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| A winding road. We'll get back to the point eventually! |
I found myself on a
tangent while teaching last semester. Perhaps it was because the conversation was a little
slow to start, but I was talking about something and it made me think of Martin Pernick's work on anesthesia and the debates surrounding its initial use. I mentioned
this-- talking about how there were moral concerns about using anesthesia as well as
practical safety questions. Was it right for people to avoid god-given pain? Would patients be subjected to immoral treatment from doctors if they were not awake to advocate for themselves?
As I talked about this, it was as if a light went on. Although everyone hadn't exactly been ignoring me before, they
were now attentive in a different way. They laughed a bit at the unfamiliarity of the idea, about
its seeming irrationality.
In that moment, I realized that I tried to rarely diverge from the point. I also realized that perhaps it was a
mistake not to diverge a bit more often. With a rush I remembered one of my favorite undergraduate professors throwing out the phrase "if you want to
know more" every now and then, when a book came to mind or a topic seemed
too big to tackle at the moment. I didn't always follow up on those
recommendations, but the moments represented something larger to me-- the excitement of a wider world that I
knew of yet. Those divergences didn't just break up the rhythm of a typical
class section, although sure, they did that too. They also represented the
wealth of knowledge that one could be interested in. It showed my professor's
passion for a grand variety of material I had never even begun to consider.
In the past I have
avoided digression as much as possible because I have been afraid of totally
losing the plot, or of droning on and boring everyone. And that's definitely a potential to worry about-- we only have so much time in a fifty-minute class. But this experience
taught me that a well timed, well chosen digression can rejuvenate a class, and
perhaps suggest that even if they are not currently consumed by the
intellectual debates in front of them, there may be things out there they have
never considered being interested by before.
Do you take tangents? How do you know when to cut them off and when to let them grow?
Related Links:
If you want to know more, a review of The Calculus of Suffering.
Some nitty gritty discussion about digressions in relation to English for Academic Purposes (EAP).
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