I'm losing it. I'm losing the annoyance.My students have been so bad for so long, I've become numb to it. I know they're going to lie. I know they're going to try to scam me. I used to get worked up. I used to wrassle them into shape. Now I just find it all washing over me.
I used to get sick to stomach thinking about how I had to hold the line, stay tough, keep them honest.
Now I find I just grade the papers, assign the homework.
I hate that. My wife tells me I'm different this semester. She says I don't come home and talk about my day as much. I don't tell her about the students, good or bad.
This is not healthy, I don't think. I feel disengaged. I feel like I'm punching the clock.
I have 20 more years of this if my health holds. How am I going to make it?
Whenever I feel this way, I do one of the following:
ReplyDelete(1) Read the end of "Generation X Goes to College," by Peter Sacks. He describes being surprised out of a similar funk by being told by one of his few students who want to learn, "Don't become as dead as they are. Give those of us who want to learn a chance." Every class I get still has a few students who want to learn: remember them.
(2) I'm at a university with a large number of first-generation college students and immigrant students, in a not-wealthy city. It's obvious we do a lot of good for the local economy. One look at city hall shows that we also do a lot of good in turning out better citizens.
(3) Go to a graduation ceremony. Every time there's a graduation, there's at least one student bedecked with academic honors who thanks Mom, who only was ever able to get a 3rd-grade education and who helped by working as a hotel maid. And she cries.
(4) Keep active in research. Write something and publish it.
(5) Fund that research, in part, with student lab fees. This way, even your most worthless students are helping, whether they know it or not. You can think this to yourself and grin, even when they're pulling their most inexcusable, childish nonsense.
(6) Write textbooks. Although I've taught one of my intro classes over 20 times now, this is how I keep it fresh. Even the dumbest mistakes and most thoughtless questions can be quite valuable for this: you can claim that every aspect of your text is "extensively student tested."
(7) Branch out into a completely new research direction. I have just (perhaps foolishly) volunteered to develop a course in computational physics. I did this partly because almost none of my physics department's majors can program computers at all, even after they've taken the computer science department's introductory course. It's also because I want to start doing computer modeling of some research I've done. Nothing gets the creative juices flowing like a firm deadline.
(8) Drink. I see from your graphic you have a head start on me there.
(9) If you're as malicious a mad scientist as I am, when it becomes obvious that one of your unbelievably annoying, whiny, worthless, stupid, lazy, childish students is definitely flunking your course, giggle to yourself in stereotypical, mad-scientist fashion and think, "I've got you now..." Seriously: I take great pride in making sure that dangerously innumerate engineer-wannabes do not become sources of danger to the public. University professors have always had the role of gate-keepers, and there's more to it than making students jump through hoops: it can be important for public safety.
DeleteWell said!!
DeleteBless you, Frod. You are so often my current Yaro.
ReplyDeleteThere are some important differences. Yaro almost never defends himself with a whip, and never giggles at the misfortune of students who very richly deserve it.
DeletePrecisely why I said "so often" rather than failing to qualify in any way. Nevertheless, Bless you for all of the many whens.
DeleteI, too, have thought of Frod as Yaro with an edge.
DeleteThe timing of this couldn't be better. I caught a student blatantly cheating on a test and gave him a zero. He had his bag on the desk wide open with his cheat notes inside of it. I caught him reaching into the bag to look and turn pages. He appealed and won because the Dean's office believed his story that he was just reaching into his bag to get a calculator. *sigh*
ReplyDeleteI caught a student cheating with a cheat sheet placed between the pages of the test. I took the test and the cheat sheet and advised her she earned a zero for cheating. She refused to leave the classroom. I had to call campus police to remove her. She appealed and won AND was placed in another professor's class where she "earned" a C.
ReplyDeleteNever ever expect students to be anything but students. That is, lying lazy parentlovers.
ReplyDeleteI was going to say "maybe this new attitude is how you get through the next 20 years," but Frod has much better ideas. And some of them can even be implemented by those of us who aren't on the tenure track -- or at least could be if I/we ever crawl out from under the looming piles of ungraded papers. For the moment, I've settled for taking daily walks in the beautiful fall weather (in between hurricanes). It doesn't speed the grading (or anything else), but it doesn't seem to really slow me down, either, and I'm feeling a bit more cheerful.
ReplyDeleteHiram, after an incident last night, I was prepared to sit down and write this exact post, right down to the 20 years left until retirement.
ReplyDeleteThe student in question laid out her entire sob story, complete with sobbing, knowing what my answer would be. I'm sure she thought that she'd make me feel like a big, blue meanie, enough so to change the rules just for little ol' her.
I don't know what's worse, the idea that she expected me to feel like a meanie, or the fact that I'm completely numb to this crap. It doesn't even piss me off anymore.
Whenever this happens to me, I abruptly inject: "That's called being manipulative, and it's considered very, VERY bad."
DeletePat: I am SO there with you, too! I didn't even get pissed off yesterday when the WHOLE class had not read the 4 pages I'd assigned. I just walked away and had lunch with a friend during that hour instead. And didn't feel guilty. At all. Or angry. But not feeling angry bothered me.
DeleteTHis is why I have hobbies (that don't include drinking coffee and hanging out). :o)
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DeleteWhen I made the move from a CC to an SLAC, I naively thought all of those types of student problems would disappear. But it hasn't. My students now are generally more prepared for higher level work, but they are just as lazy, just as scheming. (I think their scheminess is the worst part.)
ReplyDeleteIt's disillusioning, for sure, and I've had several days like the one you're having.
I find it comes and goes in waves. Sometimes months will pass where I'll wonder if I'm doing any good. Then something happens, a student, just me, my blood sugar, something, and I get a charge and the next couple of months are better.
If we think of the entire academy, of ALL of the students, it can be overwhelming. When I'm just in my classes, really in them, then it's a battle I think I can wage.
Good luck, Hiram!
I'm in the same situation (disgusted, bored, 20 years to go) and lately I've been comparing my students to the administrators...and that makes the students look bright and engaged. You might want to give that a try.
ReplyDeleteLove it!
DeleteWhen I had 20 years to go and was burned out, a sabbatical set me right. I hope your colleges (Harpy and Hiram) have the budget and contracts to let you do that. If not, can you bank time? Teach an extra class for a few semesters and then use them to pay for a semester off?
I went to observe one of our student teachers at the high school where she has been student teaching. (I teach a content area, not Education.) That made me thankful for the job I have, but it doesn't take away the feeling of ennui and boredom that hit as I rolled out of bed this morning and made my way to the voting poll down the street.
ReplyDeleteComplete disengagement is not helpful to the students who need and want your help. However, being so professionally involved in their success and failure that it gives you ulcers isn't good for your health.
ReplyDeleteDon't care more about their education than they do.
Dude, you're like a dog with a bone. ;-)
DeleteBut I agree with you.
Hiram, you da man. You'll come back.
ReplyDeletehttp://collegemisery.blogspot.com/2011/04/terrys-1-rule-of-proffie-life.html
I know exactly how you feel. I'm also despairing of the overall drift of research in my area, so that's no real refuge. An older colleague of mine told me once, after a hostile administration almost destroyed his department, that he simply found meaning in things outside his work and came to look on his job as something that merely allowed him to look after his family, have the time to volunteer at a hospice, etc. etc. He's a better man than I am, and I've been unable to follow his example. But I keep hoping....
ReplyDelete