Part 1
I was nervous. It was the first day of class. I dutifully got there 15 minutes early and sat outside the classroom — thinking of just how to make a good first impression while feeling my heartbeat hard in my chest.
The class was scheduled to start at 7. I slowly entered the room from the rear door (there was also one at the front of the room. I avoided it, intentionally.). I sat quietly in a chair in the back and watched, alone. I was wearing my “good” hoodie sweatshirt, it’s possible I just seemed an older version of everyone else in the room. I blended well enough.
As the time got closer to 7, the others in the room started talking more, louder. My heart also beat louder, harder.
I got up at exactly 7 and walked slowly to the front of the room. I stopped beside a desk and asked the young woman sitting there if this was the room for 307 — after all, this *was* my first time in this room, at this University. She said yes. I said thanks. A few people around us noticed the exchange…
Then I continued walking to the front of the room, lumbered my backpack onto the desk next to the podium equipped with mic and buttons to *control* the experience. I looked up and said to those who had heard the exchange, “and who am I?”
Silence.
Then one student said, “you’re the instructor, Jess Mitchell.” I asked how he knew…
Silence.
He shrugged. Then he said, “well, you’re at the front of the room.”
Thus, began Day 1 of 307 — with a conversation about form and function — about the form that education had taken, and the impact it had on everyone in the room. How else could we begin to dismantle the assumptions, the expectations, the power, the design of the moment?