One professor's view inside the refrigerator

Many years ago I saw on TV (perhaps on "Candid Camera") a hilarious practical joke played on an appliance salesman. While being filmed by a hidden camera, a guy walks into a showroom pretending to shop for a refrigerator. A salesman almost hooks him on one particular model, but the buyer hesitates over one small concern. How can you be sure the interior light goes out when you close the door? The salesman invites him to watch the crack carefully as he slowly closes the door. Inconclusive. Then, with the door open, the salesman demonstrates with his finger the operation of the trigger switch, but the shopper is still unconvinced. After all, a finger is one thing, a refrigerator door another. Finally, nearing desperation and looking over his shoulder to make sure no colleagues are watching, he bundles the supposed shopper into the refrigerator and briefly closes the door!

The point the program thought it illustrated was that some people will do anything for a sale. The more important point it demonstrated is that it sometimes takes an unusual perspective to ascertain invaluable information.

Unexpected perspective gave me just such a learning experience the Friday before break. In my Chaucer course I had assigned as a midterm exercise a short paper, generously announcing on the syllabus that it was due in the English department no later than 5 p.m. on Friday — that hour being the moment at which I thought the department office shut, and therefore the last conceivable moment of the work week.

Shortly before noon only one paper (of about 30) had arrived, so I purposed to return in the late afternoon. When I arrived shortly after four, a couple of papers still had not arrived. I then learned from the secretaries that the office in fact locks up at 4:45 p.m. I explained the situation, and we agreed that between 4:45 and 5 I myself would sit with the door open at receipt of custom, gather my last papers and take responsibility for locking up. The rest of this column concerns what happened in the mailroom contiguous to McCosh 22 between 4:45 and 5 p.m. on the last day before break.

What happened was that a large number of students arrived to deliver papers — but only a few of them Chaucer students delivering Chaucer papers. I don't know why I should be surprised that several colleagues had also set 5 p.m. Friday as a deadline. I would estimate that within the 10-minute period beginning at 4:50, about 30 students appeared in the mailroom, which took on an air of bustling animation. People milled about trying to find the correct preceptor's mailbox. The mailbox layout is confusing, and I thought I could here be helpful; but I gained considerably more information than I imparted.

I learned the following things, among others. There are quite a few Princeton students who, six weeks into a course, do not know their preceptor's name. (I take comfort from the fact that only a comparatively small number do not know the name of the course lecturer either, and even those could usually give me a physical description leading to a positive ID.) I learned that it is quite possible for a Princeton undergraduate to take a course, indeed to write a passable paper for a course, without being able to tell an interested bystander (i.e., me) the number of the course, the title of the course or, most amazingly, the general subject matter of the course. Nor was it always possible for the interested bystander to deduce from the title of the paper to be submitted the course — or, sometimes, the department — for which the paper might have been written.

I cannot without hypocrisy impugn the undergraduate propensity for procrastination possibly revealed by this experience. I myself have long taken it as a rule of life that one should not postpone until tomorrow what one can postpone to the next day. Several students stayed on to chat after delivering their papers, and one opined that it was impossible to enjoy the full measure of anxiety offered by the writing experience if you handed the thing in more than five minutes before the final deadline. Yet my view from within the refrigerator, so to speak, did shake my theologically committed position that a chief excellence of a Princeton education is the close and fruitful contact of professors and students. Or perhaps that relationship is close, fruitful, and only incidentally anonymous? I note with pride that my own preceptees did recognize me almost without hesitation. John V. Fleming is the Louis W. Fairchild '24 professor of English. He can be reached at jfleming@princeton.edu. His column appears on Mondays.