Lots of distressing budget/future news out there about higher ed. The most recent one: because of the failure of a plan that might have stoppered the budget hole (but had tax increases), there's gonna be another 2% cut to all state agencies. (I am trying to work out how many furlough days that could be for us, though hopefully they figure out some less-painful way to deal with it. And I know they can't legally do it, but: I'd rather just take a straight pay cut than deal with the finagling of furlough days, which feels like adding insult to injury).
But the heck of it is - and the response I give to people who ask me why I don't just quit - is that I really genuinely enjoy teaching, and I (by and large*) enjoy teaching here.
(*It's frustrating when we don't have equipment or supplies, but thus far I've managed to jerry-rig some things, and bought some supplies out of my own pocket)
I had a case of that yesterday. I have a student in my intro class that I have pegged as an "anxious person." (I also have someone in my ecology class like that).
Anxious-people students take a couple different forms. The one I took - the one most familiar to me - is to be hypervigilant about things like deadlines - when I was a student, I made copies of my class syllabi (at least, in the classes that pre-announced when exams were) and taped them up next to my desk so I would know. (And as a professor: I still keep a wall calendar, with a square for each day, and I write in all the things I must do, so I can see at a glance when I need to start planning to write an exam and the like). I rarely asked questions of the faculty as a student - for one thing, I was mostly on top of things, it felt like, but for another - I think I referred to an instance where a friend of mine who was taking Chemistry with me went in because she didn't understand how the prof was approaching thermodynamics (it was totally different than how the textbook did) and he yelled at her for being 'stupid' and that pretty much told me that I didn't want to do that. (Later on, a few of the more advanced classes: yes, I went in, at least in the ones where the profs seemed approachable. I never had a bad experience but again, being Guess Culture, I never went to talk to a prof unless I felt like he or she would be willing to answer my questions).
But anyway. More frequently the type of "anxious" student I notice is the person who is always coming in with questions they already know, who stop me in class and ask me to reiterate something, who ask "when is our next exam" shortly after I have announced it (and it is in the syllabus). And I get that it's largely anxiety that does that to a person. I need reassurance a lot though mainly I just depend on myself for that by keeping detailed notes and the like.
When I'm at my best, I can just take a deep breath and remind myself that this person is Anxious, and answering their questions or whatever will help them, and it's not meant to be annoying to me.
But when I'm tired or stressed or anxious myself, it does sometimes feel like yet another demand on me to reassure another person, when I have no one to reassure me, and so I am being asked to give up yet another small bit of my emotional energy, and what if I have none left for myself at the end of the day. But still I sigh, and answer the question or reassure the person. Because that is how I am.
But sometimes, you do see someone in a different light: a couple years ago when an athlete asked me to tutor him, but the ONLY time he had open was at 7:15 am, and I grumbled about "yet another entitled athlete" but I did it anyway, and in the course of tutoring I learned that he did kind of struggle with college, and was worried about keeping his grades up, and as the tutoring progressed, I saw him get better and better at the material, and he wound up earning a B. And he had talked about how he needed to learn the stuff and keep his grades up, because he wanted to become a physical therapist, because a friend of his had been in a serious accident, and he had seen what the physical therapists were able to do for his friend....and I don't think that was softsoap, I don't think he had any reason to tell me that if it wasn't true. And he wound up earning a B in my class. (A low-ish B, but still, a B).
And then this week: my Anxious intro student came in to talk to me because they earned "a low grade" on one of the homeworks, and didn't do quite as well as they wanted on the first exam and they wanted to know if they could still pass the class. And I told them yes, it was early days still, and to come in if they needed more help, and anyway, the homeworks really counted for very little, so a poor grade on one of the 10 or 12 of them wouldn't make that much of a difference. And then, yesterday afternoon, I had them in lab. And it was chemical-model day, where they build models of sugars (glucose and galactose, and I taught people who weren't in my lecture the numbering convention for the carbons - which I guess isn't taught much any more?) and amino acids and a glycerol and a fatty acid....and for some of them, they do the dehydration synthesis (where you join together two monomers, and you get a water molecule as a result, because one of them loses an -OH and the other an -H). I explained it but also went through and demonstrated it to some of the groups and when I got to my Anxious student and their lab partner, their reaction was....interesting.
"Wait, that's how it works?"
"Yes, and it's kind of similar with amino acids, except you take the H off the amino group of one and the OH off the acid group of the next one in the chain"
"OMG that's so cool! Oh, this is crazy! My mind is blown..." (&c., &c. and sustained geeking out over it).
And you know? That sort of thing is why I stay in teaching. Seeing (first) the light go on when someone figures something out (with just a little help from me*) and then (second) someone get really excited about something that is so familiar to me that it's become mundane. (But biological chemistry IS kind of interesting, even if it's not really my field)
(*Sometimes people get annoyed with me in lab because I ask them questions to try to direct them to answering their own question rather than outright telling them, but it's my experience if you make someone dig around in their own brain for the answer, they remember it better. It's not QUITE the "Socratic method," but it's close)
But yeah. It's that kind of thing that makes the grading worth it. Or the reassuring-people-when-I'm-really-in-need-of-reassurance myself worth it. Or the worrying-about-how-and-whether-I-will-get-paid-in-the-coming-months worth it. (And I would add: I'm not sure you get that kind of satisfying interaction with online teaching: another big worry of mine is that some bright light will decide to make us go "all online" and then I'll have to decide: do I want to have to modify how I do EVERYTHING, or do I want to look for a new career?)
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