January 16, 2026
Thanks to Chad Greene, former Fellow in Ideas, for today’s blog.
“It’s like I said: I love this film. I’ve seen it over one hundred times.” – Phil Connors, Groundhog Day
Winter break was about to end. Spring semester was about to start.
In the third or the fourth week of the semester, it would be Groundhog Day. In the ninth week of the semester, I would show Groundhog Day to the students in my developmental composition courses. (Better late than never, right?)
Because the majority of my students were born in the 2000s, most of them would have never seen Harold Ramis’ 1993 romantic comedy. So I would begin by providing them with a summary of it that should also suffice for you if, like them, you have never watched this funny – yet profound – film. Phil Connors (Bill Murray) is a big-city weatherman assigned by his television station to travel with his producer Rita Hanson (Andie MacDowell) to Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, to cover its small-town Groundhog Day festival. Inexplicably, Connors finds himself trapped in a time loop – repeating the same day in Punxsutawney over and over – until he learns a crucial life lesson.
I started teaching Groundhog Day in my developmental composition courses because the author of one of the other texts I often assigned, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, interprets that crucial life lesson to be the importance of changing from a “fixed mindset” to a “growth mindset.” According to Carol Dweck, in the first half of the movie, Connors has a fixed mindset. That is, he takes advantage of the repetition of days to create opportunities to prove himself. In Dweck’s analysis, in the second half of the movie, Connors has a growth mindset. That is, he takes advantage of the repetition of days to create opportunities to improve himself. “With no way out, it finally dawns on him: he could be using this time to learn,” Dweck observes. “Only when this change of mindset is complete is he released from the spell” (46).
During those past spring semesters, I would use the same slides to present this same summary and this same analysis – as well as a handful of discussion questions, which would also stay the same – to students enrolled in the same developmental composition courses. So, yes, I eventually felt a little like I was trapped in a time loop whenever I started to teach Groundhog Day.
And not only then. We teachers may often feel like the mythological character Sisyphus, condemned to roll the same boulder up the same hill over and over. After all, don’t we start each semester shaking our heads at the same sad stories from students desperate to add our classes? Don’t we end each semester making the same complaints about the same disappointing piles of papers from students desperate to pass our classes? Don’t we always wonder, repeating the same laments semester after semester, if the teaching on our parts led to any learning on our students’ parts?
But aren’t the repeated patterns of the academic calendar simply more easily perceptible examples of the repeated patterns in all of our lives?
Early in Groundhog Day, Phil asks two townies in Punxsutawney what is meant to be a rhetorical question. “What would you do, if you were stuck in one place, and every day was the same, and nothing that you did mattered?”
But one of the townies, Ralph (Rick Overton), sadly nods. “That sums it up for me.”
Any of you out there ever felt a little like Ralph? Me, too.
But, now that we’ve allowed ourselves to feel the tiniest bit of self-pity, let’s remind ourselves of the truths of our lives as teachers. First, no two semesters are truly the same. As many of us tend to observe over and over, the people in the classroom change. Most obviously, the students change. (Unless one fails to pass one semester and has to repeat the course the next semester.) Less obviously, though, there is the second truth that fewer of us tend to state explicitly: We, the teachers, change. We are never exactly the same, and – because of that – our courses are never exactly the same.
It is true that, as teachers, we are obligated to perform certain tasks at certain times in each semester. We must add students to our roster by this date, submit their final grades by that date. However, if we adopt the right mindset, we can choose to see the repeated patterns of our academic calendars as opportunities to learn – as Connors ultimately does in Groundhog Day.
Eventually, I freed myself from this particular time loop when my department essentially eliminated developmental composition courses. However, teaching Groundhog Day over and over, I’ve realized, presented me with the opportunities to learn two crucial lessons about the benefits of repetition in our academic careers.
‘The Master?’
As we walked our respective paths that eventually led us to teaching at the college level, many of us earned a degree that proclaimed us “masters” – of arts, or of sciences, or of something else entirely. (In my specific case, my degree proclaimed me – perhaps prematurely – a “master of professional writing.”) However, teaching Groundhog Day has helped me to realize that true mastery of a subject is not achieved during a degree program meant to last only about two years.
In the case of Connors, he only achieves true mastery of his subject – Groundhog Day, in specific, and the changing of seasons, in general – after a repetition that some estimate lasted for not only days, for not only weeks, for not only months, for not only years, but for decades. His stunning growth, his achievement of mastery, is evident in the improvement from his first attempt at covering Punxsutawney’s Groundhog Day festival at the start of the movie to his last attempt at the end.
Connors’ first attempt starts out with an introduction that his producer Hanson accepts as passable, flashing him “OK” symbols with both her hands.
“Once a year, the eyes of the nation turn to Western Pennsylvania to watch a master at work. The master? Punxsutawney Phil, the world’s most famous weatherman. The groundhog who, as legend has it, can predict the coming of an early spring. So I guess the question we have to ask ourselves today is: Does Phil feel lucky?”
But then it concludes with this:
“This is one time when television really fails to capture the true excitement of a large squirrel predicting the weather. I, for one, am very grateful to have been here. From Punxsutawney, this is Phil Connors. So long.”
When Hanson, unsatisfied with both Connors’ content and delivery, declares, “OK, we’ll try it again, without the sarcasm,” he refuses. As Connors walks away, their cameraman Larry (Chris Elliott) disparages him, not for the first time, as a “prima donna” and shakes his head dismissively.
Contrast this, though, with Connors’ last attempt – after the repetition has allowed him to spend much more time reading and thinking about his subject. This time, not only his producer and his cameraman, but also the broadcasters from other television stations listen with rapt attention.
“When Chekhov saw the long winter, he saw a winter bleak and dark and bereft of hope. Yet we know that winter is just another step in the cycle of life. But, standing here among the people of Punxsutawney and basking in the warmth of their hearths and hearts, I couldn’t imagine a better fate than a long and lustrous winter. From Punxsutawney, it’s Phil Connors. So long.”
After all Connors’ listeners applaud, Larry clasps his hand as a sign of newfound respect. “Hey, man,” he tells Connors, “you touched me.”
While it might be too much to expect applause at the end of one of our class sessions, I have realized the repetition of the academic calendar also allows us to spend much more time reading and thinking about our respective subjects, hopefully leading to us covering them in ways which are more and more likely to touch our students. The first time we attempt to cover a subject, like Connors, we may not have many – or any – profound insights to share about a particular text. However, by reading and thinking about a text over and over, we start to truly understand it – and how to talk with our students about it.
Of course, this requires us to select texts that have the depth and complexity necessary to make reading, thinking, and talking about them over and over a rewarding and enriching experience. For me, Groundhog Day itself is such a text, but watching it over and over has also taught me a second crucial lesson about the benefits of repetition in our academic careers: that the most important “texts” to understand are our students themselves.
‘I Know All About You’
At the start of each semester, most of us make the efforts to learn our students’ names and majors. Maybe, some of us try to memorize a “fun fact” or two about them.
If we stop there, however, we will have achieved only the appearance of knowing our students. We will be like Connors simply memorizing three random details about a local lady played by Marita Geraghty with whom he wants simply to have a – how do I put this? – “short-term relationship.”
“What’s your name?” he asks as she reads the newspaper, The Spirit, in the Tip Top Café.
“Nancy Taylor. And you are?” she responds.
Ignoring her question, Connors continues, “And what high school did you go to?”
“Lincoln, in Pittsburgh. Who are you?”
“Who was your twelfth-grade English teacher?”
“Mrs. Walsh.”
“Nancy. Lincoln. Walsh,” Connors rehearses. “OK, thanks very much.”
Then, when the day repeats and they meet again, Connors creates the appearance of knowing Nancy by enthusiastically calling out, “Nancy? Nancy Taylor? Lincoln High School! I sat next to you in Mrs. Walsh’s English class!”
Spoiler alert, for those of you who have not watched Groundhog Day: Connors is able to parlay the false sense of familiarity created with this shallow set of facts into an inauthentic, short-term relationship with Taylor.
Contrast this with Connors’ true effort to get to know Hanson when he realizes that he wants to start an authentic, long-term relationship with her.
“I know all about you,” Connors assures her. “You like producing, but you hope for more than Channel 9 Pittsburgh.”
“Well,” she replies, unimpressed, “everyone knows that!”
“You like boats, but not the ocean. You go to a lake in the summer with your family, up in the mountains. There’s a long wooden dock and a boathouse with boards missing from the roof, and a place you used to crawl underneath to be alone. You’re a sucker for French poetry and rhinestones. You’re very generous. You’re kind to strangers and children. And, when you stand in the snow, you look like an angel.”
After that, she’s impressed.
Now, these are imperfect examples, as I am not encouraging romantic relationships with students – either short-term or long-term. However, in Groundhog Day, Connors ultimately gets to know not only Hanson, but also all the residents of Punxsutawney. Through his true effort to understand who they all are as people, Connors creates an authentic sense of community so strong that – one last spoiler alert – at the end of the movie, he and Hanson decide to stay in Punxsutawney.
By making our own true efforts to understand who all our students are as people, we can similarly create an authentic sense of community in our courses. If you haven’t been able to achieve this in the past, don’t worry: You’re about to get another chance.
After all, winter break is about to end. Spring semester is about to start. And I hope that, like Connors and Hanson, you will decide to stay.
Photo credit: Shutterstock/ adriaticfoto
