“Um… uh… er… yes…? Well… uh… uh… you, uh, see…”

I was weeping with shame. I had been called on without warning, without exactly having “done” the reading. All I could do was sputter nonsense.

I hoped that by sputtering enough nonsense, my professor would understand that I had either been put under a petrificus totalus curse or hadn’t done the reading and she would then permit me the mercy of moving on to a better student.

No diggity.

And so I did something I rarely do: I told the truth.

“I, uh… I didn’t get, um… as thoroughly as I, uh…” I whimpered. So, I suppose I did lie a little. By “thoroughly” I meant “at all.”

It had been eons since I last felt that guilty. I didn’t intentionally flake out; midterm season is rough. And really, it only hurts me as the class in question is my favorite.

After my shameful admittance, though, something interesting happened: the professor consoled me. She almost apologized for calling on me. Sure, my entire body ached mercilessly. And I’m pretty sure that every other student was glaring through my soul for the next two and a half hours. But the professor was the most benevolent of dictators.

Didn’t I deserve to be chewed out a bit? Probably. In thinking about it, though, I had to conclude that our professors never chew us out, at least in public.

Think about it — how often does somebody, clearly having not touched that day’s reading, let total nonsense fall from his or her mouth? And the professor, 9.8 out of 10 times, simply says “Thank you” or “Okay.” Probably a quarter of students per class session bullshit their way through intellectual discourse. Intentionally or otherwise, we often find ourselves plainly insulting some of the most brilliant minds in the world.

Are we Ivy League students above reprimand?

Shaming is an important part of our country’s torture policy; I don’t see why it doesn’t have a more prominent place in academia. Shaming will work. It’s certainly better than nothing. We are busy, yes, but we should be held more publicly accountable for our lack of preparedness. That way, there’s another impetus for us to come to class prepared and our final grade is not an unexpected disappointment.

Of course, the worst part isn’t the embarrassment — it’s losing the respect of your professors.

Editor’s note: This article was edited at 8:22pm on Wednesday, October 15 to correct a grammatical error.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 10th, 2008 at 4:00 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.