Teaching Imperfection

I'm a bit of a self-help book junkie, although I'm pretty picky about which books I buy/ like/ admit to reading. Currently I'm reading The Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown (published by Hazelden, naturally). The fact that I'm even mentioning it means that I like it. I love Brown's writing style, which is self-reflective and pretty funny. Brown, a prof at University of Houston, researches shame and uses her own experiences of dealing with shame to help her reader work through issues related to perfectionism. I like it and am finding it really insightful.

One of the things that Brown talks about is how embracing our imperfections becomes a way of becoming more compassionate and courageous. As the title of her book suggests, these are the gifts of imperfection. In some sense, this is what I call a "no-duh" observation. It's so obvious and rings true. Still, my tendency is to try to hide my imperfections, shake them off, make light of them, secretly be ashamed of them or obsess over them. (The last option is my favorite course of action.) What if I did embrace them? What might my life look like? I definitely think I would be much happier, but the thought is somewhat intimidating.

As I've been thinking about imperfections and how to embrace them, I noticed something about how I work with my undergraduate research (UR) students. My university is very excited about UR and does a lot to support it. I've been actively involved in mentoring students, including mentoring them over the summer for intensive projects, and have even published a bit on mentoring UR in my field. The students who sign up for UR, especially the summer programs, tend to be perfectionists. They are honor students who take 18-20 hours a semester, volunteer for countless service projects, travel abroad at the drop of a hat, work part time on campus, get straight "A"s, juggle fire batons, rescue small animals from burning buildings, invent new technologies to save the world, etc. Most of them have never had to rewrite a paper, had a professor challenge their perspectives or had to toss out a thesis on which they've been working. But this is exactly what the UR experience is about. They sign up for extended research projects and rarely do they realize that a bulk of the experience will involve dead ends, reworking, rewriting, rethinking--imperfections.

So, how do I deal with my perfectionist students who are coming face to face with their imperfections? I remind them that no one is perfect and that research is about false starts, second chances and "shitty first-drafts" (to quote Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird). I tell them that no one expects perfection, that the idea is to think about a problem or topic in a new way as a means of furthering the conversation not ending the conversation. I even tell them stories about my own writing mishaps, published mistakes and the like, as well as the stories shared with me by own mentors. "Look at us! We're all imperfect and incomplete! That's part of being humans and scholars!" In other words, when sitting down with a student to talk about the difficulties of research and the reality of imperfection and failure, I show compassion. I show compassion to my students! I'm living and experiencing what Brown discusses, using the gifts of my own imperfection to show kindness toward others and to mentor others. Maybe now that I see this, I can work on channeling some of that kindness toward myself.

Did I Stutter?

Talk about procrastination while writing a dissertation. As I was supposedly trying to finish my diss, I had the crazy idea that I should start a comic strip and online zine. It had various names, "Did I Stutter?" and "AnxietyGirl" being the top two contenders. Recently, I stumbled across some of my illustrations. This one is still relevant and kind of cracks me up. Enjoy!

Dismantling Anti-Jewish Thinking in Intro to the NT?

As someone who teaches New Testament in a mid-sized liberal arts college, one of the biggest challenges I face is the insidiousness of anti-Jewish perspectives among many of my Christian, even culturally Christian, students. Students are not overtly anti-Semitic--they don't use slanderous language or ethnic stereo-types. Yet, when they read the New Testament, the Gospels in particular, they have an incredibly difficult time understanding that the depiction of Jewish groups in these texts are 1) the result of intra-Jewish conversation and conflict and 2) part of the authors' literary strategies. Students (including some adults I've had the opportunity to teach in church settings) tend to embrace the gnostic/ Marcionite perspective regarding the character of the divine. I can't even count how often I've heard a student say something along the lines of, "The God of the NT is so loving in comparison to the God of the OT." In other words, "the God" of the OT is described as vengeful, unloving, bloodthirsty, etc. My first response, as someone who's research is on the Apocalypse, is, "Have you read the Book of Revelation?" Yet, no matter how often I remind my class that "the God" of the NT is the same as the divine of the Jewish Scriptures and writings, from an early Christian and Christian perspective, there are always students who can not or will not shake this dichotomy. A-J Levine, in a speech at UNC-Greensboro a few years ago, explained that she responds to this by referencing the 23rd Psalm, an oft-memorized passage in Christian Sunday Schools: "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want/ He biddeth me to lie down in green pastures/ He restoreth my soul." (Of course, when I grew up we memorized this in the KJV. Old school, represent!) Even this sometimes falls on deaf ears, as students explain that in "most of the OT" God is a big meany.

So for many students (of course not all!) the multiple depictions of the divine in the Hebrew Bible are diminished into an image of an ogre and the depictions of a wrathful and justice-seeking God of the NT are dismissed as marginal. Revelation is at the end of the canon for a reason . . . it's not really meant to be read or taken seriously. (Of course, for some students, these perspectives are held deeply because they've heard them all their lives, from church pulpits, Sunday school teachers, etc. But that's a whole other can of worms.)

In light of this, I do try to find avenues for dismantling anti-Jewish thinking in my NT courses. In fact, this is one of the "unstated goals" of my Introduction to the New Testament and Early Christian Literature course. But as I write this, I am struck by the fact that, perhaps, I need to be more upfront with this goal. Maybe it is time to name this, along with uncovering how NT texts have been used to justify slave-holding and to oppress women, as one of my central student learning outcomes. In doing this, I think I also need to find new strategies for challenging these perspectives, new strategies for unsettling this simplistic and hurtful thinking. This is one thing I hope to think about this summer as I rework my Intro syllabus. Hopefully, I can begin to share some of these here.

Books to guide me as I explore these questions:

• bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress.
• Terrance Donaldson, Jews and Anti-Judaism in the New Testament: Decision Points and Divergent Traditions.
  
• Amy-Jill Levine, The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus.

And, of course, I'm always happy for suggestions and insights.