Teach A New and Uncomfortable Class.
“I learned the most in my life, just being forced to teach something where you are completely uncomfortable.”
The quote above, by Bruno Maçāes in an interview with Tyler Cowen, reminds me of Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies card deck. Each card shares a random prompt that helps you out of a creative rut. Eno would use the deck when producing albums. Once, I read, he had a band switch instruments (or, play with their non-dominant hand). Even if the results weren’t publishable, the exercise gave the band a fresh perspective (and unexpected sound).
I’ve shared here before about how much I learn from teaching. I may have also mentioned that I was extremely uncomfortable (and tremendously anxious) before walking into a user-centered design (UCD) lecturer position at DAAP. At one point, I feared I was having a nervous breakdown the day after finishing my first lecture. I had no business teaching that class, at least I thought. Now, I’ve taught the class three times, and I recently committed to teaching it again in the fall (2020). By no means am I an expert, but through teaching (and taking classes) I’m a lot more confident than I was three years ago. I’ve learned a lot.
Perhaps, it’s time to teach a new and uncomfortable class?
Here’s more from the Maçāes interview transcript for context:
COWEN: At the margin, what’s the form or method of learning most undervalued by others? Is it travel, talking to people, reading books, studying with Harvey Mansfield, something else, spending time on Twitter?
MAÇÃES: Looking at my past experience, I had a job for a few years in Berlin in a very unusual university where I could decide the courses that I would teach. So I taught Darwin. I taught Copernicus. I taught economics, even though I don’t have a PhD in economics. That was wonderful.
I think if universities could do that, those three years were the three years I learned the most in my life, just being forced to teach something where you are completely uncomfortable. It’s one thing to try to learn something where you’re uncomfortable, but think about teaching it. That was a very intense and productive time of my life.
Source: https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/bruno-macaes/