The Socratic Method

By Christopher D'Agostino

“Bueller, Bueller, Bueller….”

“Chris, wake up, wake up” shaking me awake was my friend and study partner Colleen.  “You fell asleep while you were reading your economics book”.  

I slowly picked my head up and removed the paper stuck to my face and tiredly responded with “Man, that stuff is so dry.  I just can’t keep my eyes open reading it.  The worst parts are the lectures. I mean I wish I could record the professor’s voice and play it back when I need to go to sleep at night”.  Colleen gave a little chuckle but I knew deep down she loved economics and was meant to be a business major. We gathered our items and headed out of the building where I was suppose to be reading my economics homework and headed back toward our dorms.  

“Maybe you should switch majors from business to undecided” Colleen remarked as I held the door open for her. “You can take a few random classes and then decide where to go from there.”

“I’ll meet with my advisor tomorrow and talk to him about it, maybe I'll try computer programing.  I heard there is good money in that line of work”  

    I met with my advisor and he advised I finish my first semester at the school and then switch to an undecided major where I can go down several paths and try a few different courses and then pick the major I wanted.  He signed me up for C++ programming and I thought it was gonna be great. I love computer games, AOL, and instant messenger (which was a prehistoric version of today’s texting)

what could go wrong.  I took my first computer programming class and left after an 1hr and 15 min class running back to economics.  I was “clueless” as to anything the professor was talking about.  I could have been in a class where they were teaching German and I would have understand the professor better. I left class an emotional wreck, worried about where my life was going to go and how I was already a semester behind.

    Nobody ever tells you how hard the first semester in college is.  Everything is new and nothing from high school carries over.  You need to find new friends that are trustworthy and honest.  You need to find places for food, what packy store will take my fake I.D., places to study and to figure out why you are living with two other large athletes in a room the size of a closet.  You need to find a whole new structure to a life that hasn’t changed that much since you were a kid.  Now, on top of all that I needed to find the career I was going to spend the rest of my life with. College life was tough!

    My advisor immediately switched me out of the computer class and into a history class called War and Revolution.  It was a breath of fresh air. Something I could relate to and war, what boy doesn’t like to learn about war.  After a few weeks of loving history, I went to my advisor again and said, “I want to major in history!”

    “That’s great” he said, “But where do you want to go with it?”

    “What do you mean?” I asked.  I was just so confused. I finally found what I wanted to major in and this guy had even more questions.  I actually almost asked if this guy was Socrates with his questioning.

    “You can’t just have a career in history.  You need to do something more with it.”

    “Ok…” I thought about it for a second and decided to go all Socratic back at him. “What can I do with history?”

    “You have three main options here at St. A’s.  One is to become a lawyer, which means graduating here and going to law school” Screw that I said to myself.  I don’t wanna do more schooling after this graduate stuff.  “Second is to be an archaeologist.” Me, digging for dinosaur bones in a hot desert with chisels and brushes. Not my cup of tea. “Third is to become an educator” Summers off, movies on television, field trips, school hours, and I get along well with kids. Sounded good to me.

“Sounds good. I’ll go with education” I said as I close the door on my fate. I was happy at the moment (and still am today) and my advisor signed me up for the necessary courses and sent me on my way.

After I graduated college I became a teacher at the high school level and boy was I wrong about the false realities of teaching.  I ended up, like most teachers, grading papers till 8 at night, writing recommendations for students, preparing my classes during my 25 minute lunch break, and working two jobs during the summer and after school.  But I really began to love my job especially teaching my love of history to my students. I was very happy with my decision making except for the part that economics is considered a history course and I had to teach it.

Have you ever had that deja vu moment when you feel like you have been there before and shook your head smiling as that moment just passed you by.  I was teaching two classes of economics to sophomores. Yes, I was teaching the economics which was the main reason that I changed majors to teaching students in high school, is there any irony in that? The good news was it really helped me teach the subject to high school students.  The bad news was I had to teach the subject I didn’t like in college. I guess I could try and make it somewhat fun for my students.  Well, this one kid in my level 2 economics class kept falling asleep and I went up to him and said, “Cam, wake up. You really need to finish reading chapter 3 on the stock market. So you will be able to play the stock market game online with the class.”

“Man, Mr. D....do I really have to read this boring stuff, it keeps putting me to

 sleep.”

That’s the moment I laughed, shook my head, and responded with, “At least we know you won’t become a business major in college” and I walked away with a big smile on my face flashing back to my good old college days.