I turned in my grades last Friday, so another semester of teaching is behind me. Every time I teach, it occurs to me how my pop culture radar is less and less finely-tuned, and that I'm definitely not the same age as my students any more. There was one particular incident this semester that really cemented for me that I've moved beyond that "slightly older peer" stage.
During the evolution unit, we talked about a branch of evolutionary biology that marries evolutionary theory with developmental biology (the study of how organisms develop from fertilization through adulthood). The classic example of this is how vertebrate embryos superficially resemble each other during their early phases of development. Anyway, this evolutionary / developmental biology subfield is often abbreviated as evo-devo. I made a crack during discussion about how I couldn't help but think of the band Devo whenever this topic came up, and I was met with universal silence. It wasn't my best material, so I shrugged and moved on.
The way my teaching schedule worked this semester, we would have an hour discussion and then all walk upstairs together for the lab. While we were heading to the lab room, I started thinking about my Devo comment, and it occurred to me that the blank looks I got were not the same as the "that was a pretty lame joke, Mark" looks that I'm all-too familiar with. So before I started my pre-lab lecture, I came right out and asked my students if they knew who Devo was. The response was the same roomful of blank stares I'd gotten earlier, although some of them were tinged with a mild sympathy, as if they saw the "I'm over thirty" anxiety I was feeling. "You know, 'Whip It'," I tried. Relief, as many heads started nodding. That behind me, I was able to press on with that week's lab. Nevertheless, I was struck by the fact that one of the pop cultural touchstones of my childhood was just a foggy, VH-1-cultivated memory for them. (They probably also don't remember when VH-1 was a soft rock version of MTV.)
Anne tried to reassure me that Devo is a somewhat obscure reference, but I refused to be mollified. I started doing the math and realized that the bands of my youth, Metallica, for example, were about as contemporary to these college sophomores as Led Zeppelin was to me. Yes, today's classic rock was new when I was in high school. I instantly regretted following that line of thought. (And apologies to everyone who reads this who also went to high school around the same time.) One of the things that I like about the prospect of spending my career working in a college is the constant infusion of youthful people. I just don't know if I'm quite ready to come to terms with the fact that I won't necessarily be eternally youthful, too.
Labels: aging, music, teaching
