Maybe this belongs on my other blog, but anyway: this post will be short because the second my baby saw me turn on my computer, she crawled over and began hitting the keys. I tried to bribe her with cheese but she spat it out. Oh, wait... she is distracted by something. I'd better make this quick.
Today I accidentally parked in street cleaning, and when I got back to my car there was NO TICKET. Either the gods are making it up to me for some other time I had bad luck, or I am ABOUT to have some streak of bad stuff happen to me. This latter thought is what's been on my mind today. See how I ruin good news?
Yesterday when I came in to class, my students were full of questions about Mark, whom they'd met the other day when he subbed for me. They wanted to know ALL ABOUT our marriage and our life together. I was so amused. Now, I was not born yesterday and I realized that part of what they were doing was trying to take up class time so they wouldn't have to spend it learning. But I think at least partly they were interested in hearing about our relationship. This cracks me up because the only reason someone like me would be of any interest to them is that three times a week I happen to be stationed in front of them for an hour and five minutes. Ordinarily, a person like me would be of less than no interest to them. But by virtue of the fact that I am deposited in front of them in a position of assumed authority, they start getting interested in the minutiae of my life and questioning me about it as though I were a deeply fascinating object of interest. Of course, I also enjoyed hearing little salacious details about my professors when I was a student... but now, I am not quite sure why.
I amused myself by describing our marriage thusly: "It's kind of like when Hollywood celebrities marry each other. Only one Rhetoric and Composition teacher can truly understand what another Rhetoric and Composition teacher is going through."
I also enjoyed this: they told me we had very different teaching styles. When I asked them to be more specific, the answer was, "He used an overhead projector and you always use the chalkboard."
I also note that today's students are a whole lot more... savvy and grown-up, somehow, than I remember being at 18. For example, this part of the conversation: after letting the questioning go on a bit, I teasingly asked them why they were so interested in personal revelations from their teacher. One student said she really liked knowing her teachers and even getting to be friends with them.
Me: That may be, but what happens when your friend the teacher has to give you a grade?
My student: Well, of course, there's a fine line that teachers have to figure out. They definitely need to maintain their boundaries with their students.
That just makes me smile.
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7 comments:
I'm not sure how this changes between 15 and 18, but I get the impression from my kids sometimes that they're trying to figure out what adults are and what their lives are, since eventually they'll be forced to be them/have them. They know so few adults really well.
Though... on Friday a student told me I was too old to have kids. Could have done without that.
Meg,
Let me guess. Said student who said you were too old to have kids--was this a trailer trash student? Because from a WT perspective, anyone over 24 is too old to have kids. So I wouldn't worry about that overmuch :)
L.
Oh yeah--and lest anyone reading this be offended by my use of 'trailer trash'--I can use it because I come from a poor, rural area, and most of my relatives are still in the trailer park. It ain't a pleasant place to be, ya'll.
L.
No ticket sounds good to me!
I do find it amusing seeing things from the other side, now that I have college professors for friends! It really makes a person three-dimensional when you see them from more than one perspective rather than just as a "teacher" or a "stockbroker" or a "waitress" or whatever forum you interact with them in.
I'm curious, why did you think they were asking the questions to "waste class time" rather than solely out of nosey curiosity?
(ps, the typo originally read "noisy curiosity"--hmm, certainly paints a different scene!).
Oh, I guess I assumed they were trying to eat up class time because this is a ploy I remember classmates using when I was a wee one back in college! Keep asking the teacher questions, let's say, and get him or her blathering on so we won't be asked to do any real work. :-) But I don't know. I do think that a few of them, at least, were genuinely curious about me and Mark. And I remember being genuinely curious about my professors (some of them, anyway!).
You are so right about profs seeming more three-dimensional, now that we're older. It strikes me that back when I was a student, it NEVER occurred to me how much power I had to hurt teachers' feelings, or how vulnerable they might feel. They seemed to me to comfortably inhabit their authority, and I didn't think for a second that my behavior could injure their feelings in any way. (Also: I thought they ENJOYED grading papers. HAAHAHAHAHAH!)
Meg, I cannot believe a student said that to you! How old could we possibly seem to them? Really, that's shocking!
This is a very interesting discussion. I feel such a generation gap with my students I never felt before that makes it hard for either of us to be in each other's shoes. For example, we discussed 9/11 and they have factual knowledge of the event but not the emotional reaction to it, like I did when I saw it live on tv in 2001--and they were probably 12 and at school and didn't understand the circumstances. Even simpler of an example: I bring in cartoons to analyze, and they don't get the joke that I easily got, almost as if we live in different worlds...which we do.
I told Matt that I hope that I can get old enough while teaching where I think these differences are endearing...at best right now, they are cumbersome and at worst...makes me pull out my hair!
Melissa
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