Have you ever given a gift to a student? You know, out of the goodness of your heart? Or greatness of your heart? Did you let the homeless kid sleep on your sofa one semester? Did you "loan" a hundred dollars to the nice kid in the front row, knowing you'd never see the money again? Did you bake a cake for a snowflake? Did you buy a new shirt for the student who had worn the same sweatshirt the entire semester? Did you dare to give somebody a hug? I gave a good dictionary to a student years ago before wifi was everywhere. I remember that fondly.
Q. What was the best, costliest, most important, most whatever gift you ever gave a student?
A. Don't say you gave them an education. [Be honest, dammit.]
When I left my former position, many years ago, I gave a student a first edition of a nobel prize winning author's book, which I had watched the author sign when the book first was released. If I still had that book, it would fetch many hundreds of dollars (I just checked). Of course, I would not have sold it, but still...
ReplyDeleteThe student has gone on to be a professor, and now teaches at an Ivy. I think I knew that student was going to surpass me even then.
I have given books to some of my best advanced undergraduate and graduate students. The most frequent one was "A Ph.D. is Not Enough," by Peter Feibelman, which costs only about $15 and has lots of useful career advice, for students in the natural sciences. I let my best student ever keep an old (2nd) edition of "Numerical Recipes in C" by Press et al., because he made good use of it. (I was annoyed at having paid over $100 for the new 3rd edition, because it's not much different from the 2nd ed.) I give pads of paper all the time to struggling students in my Intro-Astronomy-for-Non-Majors course, when they come to me during my office hours, when I tell them to take notes while reading the textbook, I guarantee it will help (and they sometimes do and it inevitably does), and use this pad to do it!
ReplyDeleteI have hugged only one student ever, and only because she caught me by surprise during a graduation ceremony. It's downright unhealthy for a man my age to be taking a physical interest in women that age, plus my sweetheart (who is my age) would HATE it. My university's administration wouldn't be crazy about it, either, and neither would any woman students’ parents.
P.S. More than once, I saw a hug from a student coming, and I got away by struggling like a cat that doesn't want to be petted. Life loves its ironies: if I during my youth could have seen the older version of me doing that, it would have served the young me right! ;-)/2
ReplyDeleteI lent an older lady my cell phone for a couple of days (back when they were in a small bag and not very fancy). She collapsed in class and another student drove her home. I was so worried about her, I ask the friend where she lived and dropped by. She and her ailing boyfriend (who answered the door rather fearfully) lived in a rough part of town in government housing. I sat with them a while and found out she had congestive heart failure and they didn't have a phone or car. They didn't want to go to the hospital because of the cost. So, I gave them my cell phone, told them they'd better call 911 if she had problems or to call me if they needed help. The next time in class, she gave me the phone back and later decided to withdraw. I never saw her again.
ReplyDeleteP.S. she was very sweet and grateful about the phone. I forgot to mention that; my first post made it sound like she left without sying anything.
ReplyDeleteI've given a lot of books to students over the years, especially grad students--William Germano's "From Dissertation to the Book" is a favorite there. Books are my standard student gift, as I would imagine they are for most of us here. I've lost count of how many I've given, and I don't think I've ever given (or even owned) any really valuable ones.
ReplyDeleteAnd unlike Frod, I do accept hugs. I think they are mostly harmless, even if Mrs. Archie gets a little annoyed on occasion when she's in the room.
I gave a dissertation student my old laptop once. It was hardly an extravagance, but she really needed it and I know it helped her with library work and so on.
ReplyDeleteI also pass on review copies of books and the occasional career advice book.
And hugs? Out here in LaLa Land, you're expected to hug your bank teller and the meter maid.
I loan students many things they need, but do get them back (amazing how things reappear when final grades are due) including cameras, laptops, and other things needed for projects.
ReplyDeleteA gift though? Well, the best one ever I never got to give the student, but it's worth recounting here.
I encountered a writing student here at small town private business college that was quite honestly the best writer I've met--period. She had a true gift, and she also was wonderfully funny and engaging in class. I was all ready to recruit her for the writing center because we need folks like that, only to find out that she had been diagnosed with cancer the day after my class ended and had had massive surgery.
She took me the next term too (though naturally wasn't quite up to working as well with all the treatments) and I watched her struggle, with cheer, through her own mortality.
The week after that term ended (a year ago this week) she came into the Writing Center to hang out. Although she was happy enough to talk, it was clear that sitting alone at home had been getting to her. I let her stay. We talked about what we wanted for christmas.
She told me all she really wanted was a hobby horse (all I really wanted was an inflatable marlin!) When I went to visit relatives, I found an $8 hobby horse in a feed store. This poor thing is gender confused--you press one ear, he sings as a boy. You press the other--she says she loves to be brushed. I knew she would love it. I told my husband some stupid lie about why I had to have it (he'd never allow me to spend money on students) and brought him home.
The fact is I never saw that student alive again. I had dropped her an email to let her know there was something in the Writing Center for her, but never got a response.
Months later, I found out that she had been in the hospital nearly the entire time till she died. She finally had a stroke and passed away this last summer. She sent one of her friends to find me and one other teacher to let us know.
At her funeral, I actually could recognize people from her personal narrative. I had sent flowers as well. The other teacher did too. Her family couldn't believe that she was so loved at her school. The hobby horse stays in my office, where I suspect it will always be... though nobody really knows the significance of the thing (other than it being really funny).
I'm going to sound like a complete sap here, but I think the greatest gift we gave her was showing up that day and letting her family know we cared about her.
Yeah and now I'm going to cry again, and I'm at work. FABULOUS.
When I got my Ph.D., my advisor, a Firesign Theatre fan like me, gave me a copy of their album:
ReplyDeleteEverything You Know is Wrong!
What a fine gift, for the occasion.
Well, if we're expanding this to items lent, rather than gifts, I lend all kinds of books to students all the time. For this purpose, I have five copies of "A Ph.D. is Not Enough," and five copies of another, technical introduction to my research field. Only rarely do I not get them back: I just wish the students would read them more carefully. Bart Bok, when he was chair of the astronomy department at Arizona, observed that whenever he looked at his bookshelf, and saw empty spaces where books had been that were now lent to students, those were almost always very good books. I also lend telescopes and (usually relatively inexpensive) digital cameras to astronomy students, but those belong to our public university, not me. Most of them are donations accumulated from widows over the years, so it wouldn’t be a disaster if they were damaged or not returned. It’s a situation much like the meteorites I pass around for students to handle in all my classes: none of them are worth more than $10, being “meteorite oxide,” the lowest-grade, rusted kind to which sophisticated collectors turn up their noses. But my students never know that: they think, "Cool! A rock from space!"
ReplyDeleteI have given books, but the best I think I ever gave was a handmade (including the beads) rosary to a Catholic student whose mother AND her daughter had been killed in a car wreck.
ReplyDeleteI gave a student who was going to Starvistan two pieces of animal bone. The pieces came from a traditional healer in the local market, and I'd had them in my pocket the day that my car blew up. I was not in the car when it blew up. She came back, two years later, alive and well.
ReplyDeleteGeez, maybe I'm too soft, but I've given books dozens of times, computers I didn't need anymore, cash to students I'm close with who are doing study abroad, household goods to students who needed them, clothes to TAs with no money, and lots of hugs. Oh yes, and CANDY.
ReplyDeleteOne of the advantages of both my position (assistant director of financial aid) and my appearance (I look like a middle-aged mom from the neck down and an earnest young kindergarten teacher from the neck up) is the ability to offer my distraught students Kleenexes, reassurances, and the occasional hug with nigh-total impunity. It doesn't seem to make them take their financial obligations any less seriously (mind you, with some of them, they couldn't possibly) and I get the occasional e-mail from a parent thanking me for my sympathy towards their unhappy offpsring.
ReplyDeleteGlory, yes: books, candy, hugs (here we give the meter maid one cheek, acquaintances two, and real friends three), Kleenex, lunch, brownies made for the whole crew. And flowers for a funeral. I've been invited to weddings (and even attended some!), they bring their babies to show me, I attend sporting events, and go out for a beer with my Golden Boys. I actually like most of my students.
ReplyDeleteLike Jess, I'm a middle-aged mom and look the part, I suppose that's a contributing factor.
I've been teaching 20 years and I've never even thought about giving a student a gift. Seriously, am I the only one?
ReplyDeleteAnd a hug? Are you freaking kidding me? You're touching your students? I'm not even half kidding.
I lurve my students, too, but have NEVER hugged one or given a gift. I'm alarmed at how normal it seems on here. The hug just seems totally out of bounds in my world. I hug my colleagues sometimes at semester end. But never a student. Am I not nurturing? I think I am? I have a heavy "feminine vibe," just like Fab Sun...oooooh, that's mean.
ReplyDeleteI have a colleague who loans students books left right and center. Every year at the annual city second-hand book fair, we find whole tables full of his (usually rare, expensive) books that the little darlings seem to have sold off to make their rent money.
ReplyDeleteSo I guess those end up being gifts... kind of, but unintentionally.
(And yes, we always buy them back for him, when we can afford it.)
My students' tuition would be more costly if I was paid what I'm worth. In that sense, I'm giving them a good deal each semester.
ReplyDeleteNo hugs. Students are like strippers: never touch.
This may sound smarmy but I think the best "gift" I gave was helping an immigrant student requalify in his profession. Over the course of several years, I gave him references, put him in touch with contacts in the field, found him some work, and gave him advice and encouragement. He worked hard and he did it. One less immigrant with a graduate degree driving taxi or delivering your pizza.
ReplyDeleteI've never hugged either a student or a colleague (nor was I ever hugged by any of my undergraduate or graduate professors). I have, on a few occasions, given away books (usually duplicate or review copies of things like _Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace_) to students I was pretty sure would/could use them. I have to say I'm pretty comfortable with this picture, and not only because some of my students earn more than I do.
ReplyDeleteI -want- to give an old, incompetent department chair a pie in the face...
ReplyDeleteI want a hug from Marcia Brady.
ReplyDelete{{{Marcia}}}
Kleenex, index cards, planners, prizes for in-class games (unusual pencils, buttons with funny Basketweaving slogans), candy at midterms, and occasionally food for the class. Hugs occasionally (more on that later).
ReplyDeleteThe only individual gift I planned was for a bright young man who kept falling asleep in class. Normally I call on them by name to wake them up, and they're too embarrassed to do it again. He kept doing it, so I asked him privately what was up.
"Well, the floor is cold this time of year, and my mom ends up with all the blankets."
They lived in a one-bedroom apartment with two older sisters (who got the bed) and a younger sister (who got the sofa). After his final, I gave him two new pillows and pillowcases. He was bowled over by this minor generosity. I wanted to give him a blanket, but I knew his mother would give it to a sister. I figured that if he got two pillows, maybe she'd let him keep one for himself.
People's reactions to this story are interesting. My mother berated the student's mother for not taking better care of her kids. Some colleagues have bemoaned her lack of birth control given her poverty. Others shake their heads glumly at the poverty so nearby to us. The woman who cuts my hair, though, had the most telling response. She shrugged and said, "That's how poor people live."
As for hugs, this may warrant a different post. I'm from a physically reserved ethnic group but migrated for grad school to Hugsville, where a hug means hello and my mother-in-law actually kissed me on the mouth.
ReplyDeleteWhen *students* approach for a hug, I do it in a brief, perfunctory way even if I do feel genuine affection for them. I'm a middle-aged mom, and they almost always are women or openly gay men.
As a graduate student, I occasionally was subjected to hugs from a male faculty member, and it ALWAYS bothered me. But I felt I had to do it.
As a new faculty member, I was warned about a senior male (Senor Slime) in my department who hugs everybody, male or female; and I was told about how the only new hire ever to not get tenure straight-armed him and said "I don't do hugs." The message to me was meant as, "We don't like people who don't fit in with our warm department culture." Instead, I felt it was, "You have to put up with Senor Slime because we don't recognize sexual harassment here."
So I hugged back and warned other new hires in turn, and now that I have tenure, I give Senor Slime a hard time about it.
Old-timers tell stories about that non-hugger a lot, always mocking her. I feel sorry for her. Suppose she'd been assaulted previously? Or harassed? And Senor Slime teaches Human Sexuality! If anyone should get the importance of respecting personal boundaries, you'd think it would be this jerk.
So, to all you non-hugging types, on behalf of your students, I say keep on not hugging!
Eskarina gives a really nice explanation for the non-hugging.
ReplyDeleteI sometimes want to avoid touching others just for the whole germ-passing thing...
One of the best gifts I ever got was this coffee table from a former teacher. She put the stones on top together herself. (And yes, that is a ladybug! I am sad to say I lost contact with her. Sigh.
ReplyDeleteOne of my profs also makes brownies at the end of term for his small classes (~30 students). They're positively delicious...!
ReplyDelete