Listen.
As I start a new semester, I am preparing to give a series of introductory lectures to my students in which I will explain what they will need to do in order to be successful in my class. I do this because they see life as a series of hoops to jump through, one of them being college, which is itself a series of hoops to jump through called "classes." In these classes, they will be required to jump through another series of hoops (as they see it) called, variously: papers, projects, quizzes, exams, presentations, lectures, homework, labs, and sometimes other imaginative duties that all fall under the rubric of "assignments." But they are all seen as hoops.
Students like their hoops to be spelled out for them so that they know exactly what to expect, and, if possible, given a precise set of instructions so that if they follow them, then they will be assured of the desired outcome. Of course this is not how the world works, but this is how they have been taught that it works, so this is what they expect. It would be folly to think that if you simply follow an explicit set of directions in the necessary order, that unfailingly you will be rewarded with a job, a spouse, a secure retirement, health, wealth, or happiness, to say nothing of a superior grade in a college class. IKEA works that way; if you pay your money, bring your merchandise home in one piece, and follow the directions, you WILL be rewarded in the end with a perfectly serviceable, sensibly priced, and reasonably fashionable book case, twin bed, bread box or what have you. The rest of the world is fraught with a much greater degree of uncertainty.
Nevertheless, I inform my students on day one of what they will need to do if they want to be successful in my class. Unfortunately, very few people actually jump through the hoops I put before them. The first hoop is simply to come to class. Regularly. Some students do quite well with this one, others, not so much. But that is only ONE of the hoops. Another one is that you have to read your textbook. I have had classes where not a single student had read the textbook, and were indeed astonished by what I had to tell them in class because they had never heard of such things before, despite the fact that they would have all been familiar with it to some degree if they had simply read their textbook.
The hoop that I find most difficult for students to successfully navigate is my injunction to take notes. Many students simply can't. The reason that they can't is because they have no listening skills. They can copy any text that I project on the screen (thanks to the wonders of powerpoint), but if I put up a lecture slide that says "The five things you will need to know for the exam," and then I list and explain the five things verbally, all that will make it into their notebooks is, literally, "The five things you will need to know for the exam."
This is a visual generation, I am told, where youths are more at home with a computer screen watching videos than reading text or listening to anything other than dialogue from a Hollywood film (most of which are 3D now to REALLY satisfy that visual craving) or pop music. While I was born in the era of television, my parents spent most of their childhood listening to the radio, and thus were quite adept at listening and following along with a narrative plot or, more important, the gist of a discussion or an explanation.
Listening is a lost art in to a great extent, but given the media-saturated world that we live in, this is really the golden age of storytelling in some ways. I am listing below a few resources to give people an opportunity to engage in some world class listening, to listen to stories that will make you wait ten minutes before leaving the house because you want to hear the end of the story. These are stories that could be considered the auditory equivalent of a book you can't put down. I'm hoping that after being familiar with the joys of listening, students might become recreational listeners on their own, and thus develop a skill that will do them very well in college, and indeed, in just about every aspect of life. When have you ever heard someone say of someone else "That person just listens too much"?
So here is my quick, lamentably incomplete list of incredible listening opportunities:
The Moth:
http://themoth.org/
A strange name, to be sure, but The Moth is a gathering in New York City held regularly where people with the most incredible stories share them with the audience. They are recorded for "The Moth Radio Hour" and many are available here for download as a podcast.
This American Life:
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/
This American Life is produced in association with Chicago Public Radio by the now quite famous Ira Glass. As he explains at the beginning of every podcast, in each episode the producers pick a theme and then broadcast two, three, four, or maybe just one particularly engaging story that speaks to that theme.
Snap Judgement:
http://snapjudgment.org/
Another program in the vein of the two listed above.
The Third Coast International Audio Festival:
http://thirdcoastfestival.org/
A juried competition of mostly documentary stories that will keep you riveted. Produced in Chicago, hence the name "Third Coast." Re: Sound (
http://www.thirdcoastfestival.org/library/collections/2-re-sound) is a program that is associated with the festival and rebroadcasts clips.
Finally, I want to put in a plug for one of my favorite authors, Kurt Vonnegut. Among his many excellent works is a novel entitled "Breakfast of Champions," where his narrator repeatedly begins passages with the word "Listen." Vonnegut like to insert little narrative quirks like that in many of his books. At any rate, As delightful as it is to read Vonnegut's work, it's particularly satisfying for me to hear the author read his own work. And here, thanks to the usually visual medium of YouTube, I invite you to hear a 1970 recording of Vonnegut reading from his (then) forthcoming novel "Breakfast of Champions."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXHxlHXSXoE
Listen.
