What My Students Worry About
This statue, “The Torch Bearers,” adorns the campus of Stevens Institute of Technology, where I teach. I’m the guy on the ground, old and exhausted but impressively ripped, handing my wisdom off to the youngsters.
HOBOKEN, MAY 16, 2025. I like tormenting my students with questions. I write a question on the whiteboard, give everyone 5-10 minutes to jot down an answer and call on them one by one. Profundity ensues. Ideally.
Here are questions I’ve asked: Are you in the cave right now? Can scientists solve the mystery? Will war ever end? What’s your utopia? Why are there more men than women at Stevens? What’s the point of the humanities?
This spring, I taught two sections of a first-year humanities course, 22 students per section, total of 44. These kids are 18-19 years old, planning careers in engineering, medicine, business, practical stuff. They’re forced to take this humanities course, it’s my job to make it fun.
The last day of class, May 6, I collect final papers from those who have them. Those who don’t (because their printers are busted or whatever) promise to email me papers after class.
I intend to let everyone go after that, but I feel a spasm of compassion for these young folk in a tumultuous time. So I make them respond to one final question: Are you worried about the world?
I expect them to vent about climate change, wars, racism, sexism, predatory capitalism, AI, Trump. My students and I gabbed about these problems this semester, and many wrote papers on related topics. I’ll allay their concerns with Pinker-esque platitudes about our moral and material progress.
But my students, unsurprisingly, surprise me. Many have adopted a stoic mindset (one even cites Marcus Aurelius). They don’t brood over climate change, war, Trump and so on, because they see these problems as beyond their control.
They stress over stuff they can do something about, namely tests, exams, papers, grades. They need good grades to get good jobs to have good lives.
There are exceptions to this pattern. “Abdul” (not his real name) worries that his classmates aren’t worried enough about the big picture, they’re living in a “bubble,” and when they graduate, reality might smack them in the face.
“Matias” fears members of his family might get deported simply because their last name sounds Hispanic, and being a U.S. citizen doesn’t seem to provide protection anymore. “Jasmine” fears Trump’s demolition of the Department of Education will thwart her plan to help poor Americans get a good education, like the one she’s getting at Stevens.
“Yoona” frets over the plunging birth rate in South Korea, her home. Young Koreans aren’t having kids anymore, it’s not clear how the country will care for its aging population.
I just read about that in The New Yorker, I tell Yoona. But I’ve been so brainwashed into worrying about overpopulation that I have a hard time worrying about underpopulation.
“Jacob” thinks life is passing by too quickly, he’ll be dead before he knows it. I respond, Are you kidding me? You’re what, 19 years old? No, 18, “Jacob” informs me. I exclaim: You’re 18 and brooding about mortality? Come on! Wait until you’re my age!
Then I remember that when I was in grade school a classmate fell ill and died, and for months I thought, Mom and Dad are gonna die! And Matt and Martha and Wendy and Patty and my friends! And me! I became excruciatingly aware of my heartbeat, it seemed too faint, tentative, I feared it would just… stop.
After recalling this childhood trauma, I look at “Jacob” and add, I guess I worried about dying when I was young too.
A few students offer consolation, sort of. “Ned” says from a cosmic perspective, everything happening now and even all of human history is insignificant, a spark in the dark, nothing really matters, you might as well chill.
I tell “Ned” that I comfort myself with that cosmic perspective now and then, but I worry it’s a little cold. You don’t want to climb so high on the mountain that you can’t see your fellow creatures suffering, right? Yeah, says “Ned,” nodding, he gets that.
“Igor” isn’t worried about the world, the world is fine. In fact, “Igor” says defiantly, modern life is fantastic, this is the best time ever to be alive, at least for people in a country like the U.S.
I laugh and say he reminds me of Louis CK’s riff on how everything’s amazing and nobody is happy. We have jets and the Internet and hot showers and flush toilets and antibiotics and all these wonders our ancestors couldn’t imagine, but we complain about how life sucks. Funny, right? Wait, you’ve heard of Louis CK, right? Comedian who got #MeToo’ed a while back? No?
I dread hearing from “Natasha”—she’s from Ukraine, she has family there—but she’s surprisingly upbeat. Good times, “Natasha” says, produces bad people which produces bad times which produces good people which produces good times and so on.
“It is a constant loop,” she says, “but it will always have good people in it. Even though internally I am freaking out about the world, I believe there is hope for good times at least in my lifetime.”
Instead of me reassuring these kids that everything’s gonna be okay, they end up reassuring me.
Further Reading:
The Election and the Problem of Evil
I Am One of Those Evil Woke Professors
Confessions of a Woke, Antiwar, Hockey-Playing Demonic Male
Advice to Aspiring Science Writers: Remember Marx