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Last Monday, members of ENGL1041 bore witness to the unfolding of an ironic tragedy. Students report that over the course of one class period, they lost a total 15 minutes of class time as a result of easily solvable difficulties surrounding a DVD player.
The trouble began when Professor Arthur Remold, a published author with a Ph.D., decided he would "enliven" his class by screening a few relevant scenes from the cinematic versions of the assigned texts. Remold explained that he thought the exercise would "be fun" and that it could provide "a nice starting point for discussion." Unfortunately, things did not go as smoothly as planned. Remold began experiencing difficulties almost immediately: "I put the disc in, but the screen stayed blue, it just never came up. At home all I do is just put in the disc."
Disheartened by the setback, but unwilling to give up, Professor Remold asked the class for help, assuming at least one of them would have significant experience with technology. While his assumption was correct-with half the students reporting moderate to high levels of technical proficiency-none of them actually assisted their professor, instead choosing to fidget silently in their seats and to mutter plausible solutions under their breaths. Martin Kipperman '11 recognized the problem immediately, recalling that "All he had to do was switch the input to DVD, it was one button." And yet, despite Kipperman's quick diagnosis, he refrained from offering assistance, instead checking the weather on his smartphone. "I didn't want to seem like a nerd or something, y'know?" Other classmates expressed similar fears of being seen as a "dork," "geek," or "that guy". As Nick Wentworth '12-a Computer Science concentrator pursuing an honors degree-put it: "That's just not really my thing."
Despite their lack of support, students of the class seemed to express genuine sympathy for the professor's misguided efforts. "It was really sad to watch him up there, fiddling with a remote control that only works with the stereo," said Kipperman. "I honestly just wanted to watch the videos." After 15 minutes of fumbling, Katie Han '13 finally and impatiently elected to "see what she could do"; moments later, the "problem" was solved. When recalling the turn of events Remold still feels lucky that he was fortunate enough to have had a real "technology wizard" in the class.
After returning to her seat, Han and the rest of her classmates waited as Remold tediously fast-forwarded-rather than chapter selecting-to the proper place. In the end, however, the students reported that they found the clips to be "interesting" and "thought provoking," despite the fact that they were accompanied by Russian subtitles, which Remold had found impossible to turn off.
