When I went back into the classroom at Washington University a few years ago after 25 years away from teaching, I could see right away that admissions standards and student quality had elevated since I was last a teacher or student there. I saw that new strategies and techniques were needed to be an effective teacher. I found myself teaching College Writing, the foundation writing course, to students who mostly have a firm foundation in writing the basic college essay forms. What they needed, I realized, was to try new forms, to try new things they don’t know how to do and that they would not be able to do as well as they write conventional essays. They needed to risk failure. They needed to take risks.
I have been finding ways to incentivize taking risks in my teaching, which means, in a competitive academic environment, finding ways to base grades, in part, on taking risks. I also force myself to model taking risks by trying new things as a teacher and telling them this is a new thing, so it might not go as well as my tried and true strategies. I risk failure before them. I take risks.
Last semester, I had a student who plays rock drums. For his culminating research essay, he chose to write about the seminal rock band the Yardbirds. To earn the point for taking risks on this assignment, he decided to record himself playing four pivotal Yardbird songs that he writes about in the essay, playing not only drums, his proven instrument, but also guitar, which he was just learning how to play. I approved.
When you take risks, you encounter new obstacles. Matthew reported that he was having difficulty reserving a space on campus - COVID made this more challenging than ever - to set up and record his drums. I told him (imagine geezer voice here) that when I was his age, we broke into the then-new business school and rehearsed in one of their nice lecture halls. But then, we were a full rock band, not one lonely drummer learning guitar, we had never even imagined a pandemic, and a college professor should probably not suggest that one of his students commit a crime to complete an assignment. Instead, I decided to take a risk of my own.
Matthew, the drummer, was a transfer student starting at Washington University after completing two years at community college in San Jose. So, he was a junior in a classroom of freshman - and someone savvy enough to set himself up to get a degree from Washington University at roughly half the price. I decided to ask my musical partner David Melson - we have been making music together since we were Matthew’s age, more than half of our lives ago - if he would record Matthew in his home studio. That was a bit of a risk, inviting a student into the home of a friend who is not affiliated with the university, and it was equally a risk for Matthew to accept. We all went for it.
I wanted to be there - it was my idea, and I was the connection between them - but research essay drafts were due the night before the session, and Matthew did not perform up to his potential on that draft. I could not get with being the tough guy coach in my critique that night and the fun guy teacher at the session the next day, so I asked Dave if he would proceed without me. He said sure. (This, as you will see, would become a pattern.) Their session went well (with Dave joining Matthew on bass, another future pattern), Matthew's risk paid off, his research essay rewrite was strong, and he earned an A in my class.
Dave and I drive down to Nashville at least once a year to record new songs with our lifelong musical partner (he was there for those business school break-ins) Elijah "Lij" Shaw at his studio, the Toy Box. The drummer in our musical partnership, Matt Fuller, lives in Los Angeles and can't make most of these sessions, so we usually use one of the young musicians who have interned at the Toy Box and jump at the chance to develop their relationship with Lij. But now, I had an idea.
I asked Dave what he thought of Matthew's drumming and attitude, based on their Yardbirds session in his basement, and Dave said that Matthew was perfectly fine. Did I think he could hold up at one of our Toy Box sessions? Dave said he didn't see why not.
It would be a risk to ask a former student - as in, a student in my class the exact previous semester - to hop in a car with me and one of my oldest friends and drive to Nashville for a recording session. Matthew would spend a long weekend with his former professor and two of the professor's friends who speak in psychic shorthand and complete each other's sentences. We share decades-old inside jokes by quoting fragments of the punch lines. We have been doing this for longer than Matthew has been alive. We also drink a lot - sometimes, a scary lot - of beer during these sessions. There was no guarantee the kid would even enjoy playing our songs, and the weakest performer in the project is his former professor, me, the front man in the traveling rock band who could never really sing and was now just a weak lead singer in a studio project that didn't even gig or tour.
I took the risk. After all, I need to model what I teach, practice what I preach. I invited Matthew - and told my current students that I was doing this. I invited Matthew to our next session in Nashville. He took the risk. He accepted the offer.
Leading up to the session, I checked in with Matthew a few times, giving him an opportunity to get cold feet or confess that his semester (now, the first semester of his senior year) was overwhelming him. I'm good, he kept assuring me. I'm good to go.
As we got right up on the session (Halloween weekend), I suddenly realized that I was the one who was going to have to bail, due to pressing personal and professional issues that needed my immediate attention. Unusually for one of our sessions, the show could go on without me - Lij and Dave have been doing a lot of songwriting without me, other than my words or poetic texts that I selected for a project. With my encouragement, they both have been writing and singing more lead vocals. They wanted the show to go on, so I asked Matthew, which was another risk for both me to ask and for him to accept - did my former student want to go on this musical interstate journey with me and my friends even after I dropped out? We took the risk. They went to Nashville without me.
Dave and Matthew just got back from Nashville late last night, and I have not talked to anyone about how it went, how it really went, on a human level, awkward moments and all. The only inkling of awkward I have heard is that Matthew, it turns out, is a morning person, whereas our sessions tend to go from noon to question mark. The Saturday session, for example, wrapped up at 5 am Sunday for Dave and Lij, whereas Matthew crashed at 2 am. I assume he used his mornings to do school work. I hope to hear more about the human side of the session eventually.
As for the music, the risk really paid off for our project. "The kid from San Jose is fitting right in!" was my first message to the guys, as I listened to a live feed of the session in St. Louis. "Great parts and feel, Matthew." I elaborated in a voice memo, saying that Matthew plays drums with the instinct of a songwriter, always feeling the form and punctuating the changes. As rough mixes began to roll in, I heard something very different in the performance. People who like our music tend to forgive a little looseness in the playing in exchange for spontaneity and feeling, but I was hearing a tighter performance with no loss of spontaneity or feeling. It was really exciting. I heard it especially in the rhythm section: Matthew and Dave.
"Dave always plays uber-melodic bass because he can but also to compensate for some wobble," I texted the group. "Take away the wobble and Dave hammers the pocket, being more selective and effective in his melodic departures. It's legitimately new and better."
Take risks - it's how you arrive at work that is legitimately new and better.
