What’s the Point of Going to Lecture Anyhow? vs. Do Not Cite the Medieval Texts to Me Unless It’s in MLA

POINT: What’s the Point of Going to
Lecture Anyhow?

The first piece of advice everyone gave me when I started college was to never, ever, skip lecture, but I’m a bit confused about what exactly the point of lecture is. I mean, I’ve had some lovely professors, and some lovely lectures, but some … some weren’t.
Like, I thought professors were supposed to teach the syllabus, but not all professors do that, apparently. I have this one HUM prof who talks about the texts like he was actually there when they were written (especially Inferno), and I thought that he was supposed to guide us through analyzing them? He also seems to be like, 750 years old. If he said Socrates was his philosophy professor, I’d believe him.

But beyond his … interesting approach to teaching analytical writing, I’m a bit confused by just how talking about the love of his life all the time is supposed to teach us about, well, anything medieval. I’m not sure he even talked about anything but The Divine Comedy, because talking about it meant that he could talk about his beloved “Tricia.” I feel like all this talk about his childhood crush is a bit unprofessional, but what do I know? I’m just a freshman.

I’m trying to write my second essay, but I don’t know about any themes in the texts except for romance. So yet again, I’m writing an essay on courtly love and infidelity. Perhaps if my professor talked about something other than Tricia, I’d be able to write it on another subject. But maybe this is just my fault — maybe I really am supposed to teach myself the syllabus?

COUNTERPOINT: Do Not Cite the Medieval Texts to Me Unless It’s in MLA

Students, students, students. They complain all day about my lectures taking “peculiar, long-winded, and barely historical digressions” (to quote a review of my class from last quarter), and then they don’t even cite their sources properly in their essays! “An affair with a married woman sent Paolo to the second circle of Hell.” That’s it? That’s all you’re saying? That’s from a very specific place, youths, and it’s in Canto V. Cite, cite, cite, you fools.

“Sir Gawain accepting the green girdle from the mistress of the house dooms him, and that is how affairs are presented as immoral in this story.” BORING! Tell me something I can’t glean from in a cursory read through. Sometimes I wonder if they understand symbolism, or if all they can see is the surface-level narrative on desire. The affair isn’t important, it’s the game.

I understand that many of my students skip lecture — a foolish choice, but a choice nonetheless — and that is why their arguments are so weak. But even the ones who do show up are silent and stare at me like the souls on the banks of the Acheron! The very least these fools could do is pay attention while I try to be “hip” and relate to them through having loved another when I was young. But no, they tell me that it’s “a bit weird” to bring up my personal life in lecture. What do I have to do to get them to pay attention and care?

It is quite strange to me that all these essays my students have submitted this quarter are about courtly love and infidelity. At the very least, this disappointment is tempered by the fact that none of them are scoring higher than a C+: none of these youths formatted their copycat digressions in MLA.