… Now, the fall of 1995, I had a window view that brought in the morning sun as I sat there in a former assistant dean suit, a deep olive Jones New York, and pondered how to make that year count. I looked forward to my teaching assignments, especially because I’d been able to hand pick them the spring before. Seeking a challenge, I’d assigned myself, along with Jill, a colleague from psychiatric nursing, a few sections of a problematic seminar course. In that course, students did not understand, yet, that seminars were not lecture courses. They wrote scathing evaluations saying they didn’t pay the high tuition to hear their fellow students talk. And, in turn, the faculty had unloaded their frustrations on me.

I was certain I could turn the seminar course around; I was immediately deflated. …