An address apropos of nothing
By Tad Gunkelman '97
The present: I'm doing a little illicit Internet surfing on my roommate's computer while she's away at lab. Like the other med students, I was issued a laptop when we matriculated, but I made the mistake of leaving a window open one morning after tea, and a knacker scaled our balcony and nicked it.
Not my fault. I grew up in North Dakota. I clearly underestimated the arboreal acumen of Irish adolescents.
The past: Middlebury's old science center still stands, and I'm shuffling into the main lecture hall to take an exam. I and the other acolytes of BI250 have spent the last torturous weeks feverishly reviewing metabolic pathways in all their complicated glory: the Krebs citric-acid cycle, the electron transport chain, anaerobic respiration, glycolysis. Professor Watters's 12-page exam, however, is exclusively on photosynthesis.
The last time I studied plants was in high school—and then only metaphysically while I lay on my back in a corn row I was meant to be weeding at the time.
Thus, both my present and past are rife with what Middlebury doesn't teach. This neglect is perpetrated willfully by Middlebury faculty, and quite frankly, it's something for which I'm eternally thankful. Let me explain.
In a typical Middlebury exam you're much less likely to be asked "the date of the Treaty of Versailles" (I couldn't even guess) than you are "how to solve World Hunger given only a donkey, two circus performers, and a piece of used chewing gum" (something I feel I could take a fair stab at). In one of Professor Bates's philosophy quizzes, I believe I received full credit for the following answer:
On mules we find two legs behind
Two legs we find before
We stand behind before we find
What the two behind be for
When we're behind the two behind
We find what these be for
So stand before the two behind
Behind the two before
I couldn't even begin to tell you what we were studying at the time.
My point is, I believe Middlebury is more concerned with teaching methods of thinking rather than facts and formulas. In testing photosynthesis when his lectures had almost exclusively focused on eukaryotic metabolism, Professor Watters challenged us to apply a knowledge of molecular process in a foreign context. Memorizing sequences of catalytic enzymes wasn't enough; we had to grasp a deeper meaning.
I'm currently a third-year medical student at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, and nowhere are the benefits of a Middlebury education more apparent than at other institutions. During the Korean War, an American general remarked, "If you want to take a new hill, you send in the Irish. If you want to defend a hill you've already taken, you send in the British." Similarly, if you want to challenge existing conventions, you call upon Middle-bury students. If you'd like to defend the status quo, perhaps you should recruit students from other schools.
The Nepali Himalayas, April 1998: After a hard day of trekking, I'm sitting down to the cribbage board and a deep-fried Snickers bar when a French climber accuses me of being a Middlebury graduate. How did he know?
"My wife went to Middlebury," he says. "Midd grads just have a certain joie de vivre."
Middlebury and Ireland, then, share something in common. The impish irreverence inspiring a (no-doubt) needy knacker to abscond with my laptop is the same deliberate disrespect the College shows facts and figures. The true value of a Middlebury education lies in what Middlebury doesn't teach.
The present again: In a few short hours I am to deliver an address to the governing council of the Royal College of Surgeons. RCSI is renovating its preclinical curriculum, and I've volunteered to tell them "How Not to Teach." Perhaps med school isn't the right venue to advocate fewer facts and figures. Perhaps delivering no address at all would be better than giving an address apropos of "nothing," but then that would leave me with a donkey, two circus performers, and a piece of used chewing gum. Oh well, if nothing else comes of it, at least there are refreshments and tea afterwards. I'll just remember not to leave the window open.