Saturday Q&A

It's the last Saturday of the month, which means only politics-free questions. We have decided not to divide these last-Saturday-of-the-month posts into sections anymore, as that gives us a little more flexibility.

If you are still pondering this week's headline theme, we'll give the additional hint that we very much wanted to write a headline that included the phrase "The Dark Knight," but there was no plausible way to do it, except to cheat and write something like "The Dark Night."

Fun Stuff

R.D. in Austin, TX, asks: Being a huge sports fan and especially a baseball fan, I wanted to know which of the major United States sports do you feel like you are most qualified to write about: baseball, football, basketball or hockey? Along that same line, do you have a preferred American sports playoff format, or would you prefer that the regular season have more value and we run our leagues the way they do in European soccer?

I could only imagine how the NFL might operate if they played one game per week over 33 weeks with no Super Bowl, and the team with the best record was crowned champion. A tie would be broken by who won the head-to-head matchup, since all 32 teams would play a single game against the other 31 franchises as in the European soccer model of NFL competition.

(Z) answers: Two of us, namely (V) and (A), are not sports people at all. Of the remaining two, I am rather more steeped in the world of sports than (L) is. And of the major sports, there is absolutely no question I am most qualified to write about baseball. If you put me and 99 other randomly selected people in a room, I would know more about baseball than probably 98 of them. For football and basketball, that number would be somewhere in the realm of 90-95. For hockey, it would be something like 75, and that's only because most non-Canadians don't know much about hockey.

I tend to prefer American-style playoffs, as those provide maximum "hope" to the largest number of fans. As I have written before, the entertainment is in competing for a championship. Actually winning is just icing on the cake, in my view. No matter what system is used to determine a champion, there is a certain amount of arbitrariness in it. For example, if the NFL played a 31-game season, then there would absolutely be fluky games decided by an odd bounce, or a strange penalty, or a (rare) blocked kick, or some other unusual event. In some seasons, the best team in the NFL would win the title cleanly. But in most seasons, there would be three or four or five teams in the running, and the champ would end up being the team that got the most lucky breaks, and not necessarily tbe best team.

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P.R. in Arvada, CO, asks: Three weeks in, what are your feelings about the football season? Zero prizes for predicting a first-round postseason exit for the Steelers.

(Z) answers: The Bills, Chargers, and Packers (last week's disaster notwithstanding) look like potential juggernauts.

The Colts, Eagles, Commanders, Vikings, Lions, Rams and Seahawks could be very good, but the jury is still out.

The Jaguars, Bengals, Steelers and 49ers are playing above their heads, and are not as good as their records suggest. The Steelers aren't going to make the playoffs this year, and should think about moving on from Mike Tomlin.

The Chiefs are better than your usual 1-2 team, but are also not the team they were, and won't be back in the AFC title game.

The Ravens and Broncos are also better than their records suggest.

The Bears are going to be saved from winning the title of "most disappointing team of 2025" by the Dolphins.

The Saints are the worst team in the league. Don't sign a long-term lease in that city, QB Spencer Rattler. The Titans aren't much better.

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C.J. in San Francisco, CA, asks: Given the nice analysis of causality of sharks and ice cream, and the proximity to Rudi Johnson becoming the latest in a long line of NFL suicides tied to CTE (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy), I thought it timely to ask about something that has been on my mind for a while.

How does (Z) reconcile his obvious enthusiasm for college football and the solid CTE data from Boston University, et al.? Is it acceptable for an educational establishment to promote entertainment that seems very likely to result in permanent degenerative brain damage to the students on the field?

(Z) answers: Your question included many links to many studies. We excluded those in the interest of space, and will stipulate that CTE is a risk of playing football.

As to an answer, these days, any player who chooses to pursue college and/or pro football does so with eyes wide open as to the risks and rewards. They are adults, and it is not my place to decide what is best for them and their families. We do not discourage students from pursuing dentistry or psychology (both of which have high suicide rates), or police work (which comes with obvious dangers), or other jobs that come with above-average risk, and football players deserve the same consideration.

That said, you assume too much when you assert that I am "enthusiastic" about college football. I follow it, the way I do many things, and I'll put it on the TV if I happen to be home anyhow. However, of the sports I follow, it is the one that holds my interest the least. And if it disappeared tomorrow, I would not be upset.

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T.J.R. In Metuchen, NJ, asks: Who are the ten best baseball players ever? Please consider everything, including personality.

Omitted are Ty Cobb, Rogers Hornsby, Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio (the first two because they were nasty people, the latter two because of general surliness). Also Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle for messy personal lives.

(Z) answers: In order to put this on some sort of systematic basis, I will start with the list of players who made the Hall of Fame. If they cleared that bar, then they were good enough to at least be considered "good," and often "great." And of those 278 guys (the only woman in the BBHOF is an executive), these 10 seem like the best people (presented in alphabetical order by last name):

1. Yogi Berra: He has the most World Series wins of any player (helps to have played for the Yankees in the 1950s and 1960s), and was a beloved figure in New York and around baseball, in significant part because of his malapropisms.
   
   
2. Roberto Clemente: The award that baseball gives out for community service is named after him, and with good reason, because there may not be a ballplayer who gave more of his time and energy to community service. That was true to his dying day—literally—as he was killed in a plane crash while trying to hustle supplies to Nicaragua after an earthquake.
   
   
3. Lou Gehrig: He and Babe Ruth often didn't get along because Gehrig was so upstanding. He faced his terminal diagnosis with much dignity; "For the past two weeks you have been reading about a bad break. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth," he told Yankees fans in his farewell to them.
   
   
4. Tony Gwynn: Not many players were happier playing than he was, and he is absolutely revered in San Diego.
   
   
5. Sandy Koufax: A nice Jewish boy who became a role model to many other nice Jewish boys (and, of course, many gentiles, as well). He's as popular in Los Angeles as Gwynn is in San Diego.
   
   
6. Christy Mathewson: They called him "The Christian Gentlemen," and umpires would ask for his help during games in which he was a participant, because he had such a reputation for honesty and integrity. He's one of the numerous folks on this list who died young; as he was about to succumb to illness/injury that was inflicted during his service in World War I, he told his wife: "Now Jane, I want you to go outside and have yourself a good cry. Don't make it a long one; this can't be helped."
   
   
7. Stan Musial: Perhaps the lowest-profile superstar ever, and certainly the most under-the-radar of the 10 best players in MLB history. A man of great integrity who supported Jackie Robinson and the Civil Rights Movement, and refused to endorse tobacco after its carcinogenic properties became publicly known.
   
   
8. Buck O'Neil: This is cheating a little, because he was inducted into the Hall as an executive, not a player. However, he was a player, too, and that induction category was somewhat arbitary because the Hall doesn't have a category for people who earned distinction in several areas. In any case, O'Neil was an absolute champion for baseball in general, and for preserving the history of the Negro Leagues in particular. He refused to allow personal slights to get him down, was a raconteur without equal, and was perhaps the best ambassador the game ever had.
   
   
9. Jackie Robinson: There's a reason his number is retired throughout baseball.
   
   
10. Ted Williams: You took him off the list, but I am putting him back on. He was a war hero (albeit a reluctant one), and one of the half-dozen best players to play the game. While he was indeed surly during his playing days, the Boston sports media gave him more than a few reasons to behave that way. And later in life, he became an elder statesman of the game, and much more outgoing.

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M.D. in San Tan Valley, AZ, asks: The Major League Baseball NL MVP award was already a forgone conclusion over a month ago, but the AL MVP award is definitely not and I foresee the voting is going to be very close. Who do you see winning it? Cal Raleigh or Aaron Judge?

(Z) answers: Tough call. Their teams are both headed to the playoffs, with near-identical records. The Yankees will end up with an extra win or two, but the Mariners will have the higher seed. So, this common "tiebreaker" is a wash.

Judge is clearly the more valuable player, as he has about 100 points in batting average and on-base percentage on Raleigh. That's massive, and has produced a bWAR lead of more than 2 games; 9.5 bWAR for Judge, 7.2 bWAR for Raleigh.

That said, sportswriters tend to like a "story." This was more true in generations past, but the tendency is still definitely there. And Raleigh is the better story, since it is unprecedented for a catcher to hit 60 HR, and since he has never won an MVP (while Judge has two). So, I will predict it goes to Raleigh.

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R.H.D. in Webster, NY, asks: Who do you think will win the World Series? I'm going with the Phillies.

(Z) answers: I'll go with the Mariners. They are a well-balanced team, and they have a good bullpen, which is key in the playoffs (sorry, Dodgers fans). Plus, Seattle sports fans are some of the best in the country, and the Mariners have never even made the World Series, much less won it. So, it would be nice to see those folks get their turn.

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D.M. in Shallotte, NC, asks: OK, here's the softest softball question I could ask of you guys. Since he's turning 50, do you think Tiger Woods will attempt to play on the Senior Tour, now known as the PGA Tour Champions? With everything he's been through, personally and physically, I still admire and like the guy and would love to see him play in person. Years ago, I saw Jack Nicklaus, Arnie Palmer, and Chi Chi Rodriguez play on the then Senior Tour. What do you think?

(Z) answers: Woods will certainly attempt it. I don't think it will work out, however.

The other senior players, including the ones you name, lost strength, and maybe some small-muscle control, as they aged. However, they were still able to play golf at a high level, particularly if they didn't have to use the longest-distance tees. Woods, by contrast, has wrecked his back with his high-torque swing and (probably) his car accident(s). He just doesn't seem capable of playing 18 holes for 3-4 days in a row anymore.

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R.S. in Ticonderoga, NY, asks: I will admit I don't watch a lot of "live" television anymore, other than sports. I'm a big fan of BritBox and Acorn TV, though I do have Paramount+ so I can watch the library of Star Trek shows.

I was watching a season four episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation the other day and recalled that it was aired as a first-run syndication show. TNG (and Deep Space Nine after it) seemed to thrive.

My question: Other than game shows like Jeopardy! and talk shows, are there any first-run syndicated shows these days, or have they been replaced by direct-to-streaming shows?

(Z) answers: The era of scripted, first-run syndicated dramas and comedies appears to have come to an end.

First, as you note, content producers are now shopping their ideas to streaming services. It's way easier to sell a show once, than to have to sell it hundreds of times. Plus, you can do a more limited run for a streaming service (say, a season of 6 to 12 episodes). For a syndicated show, you pretty much have to do 22 to 26 episodes a season, which is a lot of work, and can cause the quality to suffer.

Perhaps more important, however, is that the stations that might purchase such content (and there are fewer of them than in 1987, when TNG debuted) have figured out that they can get the same ratings from (much cheaper) reruns of shows like Seinfeld and Friends.

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J.O. in Las Vegas, NV, asks: Any idea how KPop Demon Hunters has become such an enduring international phenomenon? The movie has taken Netflix by storm, becoming its most watched movie, and its music has also consistently topped billboard charts for months now.

(Z) answers: Well, it supplanted Glass Onion. Both movies are very good, and have gotten very strong reviews. Undoubtedly, that helps.

KPop Demon Hunters has the additional advantages that it's musical (so, people can put it on as background) and it's kid-friendly. Kids, of course, often watch their faves over and over and over.

It is also abundantly clear that Netflix has a huge population of customers who really like South Korean content, since their most popular TV show is Squid Game. We assume this huge population of customers includes lots of South Koreans, but we don't know that for sure.

Finally, when Netflix has a hot property on its hands, it can goose the numbers by moving it up in their algorithm, thus causing the film/show to be suggested to more people. The service did that with Glass Onion, and it surely did it with KPop Demon Hunters, as well.

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D.S. in Layton, UT, asks: In that my question is inspired by the sadness of Robert Redford's passing I am not sure that it is "fun," but what are your essential Robert Redford films?

(Z) answers: The essentials are Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting, All the President's Men, The Natural and Out of Africa.

The sleepers, in the sense of "great films that are not as well known" are All is Lost, The Old Man & the Gun and The Candidate.

The films that may not be great art, necessarily, but are great entertainment, are Sneakers, Indecent Proposal and Three Days of the Condor.

And don't forget that his only Oscar came for directing a film in which he did not appear, namely Ordinary People. It hasn't aged as well as some Best Picture winners, but it's still worth a viewing.

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R.M.S. in Lebanon CT, asks: Why has Madonna never been given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame? She has to be the most famous person without one.

(Z) answers: To get a star on the Walk of Fame, you have to be nominated. Then, some person or entity (often a studio looking to promote a movie or TV project, or else a fan club) has to pony up a fee to pay for the star itself and for maintenance in perpetuity (the fee is currently $85,000), and then you have to accept the honor and agree to be there in person when the star is unveiled. For any A-lister, the first couple of parts are easy, so if they don't have a star, it's usually that they declined and/or did not agree to show up in person.

And indeed, the reason Madonna does not have a star is that it was offered, and she declined. That said, we are not so sure she's the most famous person without one. Others who have declined, for various reasons, include Clint Eastwood, George Lucas, Oprah Winfrey, Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt, Denzel Washington, Robert DeNiro, Jim Carrey and Leonardo DiCaprio.

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F.H. In St. Paul, MN, asks: What would you consider the first rock and roll song? A friend, who knows more about modern music than I do, considers the 1950 song "Friday Night Fish Fry" to be the first true rock song.

Not knowing any better, I figure that there would have been a handful of tunes that would have fallen into that transition period when jazz/big band music morphed into rock and roll around the same time.

(Z) answers: I have a lecture about this subject. And my answer to the question, which is hardly original, is the 1951 track "Rocket 88" by Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats (basically a front for Ike Turner). While it lacks the electric guitar, it has a backbeat, and it's also based on a raunchy double-entendre (the song pretends to be about an Oldsmobile Rocket 88, but is clearly about Ike Turner's penis, which "gals ride in style, movin' all along").

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J.M. in Lexington, KY, asks: What are the best board games of all time?

(A) answers: As the staffer with over 140 tabletop games, it seems this is mine to answer. Here are my top five, each with one or more honorable mentions of games with similar elements:

1. The Forbidden series (Island, Desert, Sky, Jungle): All players must cooperate to achieve the ultimate goal, which involves building some final contraption (which varies, depending on the game) to aid the group's escape. If one person dies, we all (are going to) die, so you must strategize the use of each player's skills and resources to best benefit the group. These generally got harder as each successive version was released, so I'd recommend starting with Forbidden Island. Forbidden Sky is notoriously difficult to play AND to find (it was out of print at one point, but seems to be available now—perhaps not everyone interested in playing it will need to meet someone in their East Los Angeles driveway in the middle of the night to exchange cash for a still-sealed copy—just me, then). Even though I've never won Forbidden Sky, it's my favorite. Its final contraption is a rocket, which is already assembled, but the goal of the game is to complete an electric circuit to power the rocket and evacuate your team. Players place transistors and "cables," and if you win (or assemble a circuit to see what will happen because you suspect you'll never win fair and square), you're rewarded with the rocket lighting up and playing a rocket-launch sound. Honorable mention: Tiny Laser Heist.
   
   
2. Ticket to Ride (my preferred version/map: Europe): I love path games, and Ticket to Ride is a little more complex than a simple path game (check out Cable Car for that). I prefer the Europe map over the U.S. map because it has a better balance of long and short trips. However, these are the only two maps I've played, so I can't speak on any of the others. Honorable mention: Globetrotting.
   
   
3. Cards Against Humanity: I still think this is one of the best ice-breaker/warm-up games available, for anyone with a raunchy sense of humor. I have friends who have decided it isn't worth playing because it's too formulaic. I still have a blast with it. Plus, the company's Black Friday stunts are legendary. During COVID lockdowns, I played online with friends. Honorable mention: Charty Party.
   
   
4. Cranium: An oldie, at this point, but a goodie. I dread pulling a "Charades" card, but the beauty of Cranium is that there's something for everyone to love (and maybe something for everyone to hate as well). I only recommend the "deluxe" or "tin" editions; any of the versions with "fast" and "slow" tracks on the board. The simpler versions of the game are less fun. Honorable mention: Hoopla.
   
   
5. Dixit: Everyone seems to find different elements to focus on in the beautiful, trippy artwork on Dixit cards. Can you find the card your friend just described? It's not as easy as it sounds! Some of the card artwork is available as a jigsaw puzzle. Honorable mentions: Blank Slate, Mysterium.

Additional honorable mentions because I can't help myself: Things in Rings, Colt Express, Decrypto, Wavelength.

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F.S. in Cologne, Germany, asks: After reading your item "Americans are Stupid," I ask: Why are the results so bad? Have the intellectual abilities of (Z)'s students deteriorated over the last decade or so? And what are the most needed changes in the American education system?

(Z) answers: To start, those assessment tests are always designed to produce a noteworthy result. So, I don't pay them all that much attention.

Broadly speaking, the dominant teaching style at any given time is optimized for... the previous generation of students. So, it's up to teachers, from Kindergarten through college, to adapt. I suspect the things that are particularly affecting the current generation are: (1) they have always had cell phones and other devices, as well as Google, at their fingertips, and (2) they effectively lost 2 critical years of schooling to COVID.

I refuse to accept the premise that students have "deteriorated." They are just different than they were 10 years ago, and those students were different from the ones 10 years before them, etc.

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M.A.H. in Warren, MI, asks: In the item We Are in the Burner Phone Era, you wrote: "(Z) has read hundreds of pieces like this, about how to pick locks, or how to cheat at slot machines, or how to evade red-light cameras because they're interesting and are sort of like reading a real-world spy novel."

So, (Z) knows how to pick locks, huh? Cool!

(Z) answers: Yes, but I am out of practice, so I would be pretty slow at it right now. Plus, it largely doesn't work for deadbolts.

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T.B. in Leon County, FL, asks: Ok, so you have The Anarchist's Cookbook. But do you have Abbie Hoffman's Steal This Book, which was published the previous year? (I gave my copy away before I moved overseas—probably a smart move at the time!)

(Z) answers: Yes. I had, and have, a large collection of such books. My favorite (if you include this in the same genre) is actually Big Secrets, by William Poundstone, which digs into hundreds of things like the recipe for KFC, and mysterious shortwave radio signals that one can tune into, and whether Walt Disney was cryogenically frozen.

As this somewhat implies, I am less interested in doing [THING X] than I am in just knowing how it's done. That said, I did acquire a shortwave radio and build an antenna from copper wire so I could listen to the strange signals that Poundstone talks about.

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J.E. in San Jose, CA, who was 10 miles from the Loma Prieta quake in 1989, asks: Speaking of earthquakes dissuading someone from visiting Southern California, (Z) wrote: "A non-issue. There has been one really bad earthquake in Southern California in the last half-century or so, and that one was nearly 40 years ago. Plus, earthquakes destroy property, not people."

So, I must ask: Are you referring to the Northridge quake, and if so, where were you when it hit?

(Z) answers: Yes. It hit at something like 4:00 a.m.; I know because I was asleep in my dorm room at UCLA, and it was still dark outside. The dorm developed visible cracks in its foundation, which apparently was by design as a safety measure. For reasons never explained, my landline remained operational when every other phone on the floor seemed to be out of order (this was before cell phones were commonplace). So, there was a parade of people using my phone to call relatives to confirm they were OK.

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D.S. in Layton, UT, asks: These are deeply frightening times. Just making sure that your absence from my morning this past Saturday does not mean that you were Kimmeled.

(Z) answers: We didn't mean to be mysterious. As I have mentioned in the past, I do a rather substantial puzzle-hunt-type game for my birthday each year. The event (not the birthday) was last Saturday. I put together the framework of the Saturday posting on Thursday morning, and then got to work on puzzle-hunt prep. The puzzle-hunt prep, and writing the regular Friday posting, took so much time, I just did not have the 3 hours it takes to actually answer the questions. So, I pushed the already-70%-complete Saturday posting to Sunday.

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B.B. in Dothan, AL, asks: You wrote, at the end of your letter on accepting trans people: "Any reader who is offended by this, well, the door's on the right. We're not the right site for you, anyhow."

Are they hate-reading? What a waste of one's life.

(Z) answers: We do have a few hate-readers, though they tend to fade away until the presidential election cycle heats up. Most of the anti-trans e-mail we get comes from folks who, like Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, are basically liberal on most subjects, but have decided this particular issue is a bridge too far.

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Q.M. in Manville, NJ, asks: Is "Legal News, Part I: A Legal System Under Suspicion?" the first time one of the team has directly contradicted an earlier post from a different author?

(Z) answers: No. It's not usually quite as direct, but there have been numerous occasions where it was clear that (V) and (Z), in particular, did not see eye-to-eye on some subject. For example, (V) thought Joe Biden had to go immediately after the debate performance, whereas (Z) took the position that he would not go until the numbers said he had to, and the numbers didn't (immediately) say that. Similarly, (Z) thought Tim Walz was a stronger choice for VP than (V) did.

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B.J. in Arlington, MA, asks: Question for (V): Emacs or vi? Why?

(V) answers: Aquamacs (Emacs for Mac): (1) Because it is modeless (if you want to add material, just type it); (2) You can rebind all the functions to any keystrokes you want. Seems to me CTRL-A should be go to start of line and CTRL-Z should be go to end of line, etc., etc. Maybe that is possible now in vi, but it wasn't 50 years ago when I started. I have rebound everything I use a lot to 26 commands, from CTRL-A to CTRL-Z. On an M2 or M4, performance is irrelevant. Even the M2 is blindingly fast.

Reader Question of the Week: Teaching Assistance, Part IV

Here is the question we put before readers several weeks ago:

M.R. in Lowell, MA, asks: I am going to start teaching full time at a university this fall. Any suggestions?

And here is one last selection of the answers we got in response:

(V): Prepare your PowerPoint slides carefully. Make them clear (24 pt Calibri, Arial, or Helvetica) so they can be seen even by the students in the back. Use color. Use illustrations, drawings, etc., where that makes sense. Your lectures will be much more effective if the slides are interesting. No more than seven bullet points per slide. Use PowerPoint's animation features to have lines of text, figures, etc. appear when you get to them. Putting the entire slide up all at once will cause the students to read the entire slide and not listen to you. Be sure the slides illustrate all the important points you are making well. Someone seeing only the slides should get all the points you were making in your lecture. Tell the students they can download the slides later from your webpage so they don't have to frantically take notes.

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(Z): This is a pretty unpleasant observation to start with, but: The administrators of the university are not your friends. A surprising percentage of the time, they are not your allies, either. They have their imperatives, and you have yours, and the two lists are often pretty far out of alignment, even if you theoretically have the same overall mission (i.e., to educate the students). If you are ever asked to meet one-on-one with someone who has the rank of associate dean or higher (maybe even someone who has the rank of department chair or higher), take a witness to accompany you, or record the conversation, or both. If you are unionized, the union will provide a representative to accompany you.

In terms of the classroom, teach the class that you would want to take if you were the student and not the professor. Always ask yourself the question "Is this the best way to teach/explain this?" and don't teach things in a particular way just because that's the way it's always been done. Sometimes the way it's always been done is the right way, but that is a conclusion that should be reached through active analysis.

As to the information you provide, always ask yourself "How is this useful to a student in the 21st century, and in this class?" I had professors who taught survey courses as if they were graduate seminars. Few students, if any, benefited from all the stupid little details we had to memorize. I do not believe in forcing students to learn information based on some vague claim of "cultural literacy" or the like.

If you can, try to get some experience in performance. Take an improv class, sign up for Toastmasters, get a role in a local community theater play, go to open mic night at the local comedy club. A lecture is a performance, and you want to learn how to read and respond to an audience.

May the force be with you. Always.

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(L): The effectiveness of your teaching and the ways you communicate the various concepts depends a great deal on the subject and the goals of your class. The subjects I teach are litigation classes where lectures aren't as important as incorporating practice sessions for the techniques they're learning. Luckily, the classes are small and there are lots of opportunities for students to give oral presentations or otherwise demonstrate their understanding of the subject. I try to keep things topical and interesting, so I regularly update the fictional cases they are assigned to work on. For one assignment (back when this was a hot topic), students had to either defend Britney Spears in her efforts to end her conservatorship or argue for continued supervision—it got very spirited. But the goal is to teach them how to put together coherent, well-organized and persuasive arguments. Using an issue that they are already engaged in and passionate about really gets those synapses firing and they are much more open to corrections and suggestions for improvement from the teacher. Plus, it doesn't hurt to get bonus points for picking a cool topic.

Anecdotes about real world experiences also go a long way to cementing abstract concepts. Some of my war stories really help to drive home important points—especially those stories where I really screwed up—hopefully the students can learn from my rookie mistakes! It's also helpful for students to know that mistakes happen and most are not fatal, only a minor setback. But it's important that they acknowledge the error, especially if it's in a court case, fix it and learn from it.

Good luck!

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M.B. in Cleveland, OH: As a new teacher, the best advice I got was, "Choose your idiosyncrasy."

The students are going to identify something that defines you. Much better that you make this easy for them (creative ties, flowery dresses, a fun catchphrase) than that they come up with it on their own (scratching your ear a lot, wearing the same pants every Monday, a less flattering catchphrase).

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G.A. in Albany, NY: I taught (part time) for eight years at a university, both grad and undergrad, and here are my top suggestions:

1. The first day of class is the most important day, because it sets the goals, the tone and the discipline for the class. Be on time, introduce yourself, give a short overview of your background, explain why this class is important, go over the syllabus and start on whatever material you can for day one. They are going to be sitting there with no idea who you are or why they should be listening to you.
   
   
2. Create a comprehensive syllabus, print it and hand it out the first day of class, and read it to them. The student is paying for a service, and it makes complete sense to explain what is expected and what their responsibilities are in this class.
   
   
3. Be prepared for students to make mistakes, and help them get past the issue if they are willing. This attitude starts Day 1. For example, I explained the most common mistake that students made in my class. In my instance, this wasn't a class you can cram for. If you didn't understand what I was saying in week 3, for example, then by week 6, you're completely lost. I explained it like this:

   You can't cram for this class. Information and techniques build week after week. If you sense you are lost, talk to me after class and we can discuss how to move forward. If you're lost, that's a problem, and I am here to help with problems. But don't come up to me a week before the final and ask for help because you haven't understood anything I said for the last 2 months. You don't have a problem, you have a disaster, and I can't help with disasters.

4. Be as flexible and fair as you reasonably can. I occasionally caught some flak for this, but I had this rule which I never advertised in the syllabus. I had a mandatory short meeting with any student who got below a B on the midterm. I wanted to know what happened, what can be done to bring the grade up. And I explained to them that I was willing to make a deal. If you put the work in, and you can get a B or greater on the final, I'll forget the midterm. I'll grade you solely on your final.
   
   Students will really appreciate flexibility, as long as it helps them. I'll always remember a professor from my grad school days who should have retired years earlier. In a 15-week Mon/Wed/Fri class, he walked in day one, and canceled every other Friday's class because he was busy. He explained there was going to be a midterm project, midterm exam, final project and final exam. Then, 12 weeks later, he canceled the last week and a half of classes, the final project and the final exam. He was incredibly flexible, but only for himself.
   
   
5. Be enthusiastic. If you enjoy the material and communicate that joy to your students, you'll discover it can be infectious.
   
   
6. Have fun. The last day of class was always an open question review class with no new material, and I brought cookies.

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T.S in Maple Heights, OH: Congratulations on starting a new career. I will share reminiscences and close with a potential motivational resource.

As a student I remember feeling frustrated that every professor/instructor seemed to feel that their course was the most important that semester. Later I realized, of course they do; otherwise, why would they be teaching it!

My most memorable educators were storytellers who were able to make the subject matter come alive. (I sometimes became so enthralled that I had difficulty remembering to take notes of the main points.)

The listening and empathy skills of my professors/instructors, especially at the graduate level, helped with the emotional healing of childhood trauma. This was not a part of the syllabi, but their essential humanity made a profound difference in my life well beyond the classroom. And as a motivational resource, I encourage you to spend the time watching Randy Pausch's "The Last Lecture," or read the book derived from the video. May your influence on your students be felt well beyond the classroom, both geographically and chronologically.

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J.D. in St. Paul, MN: I taught for 32 years at a major public university. I have one piece of advice: If you are expected to publish and provide service to your university as well as teach, structure your time to give each element its due.

Some (though not all) of your senior colleagues will be poor teachers. They might know this about themselves or they might be deluded and think they're fine. Either way, teaching doesn't matter a lot to them because tenure, respect, glory, and pay are all tied directly to research and publication, not to teaching. These colleagues will encourage you to be like them. Don't.

But I urge you equally not to make the opposite mistake, which nearly cost me my career. One way or another, make plenty of time for publishing.

Here's the problem: You're a kind and accessible person. Your students, graduate and undergraduate, are human beings. You care about them. You want your classes to be exquisitely prepared and excellent for them. Reading their work and commenting is torture, but you want to do this for them, not pass everything off to TAs. And they want your time. A lot of it. They're standing right at your office door, nervous, smiling, eager, needy, promising, troubled: the whole gamut.

The payoffs to research and writing, while real, are abstract and distant and to persons of a certain disposition feel selfish. By contrast, being generous to students feels humane and correct. But if it's 6 years and out because you neglected publication, what's the long-term good for anyone? Somehow, right from the start, find a balance.

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R.H. in San Antonio, TX: Mi esposa corazón was bused to a white high school in Orange County, CA, in the mid-1970s. When she filled out her first course selection card, her counselor declined to sign it, telling my wife, to her face, "These are college prep courses, and Mexicans don't go to college."

That Mexican DID go to college—several of them in fact, earning an AA from SAC, a BA from UC Berkeley, TWO Master's degrees from SFSU, and a Doctorate from CSULB.

When she died in 2023, Dr. Salas was starting her thirty-second year employed in California higher education. Her email .sig for the entire time I knew her was simple: TRIO Works!

TRIO is one of the Great Society programs designed to help first generation, low income students navigate through the college experience.

Her dissertation is titled Supporting Student Scholars: College Success of First-Generation and Low-Income College Students (300 pages, available from CSULB on request... and there's probably a few copies floating around out there on the Interwebz).

If you're working with students from lower socioeconomic status, realize that they are coming from a different place than you likely are—some of them will have been told by their high school counselors that they are "just not college material" (which is word-for-word what my wife was told).

My wife's father had no formal schooling and her mother dropped out of the ninth grade. My wife was employed from age thirteen, full-time from age seventeen onward. Imagine getting your doctorate while employed full-time.

You will probably have students from similar situations. Realize that some of your students are dealing with issues that are completely foreign to your experience.

When my wife died, she was beginning what we'd intended as her final school year before retirement—She was Director of a TRIO program at LASC in South Central LA. (Yes, THAT South Central. See Straight Outta Compton for a general idea of the milieu, though much of the 'hood has been rebuilt after the Rodney King riots in 1992.)

She called her students mijo and mija, and referred to them collectively as "my kids."

All of that is prologue to my two words of advice: TRIO Works!

(We sponsored a scholarship for FGLI students at my rural Kentucky high school; I'm pretty sure she would want me to continue doing so.)

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R.E.M. in Brooklyn, NY: First law school research and writing class I taught, and I'm panicked in case I can't fill 85 minutes. Also, what if I don't tell them the most important things they need to know? Or if I tell them something WRONG???

So, I made sure I had my notes and materials for the second class handy.

Ten minutes in, I realized I don't have to tell them the most important things. It's their first day of law school. If I tell them the one-thousandth most important thing—heck, the ten thousandth most important thing—I'm adding value to them.

Half an hour in, I realized that if tell them something wrong, it'll be YEARS before they figure it out, so I'll be off the hook. I exhaled and mostly enjoyed the next two decades teaching that class. Good luck!

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D.R. in Chicago, IL, and Alaska: I just retired from working as a teacher and administrator in rural Alaska public schools. I also continue to work as an Adjunct Professor with the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.

1. Listen to your students. Encourage them to share stories, not just in the first class session, but throughout the semester. It is much easier to teach when you know your audience.
   
   
2. Listen to your co-workers. Not just fellow teachers, but office staff, cooks, bus drivers, and custodians. When you have a problem with a student, all the staff of the school can be a helpful resource.
   
   
3. Explore your community. Recognize what resources and treasures are nearby and use them. I was the Principal at Nunamiut School in Anaktuvuk Pass for three years. Our village is home to the Simon Paneak Museum, which offers a ton of resources for school outings.
   
   
4. Constantly reinvent yourself. Avoid the temptation to recycle lesson plans year after year.

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M.M. in San Diego, CA: Not a teacher, but I do know a particular type of student you will encounter: The Natural Born Comedian. The NBC just can't refrain from tossing out a humorous comment while you are in mid-lecture, interrupting your train of thought and causing a mild disruption for the rest of the class. By all means, take it in stride, laugh a bit in appreciation and dive back into the subject at hand. Absolutely DO NOT get testy or interpret it as a challenge to your authority because it isn't. Subtle joking breaks tension, makes the class more enjoyable and you more relatable.

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M.B.T. in Bay Village, OH: Without knowing the subject matter, type of institution, course level, or class size, here are five lessons I learned the hard way. I hope they will add to the many good suggestions already sent in.

1. When handing back graded exams or quizzes, do not allow students to challenge your scoring during class. Tell them to wait and see you privately during office hours. Otherwise, a good argument made by one student will be claimed by all who gave the same or similar answer.
   
   
2. In larger classes, set up group projects. If you have, say, 25 students you can split them into 5 groups of 5 each. (Give them a way to choose their teammates, but retain control over the final decision on who goes to which group.) You end up having to grade 5 papers instead of 25 and the group collaboration experience, with all its drama and unfairness, is exactly what they will face in the real world once they graduate.
   
   
3. Do not teach out of a textbook. Bring in personal experiences when you can. In a similar vein, be self-deprecating. Students love it when they hear about a mistake you made or if you struggled with a certain difficult topic when you were a student and how you handled it.
   
   
4. Don't tolerate bad or immature behavior. Gently remind them the first day of class that their high school years are behind them and that someone is paying real money for them to be there. The good students will be fully behind you on this.
   
   
5. As you gain confidence, don't brag and don't slip into even a smidgen of impatience or arrogance.

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B.B. in Dothan, AL: Having been a postsecondary student for 12+ years, my suggestion is to not make obvious, egregious errors that insult your students. For example, from my personal experience in observing teachers:

1. Don't wear baggy shorts that expose your private parts to everyone.
   
   
2. Don't create Powerpoint slides and then read every word on the slide in a halting, droning manner with a thick, barely understandable accent.
   
   
3. Don't use class time to read articles from the local newspaper to 'prove' your eccentric, cockamamie theory that everything is caused by some kind of overly simplistic factor.

It's OK to be a mediocre professor, especially at first. Just don't be a horrible one.

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T.W. in Nashville, TN: After teaching for 35 years in New York, Texas and California, I can say two things about teaching college students with assurance:

1. Your primary focus should be on relationships, and
   
   
2. "It is now!" is always the answer to the question, "Will this be on the test?"

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B.B. in Metairie, LA: I taught undergraduate Physiology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for close to 20 years. At the beginning, I found there were a lot of slackers among the students, who were used to a lot of "rote learning" classes, until they hit mine, which required actually understanding biological mechanisms. So I introduced my lectures to the next class as follows: "I know you've heard this is a tough class in which to get an 'A', and it is. But it's also hard to get an 'F'—you have to skip the spot quizzes (by not attending lectures), fail to show up for the (required) lab exercises, and think you can pass just by memorizing numbers." There were a few nervous sniggers at that. But, apparently, some students didn't take my advice to heart, and I had to award 7 'F' grades in my class at the end of the course, out of about 40 students. I wasn't going to compromise my standards, nor the efforts of the good students, by changing those 'F' grades. That approach worked, as apparently the news spread—I never had to award more than 1 or at most 2 'F' grades ever again.

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M.A.H. in Ithaca, NY: The advice that has had the most impact on my teaching career was about the importance of setting "the bar" at the correct height for your students. If you set a low bar for your students, they will disappoint you every time by just barely clearing the bar. On the other hand, if you set a high bar for your students, they will make you proud when they all (or mostly all) clear your high bar.

Over thirty years in, and I am very proud of my many students who have cleared my high bars, even when others said they would not.

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C.B. in Hamden, CT: Two things to add to the excellent advice already on offer:

1. Build some flexibility into your course requirements: "every student can drop one problem set (or weekly quiz)"; "every student can get one three-day extension." This will save dealing with a large number of sob stories and allow you to stick to your guns on other aspects of the syllabus. It's also fairer to the students who don't have the chutzpah to ask for special treatment.
   
   
2. Don't get bent out of shape about hostile student evaluations! We all get them. But don't ignore the evals altogether—there's useful information in there. The most useful are the criticisms from students who generally liked the course.

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B.D. in Lisle, IL: This is in response to the question of beginning a university teaching position. I have very limited experience at that level, but I offer some tidbits from extensive experience as a high school teacher. They are in no hierarchy:

1. Treat your students like the adults they (almost) are. Always. They don't want to be told what to think or do. They want to see why it matters to them (and you). Engage with them outside of class and outside of the school when you see them. Watch the sports. Go to the concerts. Attend the theatre productions. See the fair presentations. You (and they) will be better for it.
   
   
2. Try to impress no one. Let your teaching and general comportment speak for you. The credibility gained in this way will be deeper, more permanent, and more meaningful to you than the alternative. The only people impressed by style over substance are the occasional idiot administrator, poor colleagues, and not-very-well-informed students.
   
   
3. Know your stuff and deliver good content on a consistent basis. Students will recognize it very quickly and respond well to it. When you don't know something, don't bluff. Admit it. If it was funny, laugh about it publicly. Give praise and thanks to the students that found the deficiency. Then go out and fix the hole in your knowledge before the next class.
   
   
4. Don't lecture students regularly about what is in your dissertation. It MIGHT be worth a day (or 5 minutes of one), but certainly not a week. No one's dissertation is that meaningful to anyone else in the room. It was a means to an end and you know that. Mine didn't change the world and neither did yours.
   
   
5. Work really hard and put in the time. If you can "get by" while not working hard, imagine how good you could be if only you did.
   
   
6. Watch other teachers teach. Many of them are outstanding. You can learn an amazing amount from them. Stealing what works is not only a good idea and an acceptable practice, the other teacher will almost always be flattered by it. You can also learn an equally amazing amount from really poor teachers. Learning what not to do is just as important as learning what to do. There is no exact formula out there for being a good teacher, but there are many practices that will set one in the right direction.
   
   
7. Accept your mistakes with grace and humor. Everyone has bad days. You will too. Accept it. Move on from it and don't let it define you. Have a better day next time.
   
   
8. No one's class is more important than anyone else's class. They all have their audience and students that need the knowledge.
   
   
9. Have a life outside of your classroom. Maybe it's an activity like playing an instrument or being in a sports league. Make it a change of pace from what you do on a daily basis.
   
   
10. Students are the great thing about teaching and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Some will frustrate you, others will make you proud, but interacting with them is truly the joy of being a teacher. Adults, on the other hand...

I close with a couple of anecdotes from my student days that I always thought were instructive. One good. One not so much.

I had a professor who was one of the few people I would call a genius—the kind of person from whom you took a class regardless of your content interest. He would always give his final exam during the last day of class instead of at the assigned time. Then he arranged to meet at the local watering hole (it was a grad level class) for lunch at the assigned time for burgers and beer as a celebration for a job well done—and he paid the tab. Be that guy. Maybe not in that way if it's not you, but find a way to be that guy.

I had a professor who seemingly broke every rule in the "ten things that will surely get you fired, even if you only do one of them" list. However, he managed to do about eight out of ten of them in short succession, such that it didn't even seem possible and he was able to avoid sanction based on this assumption. For a while. It did finally catch up to him but he managed to reflect poorly on himself, the department, the school, and his students before finally finding new employment. Don't be that guy.

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J.S. in Houston, TX: Some arbitrary bits since the good stuff has been covered well by others:

1. Have a bowl of wrapped candy in your office. Offer it to students that stop by.
   
   
2. Do not speak in a smooth, well rehearsed monotone. That puts them to sleep. When I pause for no reason for 10 seconds, even students in deep sleep wake up!
   
   
3. If you are asking questions to the class and nobody answers—maybe you are answering them yourself too quickly. If you wait until the silence becomes uncomfortable, say 10-15 seconds, someone will bite.

My background is that I have been trying to teach computer science for a few decades.

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A.P. in Kitchener, ON, Canada: A bit of advice for first time university/college teachers. Some of it is advice others provided me that I have applied and found useful:

1. The first time you teach a course spend the time so it can be repeated without too much work. Little things that take extra time the first time you teach save time for years. I try and consider universal design for learning principles when creating a course. Essentially, I make my goal that if any student asks for an accommodation I won't have to do any additional work because that's already embedded into my course (e.g., ensuring videos have subtitles turned on, making sure all tests leave plenty of time for students to finish, ensuring I do not use red and green).
   
   
2. Try to use open access textbooks. Students greatly appreciate the cost savings and it increases the chances students will read the material, as costs can cause students to not purchase a book. If you have to use an expensive textbook, put a copy on reserve at the library. (Publishers provide a free copy.)
   
   
3. If your institution has an option to be evaluated by a teaching and learning staff person, take it! I learned a lot from each review I have had over the years.
   
   
4. Read the book Stoner by John Williams (it echoes the advice provided last week on not getting involved in campus politics and a warning about making enemies).
   
   
5. Chunk your class in 7 to 15 minute blocks changing up activities (lecture, then class discussion, then lecture, then a case study in small groups).
   
   
6. Use case studies even if they are not common to your discipline. The book Public Administration: Cases in Managerial Role Playing opens with a good explanation of how to incorporate case studies into your class. Formal cases work (and can be found open access) but pulling something from the news often works even better.

Good luck!

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K.P. in Salem, OR: First, a bit of context about my academic professorial experience: 1 year as a sabbatical replacement at a junior Ivy League college in New England, 5 years as a tenure-track assistant professor at a branch campus of a major research university in Texas, and 27 years at a small liberal arts college in the southeast as a tenure-track assistant professor promoted through the ranks to full professor, during which time I served as a department head and an academic division head for 13 years. I'm now retired. My area of expertise is/was in the natural sciences and mathematics.

I'm going to assume that interacting with and sharing the subject matter in the area(s) of your expertise is one of the great joys of your life. If my assumption is wrong you should perhaps consider a different type of employer.

When you interact with students, let your love of the subject matter shine through. Students will recognize it as genuine and even if they don't "get it"—and you can rest assured that many will not "get it"—they will respect you for it. But never make any comments, regardless of how innocent you think those comments are, that in any way belittles them for not "getting it." In other words, recognize there are different strokes for different folks. Also realize that your course is very likely not the most important thing in the world to most of them, as they will have many other responsibilities. A reasoned dose of empathy and sympathy will do wonders to enhance rapport and make it easier for you to hold firm to your academic standards. You aren't trying to buy good student evaluations, but you do want to convey your love of the subject to your students.

Your other main constituents are your colleagues, which to me means all other faculty, staff, and administrators. To learn the ropes here you need a mentor, and preferably more than one, including one in your department, one in a related department, and one in any other department. If you have been assigned a mentor, bear in mind that the people who made that assignment likely had some ulterior motive(s). Ulterior motives may be good or bad for you, but you need to figure out what those motives are. Beyond that, your mentors need to be people you can trust and who will tell you the way things are (even if it's something you don't want to hear), at least as they see it. In my experience, academic departments want to hire either a puppy or a cat. Your department thinks you are one or the other and the question is "Are they correct?" If they are correct, great, as that minimizes some of the political stress in your life. If they are incorrect you will need to decide how to handle that. As a new kid on the block, you will likely be saddled with some chores you do not enjoy, such as running a seminar program. Accept these chores with grace as they are probably some sort of initiation that most or all of the current department faculty had to endure. Finally, treat staff people with respect, kindness, and appreciation, whether they be in or out of your department. They can make your life a living hell or quite pleasant.

Good luck! I hope this is the beginning of a rewarding career for you.

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N.C. from Columbus, MS: Hi, M.R.! Some thoughts from a faculty member in her 20th year of full-time teaching, in no particular order:

1. Most of your students are not a younger version of you and are never going to love your field the way you do. Model that love anyway. They will respect passionately nerdy more than faux-cool, and they need to know what passionately nerdy looks like.
   
   
2. Anything that gets students talking and solving problems together is good, especially if they are the sort of problems professionals authentically wrestle with in your field. Any activity that lets them make or touch something is also good, and will perk them right up if a class is flagging.
   
   
3. Try not to work harder or care more than they do. You won't succeed at this, but it's a worthwhile maxim to keep in mind anyway.
   
   
4. Play with generative AI just enough to figure out what it is terrible at doing, and make sure your assignments require that thing to be done well.
   
   
5. It will feel amazing some days and terrible on other days; but it's all good in the end. The classes that feel like they went badly are not always so bad from the student's perspective, and even when they are, tomorrow is another day.

Here is the question for next week:

S.H. in Duluth, MN, asks: After reading the responses to the reader question of the week from M.R. in Lowell, I was wondering if I could get the other side of it. I'm a young student who has just started my first semester of university this fall, studying earth science. I was wondering if I could get any advice or suggestions about things I could be doing in college, or stuff that I should avoid doing.

Submit your answers to comments@electoral-vote.com, preferably with subject line "Student Counsel"!

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