nascent suspicions

Hello, fellow teens!

Good gosh golly! Wow! It sure that time in the semester when students realize, sometimes for the second or tenth time, that there is a certain amount of effort required to keep hanging out in academia. No matter how many of my students have stopped me in the halls (Six!!!!) or written during feedback sessions in class that they appreciate my lectures/discussions or my humor or commitment or whatever, at LEAST as many come up to complain when a due date has passed. No matter how many times I asked my sections when their speech outlines or dramatic analyses were due, a few managed to forget, or spend more time crafting excuses than they spent on the actual assignment. I started to crack a little last week, and began to spiral towards two nascent but terrifying suspicions - that I wasn't doing my job right, and that these students were not worth my time.

Look, I get it. I'm as guilty as anyone of feeling the way some of these students do - maybe enjoying the act of going to school but definitely appreciating my free time. It's been a while since I've felt that way, though! I think I've made it nearly 24 hours.

At the beginning of the semester I made a pact with myself, signed in blood(&honey), that I would never forget how disengaged a student I was before finding the COMM department. For a long, long time, school was just something I did because that's the age at which I was supposed to do school. Then three of my grandparents died within six months of each other, and it got worse. I dropped out for a year, wallowed in the nothing, and even when I went back to finish up my community college degree I could barely care. I am acutely aware how rare it is to find, as I did, a major that completely flips one's attitude towards school. With the stress of these last few weeks however, I started to slip. I forgot; and in forgetting, students began to resemble quicksand rather than people for a brief time.

I can echo the sentiment some of you have had regarding Palmer - while his prose may be purple, his content and attitudes affected me in a significant way. In a moment of (hang on, gonna flip a quarter real quick. Heads is reflexivity, tails is self-actualization. Okay, got it) self-actualization and re-membering, reading Palmer's attitudes on attitude led me inward. I looked at all the malaise and ennui that dominated so much of my education, and was able to once again compartmentalize and understand that mindset in relation to my students. When I re-realized that I must have been the student from SuperDuperhell at certain points, the clouds lifted, just a bit.

Having said this, I should clarify that this idea of understanding is absolutely Not meant to indicate that teachers should be pushovers - to understand is not the same thing as to acquiesce. I'm not giving full credit to those turning things in late, no matter how much they try and warp the situation so it's somehow my fault. To give the benefit of the doubt does not inherently lead to extending due dates or making (undue) accommodations. To understand is to remember that these hungry baby birds are people too.