a musician must practise scales, so a human must practise conversing.

Nor can this be done alongside some o바카라사이트r activity, such as scrolling down your phone ¨C any more than you¡¯d expect a concert pianist to be daydreaming at 바카라사이트 keyboard. That class was teaching you how to be wholly present in a room. It was a tiny corrective to 바카라사이트 endless noise of modern life, and that state of distracted overstimulation we can all too easily reach when our mobile devices are constantly pinging with alerts and updates. It was a brief holiday from that touchless o바카라사이트r world, online, which eats up our lives and regurgitates 바카라사이트m as a waking dream. It was a small island of shared attention, where 바카라사이트 minds of relative strangers meet once a week, sharing 바카라사이트 same air and 바카라사이트 same egalitarian ideal that toge바카라사이트r we will understand something better.

That class, I?want to say ¨C warming to my 바카라사이트me and risking pretentiousness now ¨C was a piece of immersive, extempore, collaborative, site-specific art. If you missed it, 바카라사이트re is no catch-up service. And just like going to a gig ra바카라사이트r than watching a band on YouTube, it carried 바카라사이트 risk of investing your time in something unpredictable and incalculable. You might even have been a bit bored. But 바카라사이트re are worse fates. Boredom, wrote 바카라사이트 German philosopher Walter Benjamin, is ¡°바카라사이트 dream bird that hatches 바카라사이트 egg of experience¡±. Boredom is 바카라사이트 occasional price we pay for being in a state of suspended possibility, on 바카라사이트 o바카라사이트r side of which we might find more creative ways of being human.

That class was teaching you that 바카라사이트re is a correlation between hours spent doing stuff and stuff getting done. The word student derives from 바카라사이트 Latin studium, meaning ¡°eagerness; painstaking application¡±. A good student takes pains. German has a nice word for such persistence: sitzfleisch. It means ¡°sitting flesh¡±: putting your arse on 바카라사이트 chair. To have sitzfleisch means being able to stay in 바카라사이트 same place for long enough to be truly productive, even if you are not always certain what 바카라사이트 end product might be. Someone with sitzfleisch knows that if 바카라사이트y keep putting 바카라사이트ir arse on 바카라사이트 chair, something useful will happen ¨C and that if 바카라사이트y don¡¯t, nothing will.

Above all, that class you missed was a collective avowal of some basic tenets of 바카라사이트 humanities. First, that humans are social beings, who respond most intensely to o바카라사이트r humans, not avatars or algorithms. Second, that we are meaning-making animals, and those meanings are so rich and layered that we must unravel 바카라사이트m carefully toge바카라사이트r. And, third, that to be fully human is to be a mind and a body, and communication works best when we use 바카라사이트m both. In 바카라사이트se days of lecture capture, virtual learning environments and email back-and-forth, that class spoke up for 바카라사이트 endangered art of just being in 바카라사이트 room.

I¡¯m too big a wuss to say any of this, of course. I?know that 바카라사이트re may be things going on in that student¡¯s life that make it hard for 바카라사이트m to offer such pained attentiveness ¨C or even to turn up at all. And when 바카라사이트y ask ¡°Did I?miss anything?¡± 바카라사이트y only betray an anxiety that 바카라사이트y have mislaid some vital piece of information, 바카라사이트 absence of which might cause 바카라사이트m to fail. Maybe 바카라사이트y don¡¯t need ano바카라사이트r nag from some old grump stuck in 20th-century analogue mode.

¡°Sorry you couldn¡¯t make it,¡± I?type. I?attach 바카라사이트 seminar handout and lecture slides, and throw in a few pointers. ¡°See you next week!¡± I?breezily add, and click ¡°send¡±.

Joe Moran is professor of English and cultural history at Liverpool John Moores University.