Week by Week, Hour by Hour (A Teacher's Journal of a General Studies Course)

Authors

Francis L. Gross, Western Michigan University

Abstract

The confused motorist stopped by the watermelon stand on a dusty back road in Eastern Kansas. The weather was July-drip. The sunny kind of drip, the kind where the only drip is trickling down from a wet slot on your shirt to where your belt bunches the shirt up on your hips. "How do you get to Topeka?" said the tourist. The reply from an old man in overalls, "If I was you, Mister, I sure as hell wouldn't start from here."

There isn't anyplace else to start, except from where you are, on a trip. So, I'm going to ask you to go with me on a trip through a part of a course entitled Post Freudian Thought. It's a general studies course at Western Michigan University. My notion is that many of us who are teaching interdisciplinary courses on the undergraduate level have the feeling that our description of the work we are attempting, the journey we are taking, that we always are starting at the wrong place, maybe on the wrong foot.

I want very much to talk about my work, and so, wrong place or not, I'm just going to take you with me, hour by hour through a portion of this course. To do so for the whole course might be tedious. We will begin, then, at the start of the second of two main blocks of the course, centering around Erikson's thoughts on Identity.

Recommended Citation

Gross, Francis L. (1976) "Week by Week, Hour by Hour (A Teacher's Journal of a General Studies Course)," Perspectives (1969-1979): Vol. 8: No. 1, Article 4.
Available at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/perspectives/vol8/iss1/4