Excerpt form a reply to a question about the melancholy that descends upon one at the conclusion of some courses ....
Yes, you are quite correct there is that bluesy moment at the completion of the course. One nice thing about the electronic medium -- it makes the transition less abrupt. Students continue to send the odd email and it also has allowed me to exchange a few messages with students who have dropped the course.
End of course time is also the period in which I return to a perenial theme in my research and in my pedagogy. It's the time when I do some serious thinking about how to teach how to think. I know that if I were to teach this course again I would set aside part of the time for the modeling of the process of asking questions, especially questions about questions. It has dawned upon me that to be able to enter into metacognitive moments -- that space where you can ask yourself "what am I doing?" --- might be the prerequiste for motivating reiterative searching. Much of that sophistication depends upon being self-refexive. This might explain that the people best able to deal with large amounts of information in short periods of time are those with a flair for a variety of reading and writing styles. Of course, the ability to change gears is related to the uncanny ability to ask questions. Sounds a bit tautological but not if one takes into account that a good deal of learning is simply remembering what one has forgotten.