JY Lee | A season of Thanksgiving

I feel sorry for teachers in America. Every Teachers’ Day on May 15, students shower teachers with flowers in Korea. During my last eight years in America, however, I have never seen anyone observe Teachers’ Day in the United States (it’s May 7, by the way), and the World Teachers’ Day on Oct. 15 passes with equal silence. So with Thanksgiving as our ultimate feast of gratitude, here’s a toast to all my professors who have nurtured my inchoate mind.

Although I am a son and grandson of educators, I was not sure I would find home in an ivory tower when I started as a confused freshman. I slept through some classes and slept at others. Fortunately, after these bumpy beginnings, I met professors who have convinced me that an ivory tower is where I want to be.

Adam Grant “Organizational Behavior”

Why is he the highest rated professor at Wharton? Because this avuncular former diver-magician embodies his philosophy of giving. He offers six hours of office hours a week, responds to every email from his huge network of current and former students and introduced me to a New York Times travel writer. Not only is he a walking encyclopedia of every organizational behavior article ever published, he has consulted every company we envy ranging from Google to Goldman Sachs.

Justin McDaniel “Living Deliberately: Monks, Saints and The Contemplative Life”

This experiential course sent me on an inward journey like no other course. Led by a charismatic Catholic-Buddhist monk who spent five years in a Thai monastery, it demanded that I drop everything in life — from technology to booze and from sex to talking. In return, I tasted a teaspoon of nirvana.

Waheed Hussain “Markets, Morality, and the Future of Capitalism” & Jason Jackson “International Strategic Management”

These two classes have been the most ideologically balanced and intellectually satisfying classes I have taken at Wharton. Our readings ranged from the classical liberal F.A. Hayek to neo-Marxist G. A. Cohen and from the neoliberal to heterodox economists. In addition to debating the evolution and ethics of the current global business structures, I got to witness Jackson sport some Jamaican swag.

Walter Licht “West Philadelphia Community History” and Marion Kant “Writing Your Travels (in Philadelphia)”

Tired of living in the University City bubble and want to be a Philadelphian? These two courses were my passports. I had no idea that history can be written at the neighborhood level and that literature can emerge from exploring your own city. My primary research paper contributed to the West Philly community history website, and my portfolio of travel essays became a memoir.

Alan Charles Kors “French Enlightenment”

Like Diderot, he edited the four-volume Oxford Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment. Like Voltaire, he has been a valiant champion of free speech and tolerance. Like Rousseau, who worked as a tutor, he has been a top-rated professor during his 45 years of service at Penn. In his private salon that his lucky students get invited to, I became enlightened on the recent history of Penn and the rich conservative-libertarian tradition.

Charles Bernstein “20th Century Poetry” and Cristin Aptowicz “Creative Writing”

These two canonical figures of post-modernism and slam poetry have revolutionized words. Autodidacts without advanced degrees, they taught without the stale formalism of academia and also elicited some avant-garde poems out of me.

These professors dispelled my concern that academics are removed from the real world with their hair-splitting specialization, and that they have little time for students in the prevailing ethos of publish or perish. Despite possessing some of the brightest minds on the planet, these professors remain humble and open-minded, entertaining idiosyncratic notions of know-it-all 18-year-olds … like me.

Four years and 50 courses later, I don’t claim to know much. But these were the courses that have transformed my thought and life. As I have a bias toward words over numbers and the world of forms over its shadows, this list is subjective and humanities-heavy. So make your own, and share it with your friends and professors. May we resurrect the spirit of Teachers’ Day during this season of course selection and Thanksgiving.

JY Lee is a fifth-year College and Wharton senior from Gangnam, South Korea. His email address is junyoub.lee9041@gmail.com. “Wandering Deliberate Lee” appears every other Monday. Follow him_ @junyoubius.

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