Even my most libertarian friends, with their dreams of
desert freeholds or serene isolation from the rest of us, have to own up,
sooner or later, that we live in a community.
That unless you are Ted Kaczynski, making bombs and
manifestos in an isolated cabin, you'll have to deal with people in a way that
is civil and constructive, even if it isn't always friendly.
This is where slack-cutting is of value. The quality that lets slide the irritating
quirks of others, usually with phrases like "Oh, that's just [him/her]"
or "I have to work with [him/her] later, so I'll let it go".
Public hostility is different. Recently I was rudely and aggressively
insulted in front of a large crowd. I
had respected the offender, and in some ways I still do—in ways that will be
enough to work with her if I am called upon to do so. After her tantrum I can no longer like her,
but I've cut slack to a practical ground, where any contact I have with her can
be useful, though I am reasonably sure it can no longer be pleasant.
Fiction writing—or at least some of the characterization
that a fiction writer does—can begin in cutting slack. You let things slide because you're
interested in seeing where they head, because you realize they may make good
copy up the road. But it's good as well for
people who do other things.
I tend to pace in the classroom. It's because I can't stand still when the
ideas are good. I can see that it might
unsettle someone: twice in twenty-five years of teaching, people have
complained, but for the most part my students put up with it, out of their own
kindness and graciousness and, I certainly hope, a returned respect for me and
for my forgiveness of late papers, class-cutting, and improvised apologies and
excuses for the aforementioned. I also
hope they get excited by the ideas as well, and realize we all have different
ways of making that known.
Still, when I saw a student evaluation that expressed real
discomfort with my pacing—that went on about it for a paragraph or so—I took
stock of my habit. This was
mid-semester, on a large internet site, so it gave me time to correct my
behavior to less discomfort a student who was apparently very upset about
it. I tried to check the pacing—a practice
I found a little distracting myself, since I had to call myself out on a number
of occasions—but I figured the class was about the students instead of about
me, so I could adjust as much as I could.
And the student mentioned that it had gotten better…in the four
subsequent evaluations where she registered complaints that it had happened to begin
with.
Yes, I said 'she', because it wasn't hard to figure out who
it was. She dropped pure factual information
into the paragraph—the course she was taking from me, and that she was taking
yet another simultaneously—so I knew instantly. Don't ever think you're that opaque on
anonymous evaluations. She graduated
before three of the five complaining paragraphs were published, but in her
aftermath she left me thinking:
First time, maybe the second time, the problem was about
me. By the fifth time, it's about you,
my dear.
Which speaks to cutting slack. One thing we can learn is how to do it. Because the things about someone else are
sometimes about you. I've learned it too
often in my own life, made too many mistakes, indulged too many bad quirks and
habits, to not hope for slack from those of you I have offended. Which doesn't mean that your own little performances
won't show up in something I write someday.
Because that's the way I roll.
