Feelings.
I don't get them always.
As I said on Twitter: I'm nearly 50. Why do I still have my inner 13 year old so close to the surface?
A student said something to me today. It's not a student I know well; one of my first-years. They said it in what sounded to me like kind of a snotty voice, and it was one of those things that could be interpreted as "I'm bored, why do I have to be here?"
Someone who gave fewer darns than I would might have issued a bit of an attitude adjustment to that student ("You are free to leave but of course you will be marked absent") but not me. I let it pass - a long, long legacy of being told, "Ignore them and they will stop teasing you" (which mostly doesn't work, but whatever).
But I admit, the wounded 13 year old who still lives in my psyche somewhere kind of curled up into a ball.
(I said once before that when someone overly-teases or is rude to me, I am just like a sea anemone that's been poked with a stick - contracting up and pulling all the tentacles in. I stand by that).
I kept going - I always keep going - but I admit it bothered me.
The irony is, at the same time as my inner teenager was wrapping her arms protectively around herself, the more-adult part of my brain was going, "This person is, like, 18. They are probably scared to death, being a first-year, and that probably came out kind of differently than they intended it" and also I realize that sometimes people don't realize what is coming out of their mouth, like, tone and what they're saying and all (See: the student who says, "I see not many people showed up today, do we get extra credit for being here, ha ha," without knowing that the prof in the class has heard that joke roughly 10 times a semester for the 20 years they've been teaching, and it's so, so, so, so old and not-funny - not that it was the first time)
And so, yeah, a little grace, maybe, instead of taking the student's head off. (Though if the student keeps up with that tone, I will say something to them).
But that didn't comfort my inner 13 year old any.
1 comment:
sometimes I hate the tape player in my head that records things people say that are hurtful. I recently had a dearly beloved friend say something that I was like... um I don't think you meant it that way, but I was too hurt to point it out. Now it just plays in an endless loop when I am low. UGH! stupid brains.
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