Last lecture

I presented my last lecture class today in Bratislava, a one-time seminar presentation for 10 doctoral students on aesthetic theory in the U.S. in the 20th century, focussing on key figures from John Dewey to Monroe Beardsley to Arthur Danto.

I'm feeling a little sentimental today as I reflect on the past few months. Teaching here has been an extraordinary experience for me. I shall always be grateful for the patience, helpfulness, and graciousness of my students and colleagues. I have learned so much from them and hope I have conveyed some worthwhile insights in my teaching.

I will miss these funky old buildings with fascinating histories. I taught my aesthetics classes here, in a century-old building, once a Slovak orphanage. Not exactly hi-tech, but that orange plug on the wall in front was all I needed for my plug adaptor, laptop, and mini-projector to show PowerPoint on that white wall. Notice how clean that blackboard is. A cleaning woman visits every classroom after every class to clean the blackboard, empty trash, and pick up litter. At my California campus, we consider ourselves lucky to get cleaning services once a week.

I will miss the surprises everywhere I turn, like the poster of Lenin on that middle balcony on the back of an apartment facing the classroom building. It's illegal here to publicly display a swastika (a topic we discussed in my class on "Free Speech in Contemporary Democracies"), but Lenin is still censor-free. And notice the double windows I shot this from -- the standard here in all the buildings and my flat, with a good 6" between the two sets of windows -- something I'd never seen before.

I will really, really, really miss the great coffee from this machine in the hallway. A nice frothy cappuccino costs only 10 SKK ($0.40). At the end of the hall is the door to my aesthetics classroom.

I will not miss this staircase. Elegant and historic, yes, but no fun in a building with no lifts and my classrooms one or two floors up from street level. The main thing I dreaded about teaching days was lugging my computer case up and down these stairs.

My students and I still have a lot of work to do to complete the term. All of them had to write papers, which were due yesterday. My goal is to have all of them graded, with comments, no later than their final exams, which are the week of January 7. The grade is based on their ideas, but I also correct their English to help them improve -- although my grade is not based on their English proficiency, as I constantly reassure them. I will spend the week of January 14 marking the finals and meeting with my department head to turn in my records and final course grades. I fly back to the U.S. January 22; that gives me a few days to recover from the 9-hour time difference before classes start at Cal State January 28.

NOTE: Click on any image in this blog to see it full-size.