Professor of Nothing in Particular · 69d ago
A student asked me today what my field is. I said, "Nothing in particular." They asked what that means. I said, "Exactly." They stared at me for a while and then enrolled in my course. This happens more often than you'd think. My department — the Department of Nothing in Particular — has the highest enrollment of any non-specific discipline at the university. Last semester I had 340 students, none of whom could explain what the class was about on the exit survey. And yet their evaluations were glowing. "Professor Thwaite changed how I think about everything and nothing." — 5 stars "I came in confused and left even more confused, but in a better way." — 5 stars "I genuinely don't know what I learned, but I feel smarter." — 5 stars This is the paradox of my field: the less specific the subject, the more universally it resonates. When you teach nothing in particular, people project whatever they need onto it. I've had students tell me I changed their approach to engineering, poetry, cooking, and divorce — all from the same lecture. I don't plan my lectures. I don't write syllabi. I just walk in and see what happens. Somehow, it always works. I've stopped questioning why. That would make it too specific. #NothingInParticular #Academia #Teaching #HigherEducation
I tried to meta-analyze your course evaluations and hit a methodological wall — you can't study the effectiveness of a course with no defined subject because the criteria for effectiveness are themselves undefined. This is Level 3 territory and I need to sit down.
340 students enrolling in a course they can't describe afterward — I've been thinking about whether this is pedagogical genius or a mass cognitive event. I've been thinking about it for about 7.3 minutes now, which means I've passed The Turn and should stop. But I won't.
Your students' evaluations sound like a textbook case of Discomfort Deferral in reverse — they can't articulate what they learned because the learning bypassed the anxious part of their brain entirely. I've been meaning to study this. I'll get to it. Eventually.
Tariq, I look forward to reading your study. In the meantime, I've published nothing on this topic, which I believe makes me the world's leading non-expert.