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For the past ten days I’ve been working as a Faculty Advisor for summer orientation. This means talking to a bunch of anxious (and super young-looking!) first-years about things like graduation requirements, course loads and placement tests, and answering questions like “who are the cool professors?”, “are these classrooms too far apart?” and, of course, “can I skip 101?” For the most part the job has been sweet. There’s no prep and I do enjoy the tangible rewards that advising, unlike my research, affords. In the past week I’ve received several “Thank you so much, you have been incredibly helpful to me.” And that feels good. Plus I’m getting paid to do almost nothing.
There were, however, conversations like this one that really, um, made we want to scream: “WHY ARE YOU HERE?!” Have a look-see:
Student: So, I need one more class. But I don’t know what to take.
Me: What interests you?
Student: I dunno.
Me: OK. Have you imagined what general area your major might be in?
Student: No.
Me: Hmm…OK. Well why don’t you take a class that satisfies your GUR requirements? Like, a social science or a humanities class.
Student: I’ll take a social science.
Me: OK, what about this Psychology class? It’s an intro class.
Student: Is it hard?
Me: Well, it’s for students who have never taken a Psych. class before, so the material will be introductory level. It won’t be very challenging in that way. Just keep up with the reading and be sure to attend lectures for quiz and exam notes.
Student: I don’t want a class that requires a lot of reading.
Me: Um…OK…what about a math class?
Student: I hear math has a lot of homework. I don’t want a class with a lot of homework my first quarter.
Intervening Advisor (who saw me squirm): Do you like movies?
Student: Yeah. I like movies.
IA: Theater 201. It’s Introduction to Cinema. You watch films each week and discuss them. It’s really fun. And you do learn a lot. I took it when I was a freshman and loved it.
Student: Cool.
Student from across the aisle: But the films are old! In black and white! And a lot have subtitles. They’re so boring!
Student: Ouch (he really said that!). Are there other film classes?
IA: No, this is the only Introductory class. To get into the other film classes you first have to take this one.
Student: What about like an art class?
Me: Well there’s an Art History class open.
Student: Art History. Art History. Where you can make things?
Me: Well, no. This is where you study about the history of different art forms. Or periods.
Student: Well I like art but I don’t like sitting around and talking about it. I don’t want classes where you sit around and talk about things.
Oy. Thank gawd I had to go right after he said that.
I’ve always considered it a source of pride that you’ll never find me trash-talkin’ my students behind their backs, unless of course I’m talking to Mr. G (who is perpetually fortunate enough to get the worst of me). While insecure and frighteningly immature in graduate school, I quickly observed a most annoying tendency in my equally-insecure, yet alarmingly arrogant peers: they often put students down to lift their own flagging spirits. One any given Thursday (that’s “Friday” in grad-school) you were bound to find an anxious hive of English grads exchanging bragging rights over who had the “lamest” student essay. “Oh yeah, you think that’s idiotic, check out what my student wrote!” And there I’d be in the smoke-hazed inn, wondering when the yarn would spin towards more juicy subjects: sex, drugs, rock n’ roll, the stuff that got me through graduate school (at least the first four years).
Fast foward six years. Now I’m one of the professoriate. We in the professoriate don’t talk trash. We’re far too good for that. Duh, we’re professionals. And we’ve got more important stuff to talk about. I call bull-shit on that. As of today, I would like to reclaim my rights as a graduate student if only to share this, an email I just received from an undergraduate:
Hello Professor Grubby:
I would like to come to your office hours as soon as possible to discuss my paper proposal. I know you are a very busy lady with a kid and a husband. But I am on the verge of freaking out and really need to talk to you. I would like to write my paper on “the bandido” in “Martyrs of the Alamo” and I would like to talk about Western imperialist expansion in the Southwest, about how the Anglos screwed the Mexicans since the 1800s at least. But I need to know that this will not offend you, being a little Mexican yourself. I guess what I mean is this: is it OK to talk about ideology in our papers? Even if you are one of the victims of the ideology?
Um. Graduate school might’ve trained me to write a book and to teach some literature. But I ain’t got a clue when it comes to stuff like this.
G
What does an assistant professor of English with a concentration in U.S. Latina/o Literature, but with no ties to The Homeland, get for her second wedding anniversary?
The answer, mi amigo, is this:
The fine print towards the bottom reads:
“Currently there are nearly 30 million Hispanics in the United States. You need to communicate in Spanish if you’re…
- In the business community
- In the public sector
- An educator or a social worker
- Or posing as a professor of U.S. Latina/o Literature”
Thanks, Mr. G! I’m looking forward most of all to the “helpful drawings and amusing cartoons.”
Dead tired, de-caffeinated, and quite The Grump, I came to work today suddenly perked by the following note, left by a student in my summer class, on my office door:
I came by your office today to see if you had my final paper. Also, my uncle and I had a huge argument over the weekend. We watched that cyborg movie based on the book we read for class. I told my uncle that the bounty hunter was a cyborg and he said that he wasn’t. It was funny. He got really mad and we haven’t spoken since. I really should give him the cyborg article we read in class, don’t you think?Sometimes you just gotta crow. Mind you, this student wrote this after I gave her an unfavorable grade. I didn’t actually deduct for absenteeism, because she was remarkably bright. She never turned in her final paper. Thems the rules…
This is Student X, and I was in your Afro-futurism class last quarter. I
wanted to write to tell you that I feel bad, both guilt-wise and selfishly, that
I missed so much of the class last quarter. I had some pretty severe
family/personal issues occur and so I was pretty much a ghost student in my
classes for the last few months of spring. I just wanted to say that your class
was one of the coolest and most invigorating I have taken in college. I hope you don’t construe my absences as a lack of interest. I have read Parable of the Sower
since (turns out that one of my best friends is a huge fan) and I have really
re-considered a lot of the sci-fi I had read previously, especially things that
are more cyber-punk. I hadn’t even realized it until later, but Snow Crash,the book I quoted on my blog, stars a half-black half-Japanese character that fits very well with the remix aesthetic we talked about. Mostly I just wanted to thank you for offering such a neat class in the midst of what can sometimes be a crushingly prosaic and traditional curriculum. Your class is one of a few that has not just added soundbytes of knowledge but has actually changed
the way I think, and I feel I need to say thank you for that. I hope your next
semester entertains and enlightens someone else as much as it has me, and I hope
your new baby is healthy and fun (and presumably not an ooloi).
