What has always drawn me to the Twilight Zone ever since I was a kid was the surreal twists that screwed some poor sap's fate. Tonight's episode on MeTV was one that I had never seen before, and it was very different from TZ's usual fare, and as a young college professor myself, it inspired me the way few things do. The great Donald Pleasance does a wonderful job learning what it truly means to be a professor and why we do the things we do. Sappy, yes. Sentimental, yes. Tear-jerking, yes. But the tears are tears of beauty at a truly beautiful Twilight Zone.
The central quote of this show (and it's a quote I've bookmarked) is Horace Mann's quote "Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity." The bane of our profession is the hollowness of what we do, with students going through the motions, absorbing just enough to regurgitate what passes for knowledge on the test, but not really learning anything. Or at least so we think. And, in academia, if we are taught one thing in grad school, it is how to think. How to question and double-think everything, including what we do for a living. We think we have no impact, where our impact is far, far deeper, as Donald Pleasance's character learns. Well worth the watch.
The central quote of this show (and it's a quote I've bookmarked) is Horace Mann's quote "Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity." The bane of our profession is the hollowness of what we do, with students going through the motions, absorbing just enough to regurgitate what passes for knowledge on the test, but not really learning anything. Or at least so we think. And, in academia, if we are taught one thing in grad school, it is how to think. How to question and double-think everything, including what we do for a living. We think we have no impact, where our impact is far, far deeper, as Donald Pleasance's character learns. Well worth the watch.