dragonbook

63 9. Laugh at your professors’ jokes. Believe it or not, laughter is an important learning tool. Psychological studies show that humor has a positive impact on student learning, and students can do themselves a favor by encouraging their professors’ use of humor with their laughter—even if the attempts are kind of feeble. Now there are, I admit, some jokes that are almost impossible to find funny—particularly the jokes I tell. And you have my permission not to laugh at the following which is, in my brother’s words, “like a joke, only not funny.” There’s a fire on the NSU campus, and it’s your job to figure out who started it. The rumors start coming in. “An English professor started the fire.” “An interesting history professor started the fire.” “A dragon started the fire.” What do you conclude from all this? Who started the fire? The English professor. How do you know? Because there’s no such thing as a dragon or an interesting history professor. Not very funny, I know, particularly because there is something logically wrong with the joke. I said there was no such thing as a dragon or an interesting history professor, and this simply is not true. “You’re telling us there’s such a thing as an interesting history professor?” No. Not at all. I’m telling you that there is a dragon. Right here on the NSU campus. A real dragon. Don’t believe me? Then why is it that so many of our students disappear? Only 40% of those who start college this year will have their degrees within five years. Sixty percent of your classmates will disappear before graduation day—and, at schools all over the country, pretty much the same thing is happening. Only 40% of freshmen go on to finish their degrees. Why? We’re doing our best to keep students around, and so are most of the other higher education institutions. We provide tutoring, financial aid, counseling—everything we can to make students successful. And still they disappear. And it seems to me that, in many instances, there’s only one explanation: the dragon got them. Now, unfortunately, I’m not allowed to tell you much about the dragon, and certainly not what I tell my own children as they head off to college. With them, I can talk about what Bible