“How do you know what to read?”

A question from a student in 1993 that I could keep answering.

Her question, asked with the vulnerability of an 18-year-old student who has just finished her first term at the University of Iowa, endeared her to me. How did I know? Did I know how I did it? I realized I’d never once described it for anyone. This question came at the end of my last class in my first rhetoric course taught as a graduate student, a par…