What profs should expect from graduate students, and vice versa

Dame Eleanor Hull is the pseudonym of an American professor of medieval literature. She also writes a blog about academic experience. This month she's been thinking about what she can expect from her graduate students, whom she sees as a mixed bag in regards to talent and preparation. Comparing their performance in her classes to her own performance in an ivy league program has made her wonder about her own expectations. She's asked for comment.

Well, this upcoming fall I will teach my first graduate seminar ever, since the university has only had a masters program in history for the last two years, one of which I was on sabbatical. In the past I have had a few undergraduate seminars and everything worked right and students were both talented and enthusiastic, but graduate seminars ought to be a little different, shouldn't they? So I am interested in hearing from graduate students, former graduate students, former graduate student who now teach graduate students, and anyone else who has an opinion who is bold enough to express it. What do you expect from your professors? What drives you crazy, or drove you crazy in the past, about how your professors ran their graduate seminars?

One of the things that you might consider commenting on is the matter of what is polite and effective communication between an older professor who is an expert in the field and students who are usually quite young and keenly feel their own inadequacies -- or sometimes not. Lady Eleanor Hull brought up this point in one of her posts:

When I was a student, my cohort and I were good at reading subtexts. Many of my students are not. And yet, if I'm very direct about certain kinds of instruction, this can be read as bossy, bitchy, rude. I suppose a lot has to do with tone of voice and body language. And I think being direct is usually better than indirect direction. But sometimes I would prefer to put a page of translations and explanations in the syllabus, something like this:

If I say, “Of course you know,” or “Let me remind you,” I mean I expect you don’t know, but you should, and I am going to fill in some information so we can all pretend you knew this all along. Listen carefully, so you can keep up your end of the pretense.

If I say, “You might want to look at [Source],” this means “Go to the library and look up [Source].” Similarly, “You really should look at [Source]” indicates that I'm surprised you haven't done this already and you had better find [Source] ASAP.

Dame Eleanor has got both agreement and strong disagreements on this point.

That's an interesting issue, but far from the only thing we could talk about. One point I should make clear is that the students I am teaching are not aiming to be specialists medieval history. My class is considered a "breadth requirement" (under the rubric European history) for students who are interested either in 20th century history or Canadian history. Some students Perhaps will have taken medieval history and be interested in it, but it'll just be a matter of luck. Clearly my presentation will have to be calculated to make them feel that it's a good idea to know more than just your own little corner of chosen history. And I'm afraid I won't be able to convince them just by saying that sentence in the first class meeting. It's pretty certain that they will think at times that they are suffering the torments of the damned, but I hope in the end some will think it was all worthwhile.

I am very interested in what you might have to say on these matters.

Image: It was supposed to be a seminar but it got oversubscribed and turned into a lecture course.

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