Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda
In which we consider the holy trinity of regret for professors who did not get through all the content they intended.
According Bing AI, this is regret. Go figure.
If late November and early December is “Dead Grandma Season” for students, as I posted in my last missive, then it’s also a season of regret for instructors. As I write this, I’ve just finished the last class of the semester. The only thing left is exams, our winter commencement, and copious labor in the grading mines of Moria.
I didn’t get through all the content in the course I wanted to. Give me an amen if you didn’t get through all the material you wanted to, planned to, and promised in your syllabus.
If you are using Practical Bioethics, I tried to make the book brief enough that you could conceivably spend two weeks (or four sessions) on each chapter and get through most if not all the text. We all know, however, that the course of a semester never ran so smoothly.
This semester I ended up spending way more time on consent in chapter 3 because my nursing students really wanted to talk about that one. If you do the group exercises at the end of each chapter, that’s will also take up a class session.
Thus I’m full of shoulda, woulda, coulda. What the comic genius Gary Gulman calls in one the funniest comic bits ever, the “holy trinity of regret.” I wish I’d been able to get to chapter 8 (dilemmas for patients and families). I’m really proud of that chapter.
I don’t know of any other bioethics text that has a whole chapter on the rights, and more importantly, the obligations of patients and family members to their medical providers. The reading by Jerome Groopman and colleagues on “The Patient’s Work” is really one of the best readings in the book. Sigh.
I hope you got a chance to go over J.J. Thomson’s “Violinist Argument” which is a staple in the abortion debate. I really hope,however, you get to introduce them to Francis Beckwith’s rebuttal to Thomson. It always irked me that when Thomson is presented in a moral philosophy text, you hardly ever see a critique of that specific line of argument.
This semester, to my shame, I didn’t even get to chapter 7. I wanted to introduce a relatively new debate about mitochondrial replacement therapy. Replacing mitochondria can correct some really awful diseases but the unintended consequence is so-called “three parent children.” Not a big deal, right? Ah, but think about paternity and DNA and you start to imagine the messiness.
Having mourned my inefficiency, let me utter those three little words that make it all better: “Ah, well, next time.”
I always remember an essay by the journalist Arthur Gordon of an interview he had with a psychiatrist about regret and getting stuck. In his little book of essays, A Touch of Wonder, Gordon recounts how the psychiatrist articulates the problem with hanging out too long with the holy trinity of regret:
“The trouble with ‘if only’ is that it doesn’t change anything. It keeps the person facing the wrong way – backward instead of forward. It wastes time. In the end, if you let it become a habit, it can become a real roadblock – an excuse for not trying anymore.”
What does the good doctor suggest? Patients who can replace the regret trinity of “woulda, coulda, shoulda” with “Next time.” As the doctor explains, “next time” points us forward. I wasn’t the best at managing class time this semester. Next time, I won’t spend so much time on the syllabus. Next time, I’ll skip that reading. Next time, I’ll get those papers back sooner.
Until next time . . .