Also, and no less important, they need a place to practice their grown up manners, goddamn it. I've had students ask "Do we need to bring anything?" and I tell them directly "Yes. When invited to someone's home for dinner it is customary to bring some small and inexpensive gift, usually consumable. Chocolate or wine is acceptable. Don't bring flowers; I won't have time to put them in a vase. Don't expect the wine or chocolates to be opened that evening, because they may not go with the menu we've planned." They need to know these things, and possibly no one has ever told them. I sometimes think we need a class in how to hold a fork and put a napkin on their laps.
I certainly do not do this to be liked. I do not become BFFs with students or have them over outside of that rather formal gathering. Hell no. I learned that lesson early in my career. But also, I do like most of my students, in the sense that I wish the vast majority of them well and am interested to hear about what they do after college. I think at least some of them probably like me, which is fine. Where the social interaction with students goes wrong, I think, is not in wanting to be liked. We all like to be liked. I think it's in needing to be loved.
And I could never love them. They have abysmal taste in wine.
OK, this is so serendipitous as to be ridiculous. As I was leaving the clinic to go back to campus, I passed a little house that reminded me of one of my professor's homes. Yes, we got invited to dinner, and yes, it was the kind of transformative experience you are providing for your students by doing this.
ReplyDeleteI graduated 20 years ago, and I still remember going to dinner at my prof's house as a treat. I felt like a grown-up.
I'm with you, Chiltepin. I was invited to at least one dinner a semester when I was an undergrad, at least as an upperclassman and grad student, and it was lovely. Though I suppose the culture might be different at a Christian college, which is where I was. That sort of thing was expected.
ReplyDeleteI am eternally grateful for the professors who did this for me.
ReplyDeleteI remember the first time I was invited to a prof's house and she served a fancy cheese plate. I was there with 5 other grad students and everyone was eating the fruit and the crackers but no one touched the cheese. I remember thinking that I didn't know how to cut it (it had a rind and I wasn't sure if one could eat it or not). I remembered hearing somewhere that there were rules about such things but I sure as hell didn't know them.
Finally, I said, screw it, I don't care if I look stupid. I'm just going to ask.
"Professor? Um.... how do you.... do it?" (vague gesture towards the cheese plate)
The professor laughed and basically explained this: http://theroadislife.blogspot.com/2008/01/cheese-etiquette.html
After that, EVERYONE partook! I remember feeling perversely proud, thinking "none of the rest of you knew either, but at least I was honest enough to admit it!"
I am currently lucky to have an adviser that I trust to ask about things like this. She knows that my class background means that I haven't been exposed to many things like this that might come up, say, on campus visits or at conventions. I trust her to tell me the real deal and not to laugh at the holes in my manners. And she trusts me not to front and pretend I know things that I don't. It is a very efficient and pleasant relationship.
Unfortunately, I know many grad students who don't have such a set up.
So, again, thanks for providing this mentoring to your students. Those of us who need it are very grateful.
Exactly. I was first generation too, and had a conversation very much like the one you did with my professor at her house. She just explained the right thing to do as if she were explaining how to do a problem in class, and it came across so matter-of-fact that I realized that I could learn how to behave in "fancy" society just as I learned anything else.
DeleteI still sometimes fart in the elevator at work, though, but that's more for sport than anything.
MIT used to have enforced social mixers and "social graces" training; Richard Feynman hated it.
ReplyDeleteI say bring it back, but don't overdo it.
MIT? For some reason I was thinking it was Princeton - sounds more like Princeton's style, certainly.
DeleteI'm not sure about "enforced," but one reason Princeton holds mortgages for its professors (often very long ones that they'll never pay off, but they do build some equity) is to ensure that at least some of the enormous older private homes in the blocks surrounding campus are occupied by professors, which facilitates this practice.
DeleteI work in a small area of our department that has maybe 20 majors total, and I have a big yard which is good for barbecuing and croquet, so I have everyone over for A Thing, and some students roam around my small and eccentrically decorated bungalow and investigate bookshelves and research work desk-- a short glimpse of the afterlife/realization that their profs are people. I couldn't/wouldn't do anything involving etiquette, though, as I myself have none.
ReplyDeleteI buy my TAs pizza on major marking binge days. Perhaps I could do more.
ReplyDeleteWow this post really makes me feel guilty. I haven't had my grad students over for dinner in about 3 years, and I really should make it an annual or twice-annual affair. Like others, it was a transformative experience (BurntChrome got that descriptor bang-on) to have a nice social evening at my supervisor's house. It is something I wish to replicate for my own students.
ReplyDeleteI invited students to my apartment ONCE. A week or so later, one of the students showed up at an odd hour, unannounced. I made it clear he was not welcome, and I never had students to my home again.
ReplyDeleteIn my department, four of my colleagues regularly invite students to their homes for meals (by regularly, I mean once or twice a term... which amounts to every two months). Last week a student asked me why I'd never invited them to my home for a meal.
ReplyDeleteI replied that I was too embarrassed to have them over because I live in 600 square-foot, tiny-splendoured squalor. And it's true. I live in a one-bedroom duplex above a garage. It would fit two students (in addition to us) if we squeezed them in and no one gestured with their arms. Because I live in an area where there is no affordable housing to be found (for proof, I can submit the Craigslist non-existent housing non-list to your if you don't believe me), I live here while we search for better housing.
But given that students have noticed that I don't have them over for dinner, although I do occasionally bring snacks to the seminar classes, now I feel like perhaps I should host a shindig in the street in front of my house. I also cannot cook, so this shindig would involve serving boxes of unopened crackers, fruit, and bags of unpopped popcorn...
Oh, I don't have the energy to even consider what it would take to plan this when I can't even get the 52 essays I've been carrying around all week graded!
A lot of people post extensively on the importance of boundaries. I too believe that boundaries are crucial.
ReplyDeleteBut I too had a handful of professors who invited me for dinner. They were formative experiences. One philosophy professor took 10 of us to her summer cabin in the woods. We drank wine and ate amazing food and talked about philosophy. That weekend changed my life.
I want to do that with my students. And I will too, once I have tenure or some sort of job security.
We all know Katie likes to have them over for wine. Don't know if they ever got dinner, but there's always lots of crying.
DeleteCareful, Chiltepin, that's how you catch vile diseases. Eeeewwwwww...
ReplyDeleteI had such an experience with a couple of my professors as well, but I think the occasion has to arise organically. I've had students over twice, when I had groups I particularly liked at the end of courses that went well. My school is trying to standardize this, requiring profs of first-year classes to eat meals with their students either at their homes or in restaurants. Because everyone has to go, no one wants to participate, and it ends up being as useless as all the other hand-holding we're now required to do in the name of retention.
ReplyDeleteI think requiring it is a deeply, deeply bad idea. Having it be a requirement, and knowing it's a requirement, breaks the implicit guest-host agreement. Not only that, but if I ever have a student in a class whom I don't trust, I wouldn't have the class over. I like having that freedom (and last year, one of the little shits did break something and didn't mention it -- little bastard. I know who it was, too, hamfisted little git).
DeleteI once went to a small group dinner at the house of the spouse's graduate faculty. Dinner was OK; watching the 40 minute slide show of their vacation in Ecuador, and the 60 minute proselytizing session after was not.
ReplyDeleteI've seen the opposite - the faculty member and her spouse loaded up on cases and cases of beer, liquor, updated the iPod playlist and got ready for a serious night of dancing and relaxation - one bottle of beer was opened, no liquor was consumed, no one danced, everyone stood around and "talked shop", and everyone was gone by 10 pm; there were no issues of awkwardness, or students not liking the prof (she's actually the most popular prof in the dept). It was a major letdown for the faculty member, who had visions of how parties went when her supervisor had held them, a scant 5-10 years ago...
DeleteI think it's a great idea if you have the right kind of students and the right atmosphere. I attended a SLAC in a college town, so most of the proffies actually lived within walking distance of campus. Many of them either had a class session in their home, hosted a dinner at the end of the term, or took us all to the local pizza joint. Since the school was very small, it just seemed like an extension of the family atmosphere. I enjoyed seeing what homes were like, perusing the bookshelves to find out what they read, and meeting their pets.
ReplyDeleteThere's no way I could do this at Large Urban Community College, unfortunately, given the way my students are spread out and the means by which they get to campus. The closest I've ever come is taking smaller classes out to eat at a moderately-priced sit-down place close to school. One year, a student brought tears to my eyes when he thanked me profusely and said, "EnglishDoc, this is the nicest place I've ever been to eat. Thank you so much!" (and he did mean it).
I had some experience of this in grad school ( a few last-class-session dinners, plus being invited to department parties that also included faculty, but not undergrads), and in undergrad (mostly with faculty who had apartments incorporated into dorms). Given all the possible complications mentioned above (I couldn't fit students in my apartment, either, and am not sure I want them to know where i live), I think holding some version of such occasions on campus (high table to which professors can invite students, invite-your-professor dinners in a room auxiliary to the dining hall, teas-in-lieu-of-sherry-receptions) might be a workable middle ground.
ReplyDelete