This September is finally starting to feel like fall and I’m experiencing quite a bit of nostalgia for my old debating life. The smell in the air and the quality of the light on campus make me anxious that have not booked a bus or hotel yet; that I made plans on a Saturday to do something in the city, and so on.

Habits are strange things that we often think of as bad, of breaking them before they break us. But there are habits of thought and feeling that are triggered by conditions that have little to do with our cognitive state or our intellect.

For example, I thought today how strange it would be to work on this campus and never interact with a student. How odd would it be to work at a college or university and not interact with students. Not out of choice, but because your job does not require any student interaction or meeting at all. Perhaps your job is one where you are not supposed to interact with students?

I have thought about leaving my university job more than many times. To do what, I am not sure. I really think the barrier is the incapacity I have to imagine doing anything in September other than standing before nervous students talking about the importance of speech. I would feel so lost and so confused by a September that lacked those things.

My immediate reaction to this thought is self-accusation: Why do you lack the capacity of imagination here? But perhaps that’s not the end point of where that question leads. Perhaps the self-accusation is realization that being in this position in discourse with students about, well, discourse, is not a lack of capacity but the root of capacity in imagination. Perhaps the classroom is my commonplace book.

“Several years ago you had my sister,” said the new student – but in a college classroom not a high school one. This is a commonplace for most secondary teachers: the announcement of legacy status. But in university this is unheard of. Perhaps I’m wrong about this, but it took me (a)back. “How is your sister doing?” A full report was filed and I wondered and resented the lack of change in my position in this dusty classroom hearing about all the change in the years that have passed between her and me and now.

I assign textbooks in September; I regret textbooks in September. Maybe the ultimate capacity of the self-accusation of lack is to embrace it fully and just go. There is plenty to talk about; what’s on your mind? What’s on their minds? If rhetoric is a thing as powerful as you write about, think about, and imagine it to be, then what are you scared of? What holds you back from just going in? Why all the accoutrement? Why the bumpers, why the railings, why the handholds?

The real trouble is thinking of an incapacity as the root of all capacity. That’s a tough order. Imagining an incapacity as inventive is really a stretch. But it isn’t really – what else is the point of a commonplace book in rhetoric other than to recognize – and admire – your incapacity to “say it just like that.” Collecting bits of information, quotes, and statements – images from others – is a good habit that seems as if it is there to remind us of what we cannot do. But the contemporary mode of the commonplace book – the “vision board” of the younger generation – is an inventional device that is created to help you imagine and work toward creating something that is within your capacity. The old commonplace book should be seen this way as well I think.

But habits are hard to break. I am grateful for that, particularly in September when the light has this certain motivating quality even though I really don’t have anything to prepare for it. The feeling of anxiety, then relief is good but nostalgic.