By Michael Leppert
The Indiana Citizen
May 7, 2025
In “Mother Night,” Kurt Vonnegut wrote: “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” I might add: “And for how long.”
I was invited to join a small group of students last week to celebrate the completion of their undergraduate degrees. We first met four years ago, and I remember the moment vividly. It was my first day as a full-time instructor at an elite business school and they were freshmen in their first week of classes.
Heading into the fourth lecture of that first day, I wasn’t convinced I had made the right decision to leave a lucrative private sector career to teach. I didn’t know how the technology in the classroom worked. I didn’t know I could move the furniture around any way I wanted. I was so consumed with my own ignorance that I hadn’t even considered the far more unsettled condition of these young people. They expected me to be brilliant, to be a source of stability in the middle of the chaos of their first week of college.
I wasn’t brilliant. I was pretending. And I wasn’t pretending very well.
The first three classes that day were filled with students who were nervously silent. My own nervousness didn’t help. But when I entered that last class of the day, the students were talking and laughing with each other like they were old friends, hardly noticing that the evil professor had arrived. One of them made eye contact with me and I asked, “What, did all of you go to high school together?” She looked at me curiously, seemingly wondering if I had forgotten that it was the first day of school, and said, “uh, we just met.” That moment changed everything for me.
Four years later, the first days of my semesters are wildly different. I am a little evil, but not accidentally. I am a little anxious, but only because I know the fun that lies ahead. I’m more than a little curious about my new students. I’m truly fascinated by them. And that curiosity is everything.
I teach speech and writing to students who didn’t go to college to learn either. They can all follow instruction on rhetoric and persuasiveness, and they all know what a complete sentence is. Teaching that stuff has become the easy part. The real challenge is helping them find their voice.
In January, a student wrote extensively how she and I would both be wasting our time trying to get her to become a public speaker. She went on and on about all of the deficiencies that would prevent her from doing well at any of it, writing: “It is hard to think that I will be able to fake my confidence and take risks…because I am not going to be a good public speaker if I keep thinking and acting how I do now.”
Four years ago, I don’t know what I would have done. This semester, I quickly wrote back, “I’m convinced we can make some of this better if we try.” I asked her to stay after class the next day and we got busy on it.
Oh my, did we make it better! Throughout the semester, we had talked about her “conversation partners” as examples of how she speaks in her most comfortable situations, and she told me about her mom. After her final presentation, I asked her what her mom thought about the progress she had made, and she confessed, “I haven’t even told her I’m taking a speech class.” It was as if she didn’t think her mom would believe she was doing such a thing.
I hope she shows her mom the video recordings of the evidence. If she doesn’t, I might.
At the celebration with my soon-to-be graduates last week, we talked about the separate trips they all took abroad during their time in school. While I was listening to their stories, there was almost no mention of the places themselves, whether it was Italy, Spain or Thailand. The tales were exclusively about people, either the people they went with or the people they met.
Strangers often ask me where or what I teach. And I answer them, wrongfully assuming they will envision what I do. Where and what isn’t all that important. Who I teach is.
“Brilliant young people” is the answer.
This semester ended with laughs, hugs and tears as they usually do these days. Most recall the hurried first day that is now a feature of my classes. They question why I start so fast, because “uh, we just met.”
My graduates this year taught me how to quit wasting time. We really only have a little of it for the pretending.
Michael Leppert is an author, educator and a communication consultant in Indianapolis. He writes about government, politics and culture at MichaelLeppert.com. The views and opinions expressed are those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Indiana Citizen or any other affiliated organization.
