“Consider that this could possibly be the best class of your life.” Dave Gould, a University Iowa professor and a mentor of mine, opened each class with this line. Gould’s experimential course, The Green Room, wrapped up last week, and it was, in fact, one of the best classes I’ve ever taken.
The Green Room students listen as Peter Aguero disucsses the power of storytelling.
Gould, along with his teaching assistant, senior Navya Mannengi, designed a one semester hour, honors level off-cycle course asking students to consider if colleges and universities are asking twenty-somethings the right questions.
With a syllabus that resembled a restaurant menu and a steady stream of decedant desserts provided by chef Chris Grebner, Gould brought guests to class ranging from a magician to a social entrepeneur to a positive psychologist. Each guest prepared a question to pose to the class, acting as a theme for the week. Students curated each class by deciding the homework assignments and the content of each session. They also brought their dinners each week and together as a class, shared a meal. Often, members of the Iowa City community sat in on the class simply out of curiosity.
The class hosted visionaries including creative activist Kathy Eldon, Dwolla founder Ben Milne, social entrepreneur Andy Stoll, storyteller Peter Aguero, positive psychologist Dan Lerner, Rule29 designers Justin Ahrens and Bob Davidson, Oratory Glory founder Holley Murchison, gifted educator Sally Krisel and magician Nate Staniforth. Two of the evening classes were held at another professor’s home right outside of Iowa City, boasting an indoor salt water pool, vineyard, chicken coup and entertainment space.
Dave Gould addresses the class at fellow UI professor Bob Walker’s home.
By defintion, a green room is a room in a theater or studio in which performers can relax when they are not performing. Last year, I was able to interview internet star Matt Bellassai in his own green room when he stopped at Iowa during his comedy tour. The conversation was genuine and had great depth to it. I learned more about Bellassai in that 20-minute interview than I learned during his hour-long show. When I saw that an entire university class was formed around the idea of open, informal inquiry, I immediately signed up. What followed was a series of beautifully unplanned experiences that I will forever keep safe in my arsenal of memories.
The Green Room gifts Kathy Eldon with a binder of student made journal pages in memory of her son Dan, whose journals became famous following his death.
Classes like this one do not abide by midterms and PowerPoint presentations, and they offer students an outlet and a community of support. The Green Room gave intelligent, ambitious students the chance to sit, eat and converse about the larger issues hanging above their heads. From 5:30 until 7:15 in the evening, we were a class not divided by majors or grade point averages; we were united in the pursuit of curiosity.
After taking The Green Room, I’m not sure that my university makes these pursuits a priority. At the end of four years, we are supposed to find jobs, locate a city to plant our new, graduate roots in and set out on this new adventure into adulthood. There is nothing wrong with this plan. But for the innately curious, it is terrifying. This plan is popular to universities because it shows supposed growth. It gives a school a graduation and job placement rate to show on their website. The questions that our teachers, advisors and mentors often ask seem to be based around the end goal of positively contributing to these statistics.
Questions I’ve been asked this semester outside of the walls of The Green Room include:
1. Are you sure you can afford to study abroad? How many loans have you taken out?
2. If you drop this class, do you understand that you’ll receive a W?
3. When are you planning on graduating?
4. Did any of you actually study for this midterm?
5. Can you finish this project by tomorrow?
These questions are stressful and frustrating. They also build the foundation of the professional world. Financial struggles and annoying deadlines are front and center in the workplace. But they’re all questions that need answers. The questions posed in The Green Room helped balance them out, though. Without them, these other questions would have swallowed me up.
The provocative questions asked during each Green Room session are questions I now regularly pose to myself. A few of my favorite examples include:
1. Where do you find wonder?
2. How do you choose what’s most valuable to you?
3. What’s holding you back?
4. What makes learning meaningful?
5. What problems do you want to solve in the world?
What I found most interesting about these questions is that the answers are always changing. These aren’t cut and dry, black and white questions that you raise your hand in a lecture hall or go to office hours to ask. They are intrinsic. They force students to look for more than an answer to a question on a scantron. They illicit self-discovery.
(Left to right) Dave Gould, Bob Davidson, Dan Lerner, and Justin Ahrens answer questions in The Green Room.
Thirty students were enrolled in The Green Room this semester. There are roughly 30,000 students at the University of Iowa. How can we provide each of these students with the effect of a green room? Students at the University of Iowa and even at universities across the country could greatly benefit from the culture and feeling that Gould embedded into a regular four-walled room on Wednesday evenings. It broke up the monotony of the school and work week. It was a breath of fresh air as my education started to taste stale.
Classes like The Green Room are only achievable when teachers take on the roll of changemaker instead of simply instructor and treat it not only as a college course, but as an experience. The Green Room can only grow when there is someone who is up to the task of providing nutrients for it, shedding sunlight upon it and sharing its beauty with others. Dave Gould and Navya Mannengi grew something meaningful for a small corner of this university over the course of eight weeks.
Thirty students, who had not yet disengaged with their education, grew together over the course of eight weeks. It was an inspiring bunch of passionate learners who blossomed throughout the semester, sharing their vulnerability in assignments and discussions. They spoke of triumphs and failures in the same breath and asked questions fearlessly. Students openly shared emotional letters to their mentors, stories from their childhoods, letters of recommendation they wrote for themselves, their biggest fears and how they overcame them (this was a homework assignment, actually) and their hopes for the future in form of a promissory letter. The Green Room is not only where we succeeded as students but also where we put ourselves and our interests first.
Dan Lerner, Green Room guest teacher and professor at New York University, asked the class, “When do success and well-being coexist?” My answer is and always will be, “In The Green Room.”
Photo Credit: Navya Mannengi