Ukarinian-American broadcaster Peter Zalmayev, on a listening tour of the Global South, met with journalism sudents at Samoa National University Photo © Peter Zalmayev 2025 with permission
Listening can make it possible for us finally to come to terms with one another.
-Walter Kempowski, All for Nothing
At the beginning of every academic year, and then at the beginning of every term, I reaffirm my dedication to teaching and learning. I talk to students whenever I encounter them—young, old, or in their maturity. And I remain a student myself, raising my knowledge base on a variety of subjects, and studying a foreign language. I try to have deliberate, extended—live—conversations daily, or conduct interviews for articles and this blog that challenge thinking, opinion and belief, my own included. I particularly make time and space for college students when I chance upon them, which I do frequently in the town where I live, home to a SUNY (State University of New York) campus. The students are baristas, servers, attendants at the pool where I swim, working long hours for minimum wage while they study and try to support themselves. They are attending a state university, not an elite school, and many do not come from wealthy families. Day to day life is a challenge that most in my circle, and the privileged students at NYU where I was an Adjunct Professor until 2020, have never experienced. I write recommendations for graduate school, ask about majors, encourage them not to drop out or drop away from academe. I have a prejudice for the acquisition of knowledge that will not quit. Tragic events that interrupt children's lives and education, such as gun violence or war, are avoidable. But we must support the peacemakers, nationally and internationally, and we must listen, even in the circumscribed spheres of our lives—or especially there—in the communities where we live.
Recently, I met a young woman—I will call Flo—at a café I frequent regularly. She's a barista there and was just coming off duty. I was waiting for a friend and had some time. She told me she was a student, and I told her I had been a professor at NYU and still teach narrative nonfiction writing. She perked up. She wants to be a writer, she said, but feels thwarted by financial strain and disinterested professors. She was losing interest in getting her degree. I couldn't imagine that her professors were disinterested, but didn't question her experience. Still, I was heart sick. How can a young woman, already in college, be so discouraged? It really hurt me. What she needs is a mentor, I thought to myself, a mentor, if only for a few minutes, or just these few minutes, in passing. I asked what she likes to read and she said she didn't like to read and, by the way, did I have any tips to "get through" Beowulf and Chaucer. So I gave her some tips, not for "getting through," but to begin a relationship with these ancient works, and to get into the minds of the writers and oral story tellers who lived so long ago. "I write poetry," Flo then told me. "And I like Malcom Gladwell's books."
"I thought you told me you didn't like to read?"
"My teachers don't care what I have to say. I usually go off on tangents. "
"I would love you in my class," I said. "Are you sure your professors don't care what you have to say?"
"That's the way it feels to me," she said.
"Ignore disinterested professors," I suggested. "Maintain interest in yourself and your education. You've paid your tuition, don't waste it."
I'm reading a biography of John Quincy Adams at the moment and reminded myself of Abigail, his mother, admonishing her already well-educated and accomplished diplomat son as he took his seat in the Senate. John Quincy did not shun his mother's advice, and he remained respectful to her in his letters. But that was then, this is now. I wondered how my direct advice was landing, if Flo would find it intrusive, or amusing. I gave her my card and encouraged her to stay in touch. I want to know how she does this spring, I told her. Like all children and young adults, throughout the world, she deserves mentors—parents, teachers, experienced adults—who care about her education, a safe environment in which to learn, and no student debt.
This post is dedicated to all my students, past and present, and to all the children in war zones.