Undergrads and their dramas always make me laugh. Or at least uh..snicker.
Take this recent email from one of my students in regard to a party he was having this weekend:
Lol..well it was like getting halfway through a John Hughes movie, then having it turn into a "Real Stories from the Highway Patrol" episode except with security guards instead of real police. It's okay though, something to put into a movie i guess. A really really depressing one lol; but alas, i am a free man.
Now please tell me what this child could have possibly gotten himself into. It's more fun to speculate than to come out and ask. And the fact that he likes me enough to share that humorous tale gives me a little smile.
Or what about this from a student who in his own words "took an Office Space like vacation from school" :
I just wanted to let you know that, well to put things frankly I've been a terrible student so far. Rather then lie to you and make up an elaborate story akin to a day time soap opera plot (which I do promise would of been good) I just wanted to let you know I've missed a fair amount of class. I've done the readings from home and attended all but 1 screening (although I did walk out near the very end of The Double Life as it wasn't my cup of tea), but for whatever reason I opted not to go to classes for the first few weeks of most of my classes, including this one.
More you say? You want more? I've got more. Same student:
I know I'm probably more behind then a kid enrolled in a Texas public school (yours truly is a product of one of these fine institutions), but I feel I can catch up for the most part.
This kid makes me cackle he's so funny. He also describes himself at 4:38 in the morning as "crazier than a drunk Gary Busey"! Isn't that awesome.
But my favorite: This student's email subject line was "Ain't too Proud." This is just a few of the golden snippets he wrote to me:
...With the shadow of postponing my upper-division education another semester looming, I thought I would trade some dignity for a chance to fix the mistakes I've made over the last month or so...Kristen, I'll write a ten page paper about what McKee would say about the mise-en-scene in Renoir's lesser works. I'll do grad student grunt work for you. I'll wear a sign around my neck saying that Vince Vaughn deserves an Oscar for "Fred Claus." I'll write a full page article in the Travesty called "Kristen Warner: Great TA, or the Greatest TA?
This is the stuff that makes me glad I'm a university professor-in-training. As annoying and asshatty as these kids are sometimes, it's in these email moments that I realize how much I enjoy their complete naivete and all out ignorance. I think I can help them get some sense FINALLY and all my passion comes roaring back (cause I lose it sometimes when I realize how poorly they write and how many of them are unable to make an argument or watch anything made before 1982).
Does anybody else have that kind of experience?
It's the thing that drew me into this game. I remember when I first started TAing in Tucson. My first class was Discovering Media and it was an online course. So every Tuesday I had three sections in three hours and we had a chat session going over the big ideas from their weekly lectures and screenings. And I fell in love with the process. I loved watching them chew on an issue or an idea like race being a social construction and how it initally didn't make sense but with time maybe it made more sense. And I loved getting to know them and their habits: several of them were watching tv while we had chat session (they'd tell me they were watching Young and the Restless or Oprah), several of them ate ALOT while we were in session and we'd do the virtual foodshare thing. Several of them never came in to see me but I never stopped being amazed at their levels of intelligence or leadership roles--in a virtual setting no less. And that's how I became a teacher. I came up with ways of making them more responsible for their work and things that I do now out of habit came from that season of experiment. Never seemed forced or unnatural teaching became a way for me to perform and work out my stuff--particularly connecting with people.
In short, while I do complain about my students and their lack of motivation, intelligence or sophistication, I do still appreciate them. Even though they are knuckleheads---they're MY knuckleheads. And dammit...one of them's gonna be famous one day and invite me for a visit so I'm gonna train the Hell out of them.