"I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)." From the Tuba Playing Prof.

In a post here some time ago (in which I described myself as a turtle, not a silverback), I tried to articulate the difference between my work and my job. And I continue to see the gap between those two. I have long feared that my work has little to do with my job. Now I am beginning to feel that I am weary rather than miserable. I imagined what I was experiencing as malaise, that general uneasy anxiety that somehow “things aren’t right,” and things are beyond one’s control. I have been resigned for a long time that as an old man I no longer “fit.” And I have put into practice a simple strategy for most campus meetings: When I feel the need to say anything, I count to ten then shut up.

A student mentioned before class to no one in particular that he “hates group work” because he has issues with dissonance. Curious I researched dissonance after class and stumbled upon an essay written about mental health professionals. The authors put forth the concept of, their research on, and conclusions about what they label “professional dissonance.”

As I understand the concept, professional dissonance is when a professional finds that one’s actual tasks clash with one’s expected duties that come about because of professional values. As a result, the incongruity, the disharmony, the discord, etc. confuses, frustrates, aggravates, and stresses a professional having to “do tasks” instead of “professional duties.” One thing clear in their research: older male professionals feel it more than any other group. (Because they feel that they are allowed to express it?)

Is what I thought was “old man malaise” a case of professional dissonance?

I can’t help but wonder about the etymological differences of two words that denote the same thing to most people, duty and task. Duty comes from “what is due;” it is the price of accepting the responsibilities of a profession—one that I love greatly and dearly. Task is “an imposed payment,” what we call a tax. A duty is what one is prepared and willing to do; a task, what one is required to do. The first is what I welcome doing; the second, what I dread doing.

Such old-fashioned etymological distinctions show my age; but here I go: I wonder if my misery or weariness springs from professional dissonance, i.e., not from the having the duties but the tasks.

I feel no need to detail here what I still imagine my duties to be. Yet increasingly tasks I never imagined doing twenty years ago when I wanted to be a college instructor have required that I take on roles that clash with my professional roles as instructor, advisor, colleague, and scholar.

Here are the roles that take up more and more of my time (and some of course overlap):

Record Keeper. The latest big-money technological gimmick that promises to improve student retention is Starfish. (Was Snowflake copyrighted?) I have three classes (when every other senior faculty member in my department has one or two) with seventy-two students. I am now expected to record after every class and for every student class attendance, kudos, poor performance, etc. Perhaps Starfish has potential, but the university simply required it—without any training, statement of purpose or use, consideration of consequences, or a trial period. The university licensed it, so we have to use it.

Prosecutor. When I detect a case of plagiarism, I face hours and hours of additional work. Instead of explaining to a student how s/he violated the academic honesty policy, informing the student of hur grade, and advising the student of the procedure for an appeal of my decision, I have to prepare first a formal charge, determining what “level” of plagiarism the violation is, pointing out in what way the plagiarized essay plagiarized the source, then explain why I consider the violation a violation. Then, once a committee reviews my accusation, I must appear before it—at a time that it sets—to make the case I make in my written case. Then the student requests a second meeting in which s/he has the right to defend hurself. The committee then decides if academic dishonesty occurred, what level, and what grade IT will assign.

Editor. More and more students are requesting meetings before their essays are due so I can “take a look.” By that they mean that I edit their essays. One student said, “I need to you to take a look and point out the problems you have with it before I turn in it.” When I asked if she wanted me to take a look at draft, she replied, “No, I’m done, so you just need to look it over.” “You are asking me to grade it and revise it before you turn it.” “No, I just need to make a good grade in this class.” Another student explained, “I like my teachers to take a look, so I can earn the grade I deserve.” Unfortunately, not a single plagiarist has saved me hours of work by asking me to take a look before returning in an essay.

Physicist. I find myself more and more arguing the impossibility of time travel (as least currently). “What can I do to pass this class?” “What can I do to raise my grade?” “Well, we can’t go back in time, so. . . .”

Bobble Head. Trumpeting our long-standing commitment to shared governance, the president and provost call “all-assembled” meetings every freaking month. With no time allotted for questions or comments, my colleagues and I apparently are supposed to sit in rapt attention, smiling and nodding as the presivost details the lastes initiative that will take us to the next level—and assures us that this time it will work.

Confessor and Absolver. More and more students are too forthcoming with private issues. I am not trained to counsel those students, some with admittedly serious and often heartbreaking issues and problems, off and on campus, yet when I try to advise them where to go for help and support, I quickly realize that most students are sharing very private, intimate details with me so that I can absolve them for missing class, deadlines, exams, etc. This semester I had what must be the clearest example of all time, on any campus. After missing all but two classes, the student dropped by my office to list the demands on him: RA, SGA officer, 18 credit hours, 36 hours of work back home each weekend, flu, a breakdown, then Rehab. I suggested that as my class was not required for his major that he drop it, but he offered that he had to complete it to replace the failing grade he got the first time he took, the time he flunked for plagiarism. He pointed out that the F wasn’t going to look good on his graduate school application.

More and more students offer “notes” from doctors, employers, parents, and sympathetic deans. These notes are seemingly magical—relics from Saint Thomas Aquinas (patron saint of students) that the students believe work like indulgences forgiving all sins and excusing the absence on the date on the note AND the ten absences before the “excused absence.” “But professor, I had a note from…..”

Discipline of Diogenes. More and more students assume that by telling me the truth I will excuse and overlook. I get many emails that start off “I’m going to be honest, I missed class, because…” The list includes overslept, overhung, not feeling it, up late after concert, game, etc. One student missed class because he was winning, and “you don’t leave the casino when you’re hot.” This semester, one of my most serious and diligent students mentioned that her essay was going to be late because she’d be off on a cruise and couldn’t afford the daily wifi charge. I asked why next week, and not the previous week, which was our spring break; she replied, “It’s my boyfriend’s spring break.” “Why didn’t you go last week?” “His break is next week.”

Adversary. More and more students are bypassing me when they miss too many classes or when I email them to schedule a meeting to discuss plagiarism and instead are going to the sympathetic and forgiving associate deans and dean of students staff who are mostly concerned these days with retention. I then must report to the deans and staff my policies, explain my record keeping, “characterize” my relationship with students, defend and detail my commitment to fairness—which presumably includes the students who show up, work hard, and care but that’s not always clear—and justify class policies. When I emailed a student in a senior seminar that she should drop the class to avoid a failing grade—after attending class once in the first fifteen meetings—I got an email from an associate dean declaring that the student assured her that she had been attending class and wondered if perhaps I didn’t know her. (Our senior seminars have fifteen students, and our system has photo class rolls to help us with attendance.) I scanned and emailed my attendance sheet, but the dean replied that “since there is some doubt about her attendance,” I had to “allow her to continue in the class.” The dean suggested that a meeting to reconsider my attendance policy might help me be a “better, more caring” teacher. (The student made it to class the next day yet never returned afterwards.)

Prophet. More and more advisees request a schedule that will assure that they make the best grades. Do they expect me to know that? Or to read the site that shall not be named? More and more ask what internship will lead to a permanent position.

Pawn. One office on campus demands that I help curb grade inflation by assigning more failing grades. Another demands that I help students pass to increase our retention rates.

I hope that my professional dissonance isn’t common yet suspect that it is. Twenty years into my career, I still love the work, and I have always tried to do what is best for my students. Yet I can’t help feeling that a few students take too much of my time for roles that I had never anticipated.