The Lasting Impact of a First Impression: An Exercise for the First Day of Class

Abstract

This article details an exercise for the first day of class in an introductory sociology course. Students in two sections of Introduction to Sociology taught by the same professor and covering the same content, with the exception of the exercise on the first day of class, were surveyed at the end of the semester regarding the first day. Student responses in the section with the experiment reveal that students believe that the activity is useful in making them think deeper, recalling and applying sociological concepts to their own lives, and challenging their conceptions of roles of students and professors in the college classroom. These students also report positive recollections of the first day and of the professor. Additionally, the future trajectory of students in each section (in terms of their decision to major, minor, or take further classes in sociology) reveals surprisingly different paths.

Keywords

first day introductory sociology first impressions emotions student engagement

First days can intrigue students. They can spark students to wonder about social life, including how they will learn about social life. Instead of telling students how the class will run, professors can embody the approach of the class on the first day. (Higgins 1999:259)

The thought of the first day of class may bring up butterflies in the stomachs of students and professors alike. The excitement and the nervous energy are all magnified by the unknown. The unknown is especially so in the case of an introductory class—students and professors do not know each other, and the students typically are not familiar with the subject matter. As such, the introductory course is ripe with possibilities. Although a lot of research has focused on the introductory course in sociology and its significance, there is far less research on the first day of the introductory course.

This article details an exercise for the first day of class for the introductory sociology course. The purpose of the exercise is to spark student interest, introduce key sociological concepts, and shift student conceptions of their role in the classroom. As someone who practices critical and collaborative pedagogy (Blinne 2013; Braa and Callero 2006; Chow et al. 2003; Fobes and Kaufman 2008; Hess 2008; Hudd 2003; Jafar 2016; Sweet 1998), my goal is to challenge the passive student role, shift the typical power dynamics in the classroom, and encourage students to see themselves as active participants in their education. As a sociologist, my central goal is to introduce the sociological imagination to students and to move beyond individualistic or psychological explanations of phenomenon. If, as Howard (2015) maintains, the central pedagogical challenge of sociology is to teach the sociological imagination, and I agree that it is, then we must do more to convey the sociological imagination to our students. Howard (2015:21) argues that “the sociological imagination is not simply a term whose definition can be memorized and thereby achieved. It is a skill that must be developed over time through repeated opportunities to practice it.” The exercise detailed in this article encourages students to start practicing their sociological imagination from the first day of class. At the same time, this exercise also encourages students to think of themselves as active participants in the classroom and to feel free posing questions to the professor. The lessons from this exercise are applicable to a wide range of sociology and nonsociology courses and would be especially useful in remote courses where getting students excited and engaged may be a bigger challenge than in-person classes.

I have conducted experiments on the first day of class for over a decade and have found some to be more effective than others. I detail in the following the exercise that students seemed to be most responsive to. I first conducted this experiment in 2015 and then repeated it in the fall of 2016 with one section of introductory sociology while using a second section as a control group that did not undergo this activity. At the end of fall of 2016, I conducted a survey of both sections to see what they recalled from the first day of class and what lessons they took from the course in general. Student responses reveal that students believe that the experiment is useful in making them think deeper, recalling and applying sociological concepts to their own lives, and challenging their conceptions of roles of students and professors in the college classroom. The students also report positive recollections of the first day and of the professor. Additionally, the future trajectory of students in each section (in terms of their decision to major, minor, or take further classes in sociology) reveals surprisingly different paths.¹

First Impressions and First Days

To understand the impact my particular exercise was having on students, I found the neuroscientific literature on learning and first impressions most valuable. The psychologist Sarah R. Cavanagh (2016:62) explores how humans make initial judgments of people, on the basis of “thin slices” of evidence, rather quickly. “On the first few days of class,” she explains, “students will be forming their impressions of you, and this impression may be more important than much of what you do later.” Lang (2019), elaborating on Cavanagh’s ideas, asserts: “Their [students’] early, thin-slice judgments are powerful enough to condition their attitudes toward the entire course, the effort they are willing to put into it, and the relationship they will have with you and their peers throughout the semester.” The first day is important then not just for how the students perceive the instructor but also how they will experience the course content and the environment throughout the semester.

One way that we can capitalize on the possibilities stemming from the unknown of the first day is through being better informed about the role of emotions in learning. One reason that our first impression or thin-slice judgment may stay with us for a long time is due to the role of emotions in how we understand and recall information. The latest neuroscientific research indicated that the brain systems involved in emotions and those involved in cognition are not, in fact, working in opposite directions.

Rather . . . overlapping circuits are responsible for both, and the biochemical bases for each are very similar. Emotions are evolutionarily selected for because they influence motivation—driving us towards things that benefit our survival and reproduction (high calorie foods, attractive sex partners) and away from things that threaten our health or well-being (venomous spiders, rotten food). But they also influence our thinking—tagging certain experiences and skills as important and thus critical to both attend to and remember. (Cavanagh 2016:3)

Thus, those experiences that bring out emotions in students are likely to draw their attention and to “tag” that moment or experience it as important. It is no wonder, then, that first days can have a lasting impact on how much effort students put into the course.

Immordino-Yang and Damasio (2015:28) go further in exploring how emotions help with a deeper form of knowledge—one that can be applied rather than simply learned. They state: “when learning and knowledge are fairly devoid of emotion, when people learn things by ‘rote’ . . . without a sense of interest or real-world relevance, then it is likely that they won’t be able to use it effectively when the situation requires.” They summarize the importance of emotions by stating a simple metaphor, “Emotions are, in essence, the rudder that steers thinking.” These ideas, while espoused by psychologists and neuroscientists, are similar to the call of sociologists discussed in the following (Brouillette and Turner 1992; Dorn 1987; Higgins 1999; Howard 2015; Howard and Zoeller 2007; Winston 2007) to teach sociology in a way that has “practical applications” for students. The point, both from the neuroscientific and sociological perspectives, is to make sociology “real” to students, to encourage a personal investment in a way that reading by “rote” cannot. Our goal as educators, then, should be to ignite student enthusiasm and cultivate an ability to connect sociological content to their personal lives. Without that, our students will not leave with lasting or transformational knowledge. In other words: “When educators fail to appreciate the importance of students’ emotions, they fail to appreciate a critical force in students’ learning. One could argue, in fact, that they fail to appreciate the very reason that students learn at all” (Immordino-Yang and Damasio 2015:40).

Research focused more specifically on sociology courses, although not couched in the neuroscientific language of emotions and affective behavior, argues the same thing. In line with Lang (2019) and Cavanagh (2016), Dorn (1987:63), discussing the first day of sociology courses, asserts “anything which an instructor does or does not do during the first day of a class may shape not only students’ first impressions, but also their future interaction with the instructor and even their perception of the ideas which the instructor presents.” Winston (2007:161) asserts the same: “The first day of an introductory sociology course provides a crucial first impression to both students and instructor.” Brouillette and Turner (1992:278), also discussing an exercise on the first day of class, note that, “On written examinations, students exposed to this demonstration have shown a greater ability to apply the concept of the social construction of reality to a variety of situations than students who were not exposed to the exercise.” In addition, first days have the ability to excite students about the discipline they are being introduced to. Higgins (1999:258) made the most convincing case for unconventional first days more than 20 years ago. “Unconventional first days can intrigue students and put into practice how they will explore social life throughout the semester.” He argued that typical first days “squander the opportunity to explain to students the sociological journey on which they are about to embark and to excite them about that journey.” Thus, first days of the introductory course can be very important in exciting student interest not just in the course but also in the discipline. Call them “first impressions” or “thin slice judgments”—research from neuroscience and the research on teaching and learning point to the importance of these experiences on the first days of class. And yet, sociologists seem to be a little behind in developing and testing ideas for activities that work on the first day—especially in the introductory course.

Many other sociologists note the importance of the introductory course itself. Howery (1991:9), commenting on the introductory course, notes that it should place less emphasis on facts and names and that instead, “faculty should identify the powerful ideas and concepts in sociology and empirical generalizations that explain society.” Similarly, Howard (2015:21), contemplating the special pedagogical challenge in sociology, made the argument that “Instructors must create assignments which encourage students to question what seems obvious to them.” He went on to argue that “[g]iving students opportunity to develop a sociological imagination by applying this skill to their understanding of their own experiences can lead to greater student motivation and engagement in the sociology classroom” (Howard 2015:24).

This idea of a “practical application” of sociology or understanding their own experiences with the help of sociology can go a long way toward increasing student interest and assessment of the value of sociology as a discipline. Howard and Zoeller (2007:220), discussing the introductory course, similarly state: “As students begin to see the connection between their personal experiences and social structures, they develop an understanding of the value of sociology for understanding their experience in society.”

What better time to introduce the value of sociology and its practical application to students’ lives and experiences than the first day of the semester? This is exactly what the exercise detailed in the following sets out to do. Like Brouillette and Turner (1992:276), the exercise further challenges students to change from “passive notetakers to active participants in their education” (1992), and like their students, my students also remember the first day of class years after the actual experience. Similarly to Higgins (1999), my unconventional first day also teaches students about social positions, roles, and social expectations. It also teaches them to prioritize understanding and application over mastery of facts or encyclopedic knowledge. And as the research on emotions urges us to do, the experiment relies on students’ own emotions and lived experience of this experiment to ignite a deeper interest in the subject matter of sociology.

The First Day

I teach at a small liberal arts college in New England, with a student population of under 2,000. Class sizes in the social sciences are typically under 30 students for introductory courses, with average class size across the board being about 18 students. As a major, Sociology has been in the top 10 most popular majors at the college for many years, averaging about 20 majors per graduating class. I have taught Introduction to Sociology at least once a year for the last 12 years. Every semester in my Introduction to Sociology course, I start the first day of class with a short experiment of some kind. For many years, I tried different things—asking students to follow me around the building single-file without giving them an explanation, asking them to do jumping jacks, asking them to change their seats in a given pattern, asking students to lead other students in whatever they felt like leading them in (students often choose stretching or exercise). The point of all of these “games” was the same—to get students engaged on the first day, make sociology “real” for them by connecting it to their behavior, introduce some key concepts in sociology (norms, obedience and authority, group behavior), and create a subtle shift in their expectation of the classroom environment and their role as students and my role as instructor.

A few years ago, I was looking for more obvious and exciting experiments to deliver these messages, and I devised this particular experiment (Jafar 2015). It appeared to have been quite successful given that as students kept telling me about their first day and the impact it had on them. In the fall of 2016, when I was scheduled to teach two introductory sections, I conducted the exercise again. To have a comparison group, I only conducted the exercise with one section of Introduction to Sociology while delivering the same content to both classes on the first day and throughout the semester. In both sections on the first day, we discussed the inappropriateness of the classroom we were assigned (an old lab space that we did not return to after the first day because we relocated to a dorm common room instead), the influence of physical environment on one’s perception of one’s position in that space, and the manifestation of hierarchical roles as symbolized in the physical setup of students’ chairs and the instructor’s desk. We also had a general discussion on norms where I asked them if anyone had considered sitting at the “teacher’s” desk or standing up on their chairs instead of sitting down. We did student introductions in both sections, went over the syllabus, and I gave them the opportunity to ask me questions about myself in both sections. With the exception of the experiment, the two sections followed the same syllabus, were taught in the same way, covered the same content, and had the same assignments and due dates.

At the end of the semester, I gave a short survey to each class to see what they remembered from their first day. I waited until 2020 to analyze these data because I wanted to allow a full four-year cycle to pass so that I could track the trajectory of each student in each section over the course of their time in college. In spring of 2020, I gathered data on how many students went on to take another course in sociology and how many decided to major or minor in sociology from these two sections. Although we cannot assume a direct causal relationship between the exercise and students’ decisions to major or minor, the striking differences between the two sections certainly hint at differential impact of the introductory course.

The Exercise

I walked into my first Introduction to Sociology class, Section A, a couple of minutes before 10:25 a.m. on Wednesday. There were about 22 students sitting around in a hot and humid room on the fourth floor of a building with no air conditioning. Late summer can be brutal in New England. Perfect. The students already looked a bit uncomfortable. I walked up to the desk at the front of the classroom, turned around and faced the students without a smile. I did not welcome them or introduce myself. After a couple of minutes when I was certain no more students were going to be wandering in, I told them, “This is Introduction to Sociology. Please turn off your phones and put them away. You are not allowed to use your phones during this class. Is that clear to everyone?” The students nodded and scrambled to turn off their phones and put them away. I then pulled out my own phone and instead of turning it off, I started scrolling through email, news, and so on. The first time I had done this exercise, it had lasted 12 minutes before I gave in. I was determined to go at least just as long this time. Any shorter and the exercise would not be as effective. The point is for students to see the behavior as obviously egregious and to see whether they call me out on it.

Five minutes went by. Students looked at each other uneasily and laughed uncomfortably now and then. I would look up sternly from my phone if the noise got louder and would go back to it once it died down. Ten minutes went by. Twelve minutes. A student finally said, “When will we start class”? For a split second I thought I should just end the exercise here. But I wanted to see if I could push this experiment further. I looked up and said “In a minute.” The students remained quiet after that. Fifteen minutes in, I thought my exercise had gone on long enough. I now put away my phone. Looked at them and smiled. “OK. Are we ready to get started?”

After the Exercise

Right after I ended my exercise, we went through the syllabus and various requirements of the course. I asked for questions along the way. We discussed the classroom we had been assigned and why that might not be good fit for this course. After that, I asked them all to introduce themselves to the class and share something quirky or fun about themselves. Once student introductions were over, I told them a bit about myself and told them they could ask me any question they wished to ask—about myself or the course. “Ask me anything, and if it’s appropriate, I’ll answer it,” I said. The students started to relax and asked me about my favorite color, pets, my majors in college, where I grew up, and so on. I made it a point to be as relaxed in my demeanor as possible—I sprinkled in references to pop culture and my enthusiasm for superhero movies, and the students by this point were visibly enjoying the conversation. Not at all like the first 15 minutes.

After their questions died down, I prodded them, “Is there anything else that you’d like to ask me about?” After a few more random questions, when I was sure nobody was going to ask me about the first 15 minutes of class, I asked them. “You don’t want to ask me anything about the beginning of class?” Now the students started grinning. The student who had asked me when we would start class piped up and said, “I knew it! I knew it was an experiment! My friends had told me that you do experiments on the first day. I tried to get other students to join me in questioning you but no one would.” I asked them why that was the case, and they gave me a range of answers that allowed me to move to a discussion of some very basic yet important concepts in sociology that we study throughout the semester: social norms, group behavior, roles, paths of least resistance, obedience to legitimate authority, conformity, and bystander behavior. But there are also pedagogical lessons in this exercise that I wanted to underscore for the students. I encouraged students to think about what they had been taught about the role of students in the classroom. What had they been taught about the role of the instructor in the classroom? I encouraged them to “unlearn” the behaviors they had been socialized into. I encouraged them to become comfortable questioning each other and their professors (or at least me). Above all, I encouraged them to see themselves as active participants in creating their educational experiences, not as passive recipients.

In Section B, the class followed the same chain of events except for the first 15 minutes of the experiment. I also concluded the class with the same conversation as above, minus the context of the experiment.

Impact of the Exercise

As mentioned earlier, I taught two sections of Introduction to Sociology in the fall of 2016. The classes enrolled 22 and 21 students in Section A and Section B, respectively. In December, after final exams, I sent out a survey to students in both sections asking them to recall the first day and what they had learned on that day (for the full list of questions, see the Appendix). The survey included questions specifically asking them about the first day along with some general questions. The survey for Section A included additional questions about the experiment on the first day. In Section A, 21 out of 22 responded, although two of those students were not present on the first day of class so responded with “n/a” for most of the questions. I have removed them from the following analysis, leaving 19 total responses. In Section B, 20 out of 21 responded, and all 20 were present on the first day. The following sections include snapshots of student responses from that survey. Given the small numbers, I did not conduct any statistical analyses; rather, I am presenting the qualitative data as a window into what the student experience was.

Memory of First Day

One of the first questions I asked in the survey was: “What, if anything, do you remember about the first day of class?” In Section A, only three out of 19 students did not mention the experiment. Those three mentioned being anxious because they were new in college and did not know what to expect, and one mentioned “the professor’s energy and excitement about the topic.” The rest of the responses touched on the experiment in some way. Ten of those responses mentioned feeling some kind of emotion related to the experiment, such as feeling “confused,” “nervous,” “intimidated,” “excited,” or “relieved.”

In Section B, 10 out of 20 students remembered discussing our classroom space on the first day. Not a single student described their own emotions when recalling that day, but some did use slightly negative words to describe my feelings about the classroom: “upset” or “angry” showed up in four out of 20 comments. One student described my presence as, “I remember Professor Jafar walking in with an intense, demanding presence. She asked questions, was fiery, it was really intriguing.” The use of the word intriguing was the closest a student came to describing their own emotions on that first day in Section B. The remaining responses were split into students remembering student introductions, going over the syllabus, discussing how my name is pronounced, or discussing the seating arrangement and norms.

Section A also received the following, more specific question: “What, if anything, did you learn from the exercise/experiment on the first day of class (sociological concepts and otherwise)?” In Section A, only one out of the 19 students said they learned “nothing.” The remaining 18 responses touched on learning about “conformity,” “authority,” “obedience,” “norms,” “power,” and “roles.”

Impact of Exercise on Student Experience and Views of Professor

Because section A was the only one to undergo the experiment, the following questions were only administered to that section. Because challenging a traditional hierarchical model of teaching is an explicit goal of mine, these questions were meant to capture student attitudes toward the class and toward the professor and to capture whether the exercise shifted these attitudes in any way. When asked, “How, if at all, did the exercise affect how you approached this classroom and your education (i.e., participating in discussions, asking questions etc.)?,” only two students reported that the exercise did not have an impact. One student said it made them more intimidated. The remaining 16 who were present all overwhelmingly agreed that it made them more comfortable and more excited for the course. Some responses include:

I instantly became more engaged in the material and more eager to participate in the class. Even though I very easily would have been interested in the course material, having a first-hand experience in a sociological experiment connected me to the material on a personal level.

I was more comfortable speaking up in class than I would have been if she had not done her exercise.

I felt less intimidated after the experiment and felt more willing to participate and offer more analysis for the readings and discussions.

For some students, these lessons went beyond my classroom, as evidenced in the following reponses:

It definitely made me more comfortable speaking out because she taught us that we shouldn’t be afraid to question things and speak our minds, even if it is outside of the social constructs.

It taught me to be ok with questioning and the right thing to do is question professors and my education.

It affected how I approached my education because it made me think about instances when I should have questioned teachers or others in authority but didn’t.

As a follow-up to the previous question, I asked: “How, if at all, did the exercise affect how you approached the professor?” Fourteen students responded extremely positively, reporting that it made them more comfortable with me or that they found me more approachable after the exercise. Some responses include:

It made me more willing to approach the professor and talk about perhaps more controversial thoughts that I had on a topic.

It made me more comfortable with speaking in class because this experiment set me up to think about this professor as an educator that accepts questioning.

Interestingly, one student also commented on the impact this had on his or her relationship with their classmates:

Surprisingly, the experiment made me more comfortable around Professor Jafar. She is just a wonderful educator and person, but in a similar way that the experiment connected me to the material, the emotional journey of the experiment created a unique kind of bonding not with just Professor Jafar, but with the rest of the class as well.

Only one student reported being more hesitant to approach me after the experiment. The remaining four were more neutral in their response, but two of them seemed to have interpreted it as a question of respect toward the professor and whether this exercise made them disrespect me in some way, to which they added that they still approached me with respect.

When asked, “Would you recommend this exercise again? Why or why not?,” all 19 respondents who were in class on the first day said that they would recommend this exercise. The following are some sample responses:

Yes because it’s a good introduction to the topic of disobedience and it leaves a lasting memory because of the emotional element to it.

I think it brought the class closer together on the first day.

I would recommend it again because it allows students to question you which is something that is not done in most classrooms.

Yes because it was a great way to personally see how society effects [sic] how we act and we were able to relate back to that moment all semester.

Yes I would recommend it because it offers a tangible analysis of social norms and is a great way to start the discussion of a theme that will come up often throughout the rest of the course.

Yes because it creates a better environment for the class room where people can voice their opinions more easily.

As can be seen from these responses, students report that the exercise is worth repeating either because it created a better classroom environment or because it made sociological lessons “real” for them in some way.

Lessons from the Course

I wanted to ask both sections what they had retained from the course in terms of some of its major themes—themes that we touched on since the first day of class. To that end, both Sections A and B received the following question: “What have you learned about norms, obedience, and conformity in this course?”

The differences between the two sections were fascinating. Many of the responses in Section A connected the lessons more directly to their own lives and experiences:

I’ve learned so much about norms, obedience, and conformity in this course. Everything that I’ve observed in my life has been confirmed through the material in this course. Honestly, there’s too much to write about, but the biggest thing that I’ve learned is that everything we have read is more relevant to my life than I would have thought before. This course brought a certain awareness to my own life, which will help me throughout my life.

I have learned to be observant of my own conformity to these things as well as my peers, becoming much more aware of my social behavior in every context.

I’ve learned that people tend to obey social norms and conform to them because no one wants to be a social outcast. Those who break social norms (such as standing facing the wall in an elevator) are regarded as “weird” or “lacking social skills.” We tend to obey those who are perceived to have more authority than us (ex: a professor and students, or a manager and a police officer), no matter how far they may ask us to go. Most people even tend to obey the authority figure even when they feel that they passed their own moral and ethical beliefs.

As can be seen from the previous responses, students in Section A often put the lessons in personal terms and connected the lessons learned to their own lives. On the other hand, although Section B did an excellent job of summarizing and recalling lessons learned from various readings, the students did not personalize it the way that Section A did. For instance, Section B students said:

i [sic] have learned that we all conform to norms in our society and how it can be super detrimental to individuals, especially to those who don’t want to conform but feel they have to. we [sic] talked about gender norms and the things that boys and girls must wear, do, think, say, etc. we [sic] also learned how conformity is so dangerous because we do not see it as being dangerous. And [sic] for obedience we learned that people are willing to go to great distances to follow what authority says to do, especially when looking at what we have most recently been studying– abu ghraib, holocaust, milgrim [sic] experiment, etc

I have learned that norms are a real thing and can be changed, that they do not have to stay the same but their [sic] is a sociological explanation as to why they do. I have learned that obedience is not just in Germans, but Americans or anybody who believes that authority figures are above them. I have learned that people conform because it is easier to conform, or seems easier socially, to conform than to have full control of your own thought and to speak out when feeling the need.

Clearly, Section B students showed a good grasp of the subject matter. It does not appear that their learning of the concepts was deficient. I would note, however, that most of the examples of lessons learned in Section B came from the last few weeks of the semester, whereas Section A drew on the whole range of the semester. Furthermore, in Section A, four students also mentioned the classroom environment and professor/student dynamics in response to the questions about lessons learned. For instance, one student specifically said “[t]hat learning environments are better when students feel comfortable challenging the authority.” In Section B, nobody mentioned classroom dynamics as part of the lessons learned.

Overall, although the sample size is small, the results of the survey reveal that in Section A, students felt more engaged, more comfortable, and excited and remembered the lessons learned on the first day for a long time. Additionally, the experiment encouraged students to think about their roles in the classroom and to become active participants in their education. As an instructor, I find the exercise valuable because it gives me the ability to keep returning to concepts first introduced in this experiment and to connect that first class to many other concepts throughout the semester. For instance, one student reported (when asked “What, if anything, did you learn on the first day of class), “I found many parallels to this experiment and what my classmates and I learned during our discussion on bureaucracies.” The experiment allows the first day of class to be seamlessly woven into the whole semester, and through repetition and recall of how students behaved on that first day, the lessons drive home and become personal in a way that simply reading about them does not allow for. But given that students in Section B recalled lessons from the course pretty clearly, I was unsure of the impact of the exercise until I recently traced the trajectory of each student in the two sections.

Future Trajectory of Students

As mentioned earlier, one last aspect of assessment that I waited to collect data on until 2020 was how many students from each section went on to become majors and minors in sociology and how many went on to take another course. For this information, I waited until spring of 2020 to make sure I captured all of the late declarations in this cohort of students. There are many things that impact a student’s desire to major in a subject, and it is impossible to connect students’ decisions to major or minor directly to this experiment. Nonetheless, the introductory course experience certainly influences whether the students’ interest is sparked in that subject matter or not. Because students who enroll in a course in their senior or junior year often find it too late to add a minor or major, it was important to account for any large differences in the students enrolling by class year. There were no significant differences between the two sections by class year. Section A, which enrolled 22 students, had one senior and two juniors, with the rest (19 students) being sophomores and first years. Section B had one junior, and the rest (20 students) were sophomores and first years. In the semester when I did this experiment, there were four (nonsociology) declared majors in Section A already and one in Section B.

In Section A, nine students went on to declare a sociology major, and two declared a minor. That is, 11 out of 22, a full 50 percent of the class, went on to major or minor in sociology (including a student who had already declared a major and added sociology as a second major). In Section B, no students declared a major or minor in sociology. In Section A, 16 out of 22 (about 73 percent) went on to take a second or more courses in sociology. In Section B, only five out of 21 (about 24 percent) went on to take a second course (or more) in sociology.

I had not expected to see such a drastic difference between the trajectory of students in Section A and Section B.² Although there are many other factors that shape a student’s decision to major or minor, the stark difference between the two courses certainly reveals something about their impressions of the field. Keeping in mind the research on “first impressions” (Brouilette and Turner 1992; Cavanagh 2016, 2019; Higgins 1999; Lang 2019), we might reasonably conclude that students in the two courses formed very different first impressions of the professor and the discipline on that first day and that those first impressions influenced their decision to pursue sociology. Connecting it to neuroscientific research on emotions, motivation, and learning among students, we may reasonably conclude that the emotional experience of the first day engaged and motivated the students in a way that the other course did not.

Things to Consider

I would be remiss if I did not address some of the risks that come with this particular exercise. The exercise encourages students to challenge the authority of the professor in the classroom. As such, this has bigger risks for junior faculty and faculty of color whose authority students may question to begin with (Gutiérrez y Muhs et al. 2012). Because faculty of color, especially women of color, struggle to establish their authority in the classroom, an experiment designed to question that authority even more could backfire and could result in disruptive, rude, and disrespectful behavior. As a woman of color, I am constantly aware of issues of power and authority in my classroom. In the many years that I have been teaching and doing some kind of experiment, I have found that students become more comfortable with me but hardly ever disrespectful. The instances of disrespectful behavior that I can recall have happened just as frequently or more frequently in classes that I have not done any experiments in or have happened in my midlevel courses where I do not conduct this experiment. In the words of one student, “The exercise didn’t effect [sic] how I approached the professor at all. I still approached with respect.” And another student added, “it made me admire the professor more.”

Overall, the response has always been positive enough that the benefits outweigh any potential backlash for me, but others would need to understand their own institutional culture and classroom environment to gauge the risk for themselves. Those who are less sure of their students’ reactions or their own positions within the institution might wait until they are more experienced or tenured so that any potential backlash or disruptive behavior can be addressed in a way that is not detrimental to the instructor.

Another aspect that an instructor should consider is the personal anxiety that this experiment causes. It certainly increases student uncertainty and anxiety briefly. But perhaps more than the students, it is anxiety-inducing for the instructor. It takes a lot of will power and confidence to sit in front of a class actively doing the thing one has asked students not to do. To be successful at it, one needs to put on an unapproachable demeanor and not burst out laughing from the tension or just giving in. My heart always races, pounds really, right before I walk into class with this experiment in mind. The nervousness is induced by the fact that I cannot predict student responses. What if a student is really rude? What if someone calls me out? I found that it helps to lay out a script for myself for how I might respond to particular student reactions. For instance, I had already prepared for the question that I received during this class: “When are we going to start class?” And I had practiced the response I gave: a short, stern-faced “In a minute” before continuing with what I was pretending to do on my phone. Another question that is worth preparing for could be “This is an experiment, isn’t it?” One could respond with a calm “Does it look like an experiment? Please give me a minute to finish up” before returning to the phone.

One other consideration for this experiment might be how one dresses for this first day. I dressed in a manner that was far more formal than my typical wardrobe for the rest of the semester. I wanted to project “authority” through my material self to my students. Of course, how much one needs to depend on one’s wardrobe for projecting authority is dependent on factors like gender, race, sexuality, and class. But if one feels especially nervous about this experiment and whether students might call out the experiment, relying on these material aspects to convey authority and status certainly provides a little boost.

Finally, it is extremely important to follow up this experiment with some fun, laughter, and casual talk so that the students are not left with the serious and unapproachable persona cultivated for this experiment. I allow students to ask me any question they would like. I answered questions about pets, favorite color, TV shows, movie genre, and other irrelevant or downright silly things. All of this put the students at ease and made them realize that the stern-looking professor was really an act and not who I am as a professor.

I used this experiment in an introductory sociology course, but it can be used in any sociology course, especially in the introductory or midlevel courses where the students may still be a little unsure of their place in the classroom. Beyond the sociological concepts taught, there is the pedagogical benefit of getting students more engaged and questioning their place in the classroom, and thus this experiment has relevance beyond sociology. It is especially useful for any instructor who wishes to increase student engagement and break down the conception of the professor as untouchable and unquestionable. It can be used in small and large classes effectively because it does not require monitoring or grading of student activity in the moment. In many ways, it is the lessons of this activity, rather than the specific form it takes, that are more important, as instructors think about adapting this for their classes. The lessons from this experiment can be used to design a number of activities, including in remote classrooms. So long as instructors design activities/experiments that (1) take place on the first day and require a student response in some form (even if it is a nonresponse, as in the activity detailed here), (2) engage students cognitively and affectively/emotionally, and (3) connect to the course’s main concepts and themes, the activity or experiment should yield similar results.

Having tracked the student trajectories over these four years, I am convinced that the experiment has enough of a benefit to keep going with it. As Weimer (2015) stated: “Courses have been known to change lives. Most don’t, but why not introduce the possibility on the first day? . . . transformative learning . . . happens when we learn something that not only changes how we think, but also changes what we do.” This article has laid out one possible way that we can approach our courses on the first day of the semester. First days are full of uncertainty and possibilities. Why not make the most of it, even if it means taking some risks? The reward for both instructors and students is a course that could possibly transform the student experience.

Footnotes

Appendix: End-of-Semester Survey

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the director of Institutional Research at Connecticut College, John Nugent, who helped me track the students’ trajectories as I started working on this article. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers and the editor for their helpful feedback on an earlier draft of this article.

Editor’s Note

Reviewers for the manuscript were, in alphabetical order, Brian Kapitulik, Cheryl Laz, and Charles Seguin.

ORCID iD

Afshan Jafar

Notes

Author Biography

Afshan Jafar is an associate professor of sociology at Connecticut College. Her research and teaching interests include gender, globalization, bodies/embodiments, and Islam. She is a recipient of the Helen Mulvey Award for Teaching (Connecticut College). She is an active public scholar, and her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Ms. Magazine, and LA Review of Books, among others.

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