Coles: I Hated Being a Pre-Med

Professor of Psychiatry and Medical Humanities Robert Coles '50 said he didn't enjoy taking the premed courses necessary for his medical degree, and that he "never intended to become a teacher."

Speaking to an audience of more than 30 people at Boylston Auditorium, Coles last night discussed his feelings about his work and his popular class Gen Ed 105, "The Literature of Social Reflection."

The speech was part of a series entitled "What I Teach and Why," co-sponsored by the Cambridge Forum and The Harvard Crimson.

Coles said that he had planned to study literature in college, but changed his mind after being encouraged by a professor to send a paper he had written on physician and poet William Carlos Williams to Williams himself.

After receiving a favorable reply from Williams and going to meet him, Coles switched to pre-med, despite his disdain for courses such as organic chemistry.

After going to the South to study desegregation and traveling to many poorer parts of the country to study children, Coles was approached in the late '60s by a former professor who asked him to become a section head. Coles agreed and eventually faced the prospect of becoming a Harvard instructor himself.

"I said 'yes' but asked, 'What would I teach?'" Coles said he first considered becoming a psychiatry instructor but decided on teaching literature because, in his words, "I think I know novelists better than social scientists and I think I'm more compatible with them."

Coles said that in class his goal is to "connect theories to what is palpable, to what is part of our lives," adding that he tried to inject a view of the real world into the Harvard community, which he described as "all us busy intellectuals, all too busy and all too self-absorbed."

Responding to a student's comment that the course was nicknamed "Guilt," Coles said, "What's wrong with guilt? It's a damn good thing."