Let’s begin like this: When discussing Reynolds Price, I don’t have a unique vantage point.
I was his student in Spring 2005, when I was a sophomore. I took his Two Gospels seminar. I took it because it was taught by the world-famous Reynolds Price, and because it only met once a week. I got a B. I don’t think I meant more or less to him than any of his average students, which is to say that he seemed to care a great deal about my development as a writer and an intellectual.
As part of the seminar, we read his translations of the gospels of Mark and John. Each student then wrote his own gospel. My gospel was told from the point of view of Jesus. It incorporated some stream-of-consciousness elements and reflected the same ethos as “Christmas Song” by Dave Matthews, which I discovered while writing my gospel.
I prepared for class by reading Professor Price’s translation of the gospels and whatever other reading was assigned, but I never read anything else. I attended every class session, but I never went to see Price during his office hours. I went to the end-of-class tea at Price’s house, but I didn’t stay any longer than I had to. Put simply, I did everything that was expected of me, and I did nothing else.
I turned in my 42-page gospel on the appointed day. Later that summer, I received a package in the mail. In the package was a copy of my gospel, marked up by Price’s red pen. He also included three-quarters of a page worth of comments. He wrote that my gospel was “very good” and that with some more work, it might even be worth publishing. (It will not surprise you to learn that I did not put any more work into it.)
Since I was still a punk pre-med at the time, I wrote Price an e-mail, asking why he said my gospel was “very good” and then gave it a B. The e-mail he sent me was impressive in its clarity. Very good is a B, it said; excellent is an A.
When I read his e-mail, I realized that he was right and the rest of my education had been wrong. I hadn’t done excellent work, and I didn’t really deserve an A—even if the same work would’ve earned me an A in most other classes at Duke.
Like I said, I’m not telling this story because I think it’s unique. I didn’t have a special Reynolds Price experience; I think I had a garden-variety, regular Reynolds Price experience. Still, it was among the most important experiences I had as an undergrad.
Class with Price was a throwback to a time when being a college student—being a Duke student—really meant something. He was a throwback to his own undergraduate days, the time when, as Price said in his famous 1992 Founders’ Day speech, the University “gloried in a proportionally greater number of absolutely first-rate student minds.”
In Price’s classes “fruitful personal exchanges between teachers and students were far more common.” We were encouraged not to be “students who exhibit a minimum of preparation or willingness for... serious conversation in the classroom.” We were not graded as though “standards of grading [had] steadily inflated.”
Unfortunately, it took me until after the semester was over to realize what was going on, and it took me until well after I graduated to realize what it meant. I treated Price’s class as though it was just like any other, when, quite clearly, it was not.
Price’s own brilliance and force of personality made his classes what they were; he was one of a handful of professors I had while an undergrad who could turn back the clock to the time he described in his Founders’ Day speech. But what all those teachers had in common was how much they asked of their students.
As students, we all have the capacity to turn Duke into an institution of which Price could be proud. We only have to ask more of ourselves.
Alex Fanaroff is a fourth-year medical student. His column runs every Wednesday.
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