Butterflies in the Mind: Taking the Long View
This is not a post about teaching, but teaching is what I do and what I know best, and this post is about thinking about what we do.
People often wonder if I find it frustrating to be a university instructor. I teach topics that students resist a lot – in Women’s Studies, I teach with an explicitly political edge, challenging students to face up to the realities of social and economic injustices; in anthropology, I have to bring students to see the value of practices that they find disgusting or blasphemous (or both). While I have my share, maybe even more than my share, of students who really “get it”, I also have a good number of students who resist me at every turn, who are personally affronted by nearly every thing I say.
“Don’t you sometimes feel like you’re wasting your time?” people ask me. “Doesn’t it feel futile when they don’t change at all?”
The answer is that no, I don’t feel like I’m wasting my time. Not in the least. Granted, it can be frustrating in the heat of the moment. Students often look to their professors for truths that we simply can’t give – what we can give are outlines of various theories and arguments and help lead our students to understand their ramifications. And in the absence of hard, fast truths, some students just shut down, and it’s a real bear to re-engage them.
But for the most part, even the most resistant student doesn’t discourage me. A couple years ago I had a student who expressed his resentment of every single thing I taught by reading a paper in class. It was, of course, intended as an insult, but I didn’t care then, and I don’t care now. I consider that one of my highest successes.
Wait, what? How can a student ignoring me be a success? Simple: I take a longer view than 16 weeks (the length of a semester).
Everyone knows about the Butterfly Effect, right? The idea is that in a interconnected chaotic system, like the global environment, small events can turn into big consequences. A butterfly flapping its wings in China might whip up the tiniest of atmospheric disturbances which, as it interacts with the forces in the environment, is magnified and intensified until it sets off a massive hurricane in the Caribbean.
Teaching is like that. We set off butterflies in the mind, whose wing-flaps have little effect today and tomorrow but which, somewhere down the line, might blossom into a full-blown mental hurricane – a brainstorm, if you will.
(A professor I knew in grad school preferred a somewhat more military metaphor: mind-bombs. We plant landmines, in the hopes that someday our students will stumble across them and *BOOM!* I find the image of explosions in my students heads a little overly graphic for my own taste; butterflies are, I think, a little less objectionable.)
In the long view, I don’t have to be convincing. I don’t even have to be right (though I like to think I am more often than I’m not). Being convincing, being right – these are beside the point. The real outcome of the work I do day in and day out will come months, years, even decades down the road, and I won’t be around to see it. My job, as I see it, is simply to cultivate butterflies – to lay out a set of facts, theories, and ideas and make sure my students know what they are. The ones that resist, the ones that are so deeply offended, they’ll have their whole lives to think about this stuff, to argue with it, to reason out why it doesn’t apply to them or to the people around them.
In case you’re thinking that I can take this fuzzy-headed view towards my work because I teach in the fuzzy-headed liberal arts, think again. I was an engineering major lo these many years ago, and while my professors may not have realized it, they too took the long view. The professor of fluid dynamics doesn’t stop to ask whether her student will be building missiles or wheelchairs, machine guns or microsurgical instruments, she just teaches the physics. She, too, is cultivating butterflies.
Here comes the point: we are all cultivating butterflies. To some extent, everything we do has the potential to set off a chain reaction that results in something HUGE months, years, decades in the future. And most of the time, we don’t have any idea, can’t have any idea, what that butterfly moment is or what it will result in.
What we can know is that we’re doing it. That the work we do today isn’t just about today, that it doesn’t have to be finished, closed-off, polished and perfected and done. That it’s ok to leave things open-ended, to let them unfold like a butterfly’s wings as she emerges from her cocoon, to let them surprise us with their iridescent beauty – or disappoint us with their moth’s-wing drabness.
Far from frustrating me, the part that’s out of my control is what makes it possible for me to do the job in front of me. If I had to “convert” all my students, I couldn’t do it. It’s the uncertainty of what they’ll do with what I can teach them, even the ones that hate me and hate the material and hate the class – it’s that uncertainty that makes it possible to teach at all. What about you? How do you cultivate butterflies – or plant mines – in your job? Or in your life?
WRITER'S BIOGRAPHY
Dustin Wax
Dustin M. Wax is a freelance writer and project manager at Stepcase Lifehack. He can be reached though his freelancing site at DustinWax.comDon't Be Stupid: A Guide to Learning, Studying, and Succeeding at College.
Follow him on Twitter: @dwax.
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Comments
fernanda says on November 23rd, 2009 at 9:47 am
Thank you! As a math teacher myself I can surely relate to and find solace in your comments!
Dan Berlin says on November 23rd, 2009 at 10:43 am
I think there is another point to take away from this article, which is to avoid getting wrapped up too tightly in the natural worries of acceptance or perfection in one’s work. Find something valuable in what you are doing, and be happy contributing value, even to a select few. I often see many people throw away brilliant ideas because just one or two individuals were disinterested. Thanks for the nuanced post!
Mendy says on November 23rd, 2009 at 10:55 am
I identify with this concept you’ve laid out as well. I work and have worked with children and adolescents for most of employable days. We plant seeds, maybe water…but do not always get to see the fruits of our labor. If we are lucky maybe it will come back around one day. We just have to have perseverance and confidence in our labor and trust “the powers that be” to do the rest.
Kenji Crosland says on November 23rd, 2009 at 12:23 pm
It’s amazing that although we might hear about a particular concept we don’t accept until the storm comes many years later. I myself have ignored or rejected the wisdom of other people many times only to later accept the wisdom years later. Thanks for your insight. It really brings idea into focus.
Finja says on November 23rd, 2009 at 12:43 pm
That’s why I sometimes write letters (real paper ones) to my old teachers when “the bomb went off” (I actually like the mind-bomb-metaphor better) and their teachings affected me years later.
Up next is a letter to my art teacher in high school. I really hated him in class, but recently I got very interested in modern art, and so many of his words now ring in my mind and I feel like “wow, that actually makes sense now”.
And I just want to let him know.
Helen says on November 23rd, 2009 at 1:40 pm
A good part of my identity has been established by my teachers. They knew how to “cultivate” me, and at some point(an important one it seems) they told me that something, that turned on the spark. Each one of us had THE teacher. I guess it is a very fulfilling feeling!
Alaa says on November 23rd, 2009 at 1:47 pm
I’m a student of English literature and I also write for a student magazine. I was talking, few days ago, with the chief editor of this magazine about why do we write? I mean, I don’t see any change in people after they read the magazine or my articles. The chief editor told me that we don’t have to see the change right after the magazine is published, but maybe someday, someone I don’t even know, reads the magazine and it changes something in him, and he starts to make a change in people round him, and so on.
We may not be able to see the results of our work, but we have to be sure that it’s there.
Kurt says on November 23rd, 2009 at 2:03 pm
Thanks Dustin for your insightful article. I’m curious about the student who disagreed with you. The the student may have written the article believing in the same “cultivating butterflys” principle, that they might be able to influence you to understand their perspective, even if not right away. You said that you “didn’t care”, but I hope that by that you meant that it didn’t bother you that they disagreed with you, not that you weren’t considering their opinion. And so do you think their argument influenced you? If so, then it would be even greater evidence for cultivating butterflys.
Dustin Wax says on November 23rd, 2009 at 2:17 pm
Kurt: You got it — obviously I *care*, since my job is to make sure my students at least understand the material in the course; as you said, though, it didn’t *bother me* that this student was so angry about it. In fact, it pleases me — we get angry and offended when our core values, things we don’t consider very often, are suddenly challenged, so this kind of reaction tells me that something’s happening with the student. I know it will take some time — longer than the class — to process it all, so I let myself wait.
mike says on November 24th, 2009 at 1:14 am
Thank you Dustin.
Today’s column is, for me, a collector’s item. It’s cherishable. I’ll keep it close for comfort and counsel.
Lisa says on November 24th, 2009 at 3:45 am
I love your idea of butterflies. This is also similar to the job of a parent, how you plant the little seeds of thinking and hope that one day, it will cause something great and wonderful. Great analogy and your attitude as a teacher is one that is much needed – how to better challenge students to think outside the box rather than challenge them on how much they can retain.
Noel Posus says on November 24th, 2009 at 4:40 pm
Dustin, this is a fantastic post and thank you for sharing it. I am also an educator (20+ years) and my first years and some of the more years have been at the university level. The majority of this time has been as an executive and life coach. In all these learning environments I find that the simple model I’ve used is 1) Raise Awareness, 2) Make Decisions and 3) Modify Behaviour/Take Action. There are lots of ways we can raise people’s awareness, some more politically edgy than others, and when done respectfully and professionally I personally believe this is the calling I have and the responsibility all of us have in one form or another.
Thanks again for sharing!
Cheers, Noel
Beggar in the Suit says on November 25th, 2009 at 4:52 am
my Mum has been a teacher for 30 years.. Perhaps she didn’t make a difference to all her students but definitely there were handful of them.. and it makes her proud of that already!
AlmostGodess says on November 25th, 2009 at 9:36 am
I am considering becoming a university professor. Your article reminded me of the reasons for doing it.
Thank you!
SEO says on November 26th, 2009 at 12:47 am
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Arvind Devalia says on November 27th, 2009 at 7:48 pm
Dustin, a thought provoking article, though the image of mind bombs didn’t resonate with me either:-)
This is one of your best articles and gave me a great insight into what you do, but more importantly I learnt about the approach you take and where you are coming from.
In many ways, through my blogging and my coaching I am cultivating many buterflies in my own special way.
I have coached many children and young people, and it is a real honour and privilege when you see something come alive in them or when they have just had a great insight.
Those butterflies starting to flap in young minds will certainly cause many hurricanes and tornadoes in years to come.