Different Temperments
There are immensely different temperaments [in students]
and also immensely different speeds at which people respond.
And that means, you see, that as a student you have to find a
way of manipulating the courses or else have to find a way with
groups of your colleagues in he English Club to propose
alternatives to the present courses....If time and again you find
that demands are made which seem to you irrelevant or trivial
to your finding yourself in the material, then I think some
substantive statement should be drawn up and presented to the
department with suggestions for other options. Because you
have to remember, the function of a graduate school in English
(if we put aside getting people [teaching] credentials in the first
year), is to see that you people — to see that graduate students
— have the best kind of education in which to find their places
in the profession and in themselves....Our purpose is double:
you are supposed to provide us [faculty] with a sense of what's
important, and we're supposed to provide you with a sense of
the significance of the work you want to do. Otherwise, I don't
see any sense of graduate school.
