The first thing that Professor Davis told me about being young was that he had no idea what he was doing. We sat down over a Zoom call and a cup of tea, and I watched the English professor that so many of us have come to know on campus tell me that he was planning to play rugby in Australia when he was 18. He was very good in high school, and this was rewarded with a spot on a team and a job on a sheep farm 7500 miles away. But his parents said no and that was that.
Instead, Davis sent in a late application to CU Boulder and got in. The plan was to stay for a semester, find his collegiate bearings, and transfer to a big name school. But as it turned out, life at the Rocky Mountain school was rather wonderful. The next three years were gorgeous, ecstatic, and aimless. Bill Davis’ main talents were partying hard and getting good grades, and he really did not care where any of it would have him end up. Eventually, the years of heavy drinking saddled him with a period of debilitating depression after junior year. Davis could hold his drink, mind you, but the drink could not hold him quite so well anymore. The options were clear: get sober or go out in a blaze of glory. Quite radically, he chose the former. He had lived a “die young, leave a good-looking corpse” sort of existence up until this point, and the opportunity had finally come upon him. Bill Davis quit drinking. He would be graduating in a year.
Among what helped Bill Davis out of the trenches at this time was his classics professor, Ed Nolan. He was erudite and funny and he swore really well. He spent his time reading obscure books in Greek and Latin, in both of which he was fluent. He was the exact image of the brilliant, bookish professor that Davis saw at the end of his own path. As a professor, Nolan was extremely attentive and caring, giving pages worth of feedback for each essay, for every student in every class. He went on to help Davis write his graduate school applications when it was time to decide what would come next.
The applications landed Davis at Claremont Graduate University to complete his master’s and doctorate degrees. He then moved to Hawai’i to complete his dissertation about how America came to imagine the South Pacific in literature. There, he began his work as a teacher.
Upon being hired at one school, he was instructed to organize a new ESL program from scratch the week before the semester started. Davis quickly realized how underserved the international students were at this school. He explained that private schools and universities tend to use international students to balance their budgets, as they can charge much more for tuition without spending too much on extra support. As such, Davis was told to “show them movies and take them to the beach.” Instead, he figured out ways to provide the students with the support that the institution wasn’t giving them. He took the time to connect with the students, understanding where their needs weren’t being met, and did whatever he could to keep their heads above water. This was all while making $10,000 a year, working 80 hours a week, and making little progress on the dissertation that he had moved out there to finish. Teaching at private high schools for four years was a monastic, thankless ordeal, but one that he came to truly love.
It was time to finish that damn dissertation, so Bill Davis took a year off and never returned. He began applying to jobs on the mainland, and West Valley College responded first. The twenty-two years of being a professor were not at all like what he’d imagined. Much of what he’d expected from teaching lied in having a certain status and identity. His vision was to be the brilliant, bookish bestower of sacred knowledge, just as Ed Nolan had been to him. As it turns out, teaching is about the students.
The best part of Professor Davis’ job has always been the students, he told me. From when he began teaching high school fresh out of Claremont to this twenty-second and final year at West Valley, Davis has made it a point to let the students determine what he does as a teacher. It has always been about meeting the basic needs of students as he found them, modeling the teaching around what they actually needed from him.
Unfortunately, this job has been getting more difficult to carry out in the past few years. With the rise of student apathy and administrative overhaul, the chasm between students and professors is wider than ever. Students are tired and discouraged. There is only so much you can do to make a student care, and the accessibility to academic dishonesty that ChatGPT provides only further discourages them. Professor Davis firmly stands that if you can’t write about something, then you don’t truly understand it. The value of composition courses is in developing the critical thought process that is so vital to individual autonomy. Nonetheless, he says, the role of writing and literature in our society has changed, and we have yet to adapt our English curriculums to it effectively.
One of the main changes Professor Davis has seen in his time at West Valley is the significantly reduced role of staff in campus decision-making. Where professors were once able to challenge changes in policy and offer input, they now have very little to stand on. Classroom experience and direct interaction with students can be some of the most important and most overlooked factors in school governance. Davis worries that professors are more and more being treated as obstacles to be dealt with rather than sources of relevant expertise. Regardless, Davis is overjoyed at getting to work with such a smart, dedicated staff that so deeply cares about their students.
Authors that Professor Davis loves, but will never teach:
Kurt Vonnegut — Cat’s Cradle and Bluebeard in particular
Albert Camus — The Plague, The Myth of Sisyphus
Fyodor Dostoevsky — Crime and Punishment, The Brother Karamazov
All of Haruki Murakami
Professor Davis’ first big boy book:
An old, green hardcover version of Treasure Island
What Professor Davis is reading now:
Fierce Desires: A New History of Sex and Sexuality by Rebecca L. Davis
4-5 other nonfiction books
Professor Davis’ least favorite book:
Shark Dialogues by Kiana Davenport
A book that has no business being taught to highschoolers, according to Professor Davis:
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Books that Professor Davis would recommend to people who don’t like reading:
The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells
World War Z by Max Brooks
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
Books have always been a necessary source of wisdom and tool to navigate life for Professor Davis. The favorite titles listed above are all books that have made him feel richer, smarter, and more aware for having read them. There is a magic in such dull, ordinary objects containing whole other worlds to escape into. Still, he adds, a love for books must be married to active engagement in life itself. Read more books, everyone.