July 7, 2023
BU Today recently published an article sharing Associate Professor of Markets, Public Policy, and Law, Jay Zagorsky’s reflection on teaching roughly 10,000 students during his time at Boston University.
In addition to technology, exams, grading, and students, Zagorsky notes the many changes in and outside of the classroom. Since teaching his first class in 1987, Zagorsky has observed grade inflation, lectured over Zoom, and bounced between paper and online exams.
His ever-changing audience of princes, paupers or even directors of refugee camps in Sudan, has been able to teach him even more than he teaches to the class. “I love hearing about their lives, which has provided me with stories that I could never learn from a book or journal,” Zagorsky says.
Despite the numerous changes and challenges over the years, Zagorsky would have it no other way than to be teaching students at BU. He notes, “…about a decade ago I had acute appendicitis just before a class. I was rushed to the operating room and before the surgeon cut me open, the anesthesiologist leaned over and said, “think of the place you most want to be, like the beach,” the image I saw before being knocked out was me giving a lecture in Morse Auditorium in front of a sea of BU students.” Zagorsky looks forward to teaching his next 10,000 BU Terriers.