I'm posting mostly because Terry P. feels lonely. That's just the kind of caring, giving nurturer that I am.
This is an incident that transpired last week. I'm deep in the midterm weeds, so I've been meaning to post but remiss.
Walking down the hall, I passed Texting Tessa from last semester and a friend of hers, someone I didn't know. As is my wont when making eye contact with people I know, I greeted her. I smiled brightly and said, "Hi, Tessa. How are you?"
Tessa looked at me with the annoyance only teenagers can manifest, and said, "Fine," and kept walking. Her companion smiled at me and I nodded.
This is what I heard mere nanoseconds later, before I was even out of earshot:
Tessa's Companion: Who's that?
Texting Tessa: That bitch failed me last semester. Who the fuck she think she is saying hello?
I should mention that Texting Tessa never stopped texting--before, during, or (I'm guessing) after our encounter. I'm sure she texted herself all the way out the door. She was heading for the exit.
I'll leave it up to you to fill in the punch line.
Please tell me she walked into the door....
ReplyDeleteI hate to say this, but I think you're expecting too much for a student to be cheerful after she flunked your class, even if it was entirely her fault. I just don't make eye contact, unless they're coming at me to do harm.
ReplyDeleteFroderick, perhaps I should clarify. I'm not the one who made eye contact first; she looked up at me to avoid walking into me. I also didn't expect her to say hello in return. I also expected her to complain about me, but I think her "who does she think she is" comment is the most telling.
ReplyDeleteThe idea that people can be civil to each other when they're in disagreement is something completely alien to her. In her mind, I didn't even have a right to speak to her. Of course, now that I think of it, she kind of had that attitude that I didn't have the right to address her in class, either.
Sadly, M-A&M, she seems to have been able to exit the building without (literally) hitting the door.
I was hoping the punch line would be a line about punching her.
ReplyDeleteGetting in touch with my inner Strelnikov.
I've actually had students who failed my class retake it (perhaps because they hoped they could re-use some of their work, but still, apparently they got through the experience without deciding I was the antichrist. And yes, at least a few of them did do it on purpose. It's entirely possible that others simply didn't note who was teaching the cass).
ReplyDeleteI once had the experience of walking into a friend's holiday party only to encounter one of my former students (the nephew of a friend of the friend), with whom I had a polite conversation, though I frankly didn't remember him all that well. I later learned that he'd seen me coming up the walk, and pulled his aunt aside to ask, with considerable horror, "what's *she* doing here?" I never went back to his work to see if I could find an explanation for the reaction, since both the friend and the aunt are pretty gossip-prone, and I figured I was best off being able to continue to play dumb as to the reason behind this reaction. But I'm pretty sure he hadn't failed the class, or plagiarized, or even done badly. I think I might have pushed him to explore the assumptions behind some rather cliched idea he had used as the thesis for a paper, but that's all I've got. Maybe that particular cliche was particularly dear to him.
I've had many students be civil about their failing grades. Many do indeed realize that they failed; I did not fail them. It's juvenile to assume that the reason for their failing grade is that their teacher is a bitch. Saying so within earshot of that teacher is inexcusable.
ReplyDeleteGreat Lakes Greta - your student may eventually get a clue that anyone matters but her. Or she may go through life being a small-minded, mean-spirited, vindictive, petty little twerp who will never be able to figure out why she can't hold a job and never keeps a friend for long. Either way, she is, thank God, no further concern of yours. I either pity or blame her parents (depending whether they did their best with her and it didn't take, or they actually raised her to be that way.)
ReplyDeleteCC - I think students are sometimes terrified of seeing us in social situations no matter how untraumatic their professional interactions with us have been. It sounds as if your student had no real problem with you (had a perfectly civil conversation with you, after all - at least he didn't spend the entire party hiding in the coat closet to avoid you) - he just was unprepared to see you off-campus, actually existing in Real Life (OMG!)
Granted, I teach on a small campus, so running into former students (failures, cheaters, mouth breathers) is inevitable. This semester I keep passing the kid who got a B- last semester, despite his best grubbing for an A. He won't even make eye contact with me when I'm the only one in the hallway! Oh, how that B- must chafe...
ReplyDelete@Merely: thanks; that's comforting, and, I think, a likely explanation. It's also possible that he talked to me because his aunt was there, and expected it. Neither she nor he was born in this country, and she's a bit old-world in her view of the professor/student relationship; in fact, the main reason she wanted more information was so that she could properly chastise him for doing whatever it was that made him embarrassed to see me -- a refreshing attitude, when you think about it, but I still stuck to FERPA.
ReplyDelete