Dr. Bubba's student's diary
12:00 pm Overslept and missed first class. Hungover.
12:30 pm Ate breakfast and skimmed assigned readings.
2:00 pm Went to Wittgensteinian hamster fur class. Was confusingly interested and nonchalant.
5:00 pm Spontaneously and unsolicitedly told Dr. Bubba about the abortion I'm having tomorrow. Interpreted his lack of meaningful response in a way that will hurt him and make him spend the Holy Weekend wondering whether or not he should have said something meaningful.
6:00 pm Dinner with friends.
11:00 pm Cried myself to sleep because Dr. Bubba is a smug, insensitive asshole who was too stunned to impart wisdom to me today.
Oh, dear, Bubba. I'm sorry. That really was more information than she had any right to impose on you, let alone expect some sort of meaningful (or even coherent) answer.
ReplyDeleteYou are not paid enough to deal with that.
ReplyDeleteMy mentality would be "I don't give a shit" so I'd say something snarky like "do they give you a lollipop afterwards?" or "hey on the brightside 2 more and you get a free tshirt".
ReplyDeleteWhat is with that? I don't mean to hijack or demean your experience, but to add to it. I had TWO last quarter. TWO! Students who had abortions and thought I would want to know, that is. One blurted out she had just had an abortion over the weekend so was loopy from the pain meds. Another came to tell me she might be a little distracted because she had "chosen to end her baby's life." She asked if I would pray for her baby's soul because she didn't feel she had a right to do so since she had chosen to "end her baby's life." WHY? WHY? WHY are we the ones they tell these things to? I am SO unequipped to say anything or offer any kind of solace. A simple: "I've been sick" or "I couldn't come to class" would suffice.
ReplyDeleteWhile I'm not an asshole who would make insensitively snarky jokes about lollipops or two-fer deals, I feel thoroughly inadequate and unprepared to offer any kind of response beyond, "I'm sorry to hear you're going through that. Have you visited the Counseling Center?" And I don't know why they feel their professor would be that person.
Then again, blurting out such news might not warrant comfort or solace. Maybe they're too young or too immature to know the kind of burden that puts on someone else and that a decision of that magnitude is not one that a student should simply blurt out as an excuse.
I'm sorry. Have you visited the Counseling Center?
The student may feel, for some reason, that she does not need a full counseling session (or more) just for the brief moment of empathy she needs from a human being. You may feel that you are a near stranger, but so is the counselor, perhaps even more so if she has not met that person before or if the counselor is trying to get patients to talk and wonder what to do without expressing any opinion of his own. I actually had that experience. I went to counseling and felt that I might as well talk to my cat instead. On the other hand, some of my teachers had much more empathy. It's not that I used to bother them frequently or always talk a lot, but over the years, I got some empathy and good advice from some teachers/professors, and I'm still grateful to this day.
DeleteUnless I knew the student personally I wouldn't even necessarily believe that they were getting an abortion. Students often have no shame about such things. If they lie about their grandparents dying, why not lie about getting an abortion?
ReplyDeleteI think the generic response to any admission like that--whether it's talk of abortions or three-ways or projectile vomiting--is a concerned look accompanied by "Get some rest."
And, of course, if the student comes back the next week asking for an excuse because of her abortion, that same concerned look accompanied by "Let me see the note from your physician."
We get ZERO training on how to deal with such situations. We get thrown into situations that are painful to deal with. I had a student whose mother died a couple of days before the midterm, and the worst part was listening to "...and I wasn't there when it happened! I didn't get to say goodbye!". And then I got the phone call a few days later from student counselling that "there'd been an incident in the first-year residence where there was a medical emergency involving self-harm", and it would be best if I signed a form allowing the student to write their final exam at some indeterminate time in the future. I could do nothing except reply "I'll do whatever it is I'm told to do, because I have no idea what to do."
ReplyDeleteYour second case sounds like the right outcome - those are the folks who ARE trained to deal with the situation, the student's actually seeking help from the right place, and you're not getting more gory details than you'd ever want.
DeleteLong ago and far away at my first teaching gig, we had an outstanding student counseling service. When a student came to me with a huge life event, I'd express sympathy, but tell them plainly that just moving one deadline was just ignoring the real problem. I'd assure them that I'd support whatever plan they'd work out with the counselor, and would literally dial the counseling service right there to set them up with an appointment.
When the student's story was BS, this had the nice effect of stopping them in their tracks.
But sometimes, every now and then, it made a real difference in a student's life.
So Poopiehead, my advice would be to drop by the counseling service one day yourself, meet one or two of the staff there so that you have people you can call when this comes up --- and a number you tape next to the office phone.
Well said, OO. You've described to a T why I feel rather unmoored by the lack of a student counseling center on campus out here -- sadly, such services are apparently too much of a luxury outside of the US.
DeleteThe student's manner was not rude, and she was not trying to be excused from an assignment. I was caught off guard. I had nothing useful to say. So silence it was.
ReplyDeleteWow. Just wow.
DeleteFortunately or unfortunately, we're parent surrogates to a fair number of our traditional students. In loco parentis still lives. Sometimes it feels like they left out the "in" and the "parentis."
For whatever it's worth, in my (entirely second-hand) experience, most abortion clinics do provide some minimal counseling (at the very least, a chance for the patient to reaffirm her decision away from anyone who might be exerting undue influence on it) before the procedure. (Some, of course, are also forced to provide other sorts of state-mandated "information," "counseling," etc. designed to induce hesitation and/or guilt -- an entirely different matter). So with any luck she'll get to talk to someone better-qualified to deal with the situation, and the varying feelings she may be experiencing, today.
DeleteThis is one of those moments when we (and they) are reminded that, at least in some ways, our students are unquestionably adults -- and adult actions and decisions have adult consequences.
I agree with the "loco" part too, but not "in parentis." We have no authority to act or even say anything whatsoever: even silence can and ofen will be held against us.
DeleteI have learned, that whenever I hear an excuse, I respond with, "I am sorry to hear that." It comforts the student and at the same time, I am honestly sorry to hear that they were not in class.
ReplyDeletePeople of this age group have not been taught the social graces as they might have been in the past. They're also used to tweeting every random thought and consequently have no filters.
ReplyDeleteBesides, it's easier to say "abortion" than "elective surgery".
While this might be a trend more common among the Tweeps, sometimes it's colleagues who too freely dispense TMI.
DeleteI once extended an invitation to a colleague to attend an event related to a talk she had recently given. Instead of just politely declining, I got an e-mail detailing that she couldn't go because she was dealing with a relative who was due to give birth after a difficult pregnancy and a miscarriage before that, and etc, etc.
Needless to say, I didn't go out of my way to invite her to stuff after that.
One of the 10 rules for Astronaut Candidates is:
ReplyDelete"Nothing is sometimes a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say."
This student is being unreasonable if she holds your silence against you, Bubba. What exactly are you supposed to say? Your students' private lives aren't your job, and I bitterly resent it when my student impose them on me.
Frod, I love that. Perhaps it should become a national motto.
ReplyDelete