Letters from an Astrophysicist

by Neil deGrasse Tyson

Think of a professor facing away from you, droning on while writing on the board in the front of class. As a student, especially in college, it’s your responsibility to learn the material. You are paying for the education. So your learning skills will, in many cases, need to compensate for the absence of clarity or enthusiasm in the professor’s delivery. That’s lecturing. Now think of a professor who faces you from the front of the room; who makes eye contact with the audience; who has invested time and energy thinking about how you think; who pays attention to your attention span; who is aware of what words you know and what words or concepts confuse you; who knows the demographics of the audience—age, gender, nationality, ethnicity, political leanings, cultural leanings, propensity to laugh, to cry; who carries some pop-culture fluency, for easy reference and analogy, but only when teaching the subject can be assisted by such references. That person is not lecturing to you. That person has opened conduits tailored to that audience in that moment, and at that time. That’s communicating.