When I was in college, both undergraduate and graduate school, this is what I knew about the personal lives of my professors:
- Many had cats; at least two had dogs.
- One spent most of her summers in Italy researching the letters of a sixteenth- (or maybe seventeenth-) century Italian woman.
One smoked cigarettes, but only at home.- One preached at my childhood church before his marriage went, ahem, awry.
- One adopted a child from another country.
- One loved Paris and the Moulin Rouge (the actual establishment; I’m not sure how he felt about the film musical).
- One male instructor, whom other students and I attempted to set up on dates (with women), was actually gay. Oops.
- Few of my professors had children.
- One spent half of the year in Norway, the other half in Texas.
- One drove two hours one-way to get to school.
- One dove into a pool of students dressed only in his underwear. (No, I wasn’t there.)
- One frequently enjoyed his before-class dinner at La Madeleine.
- One voluntarily removed the television from her house because she was addicted to watching professional baseball games.
- One professor’s wife gave birth on the fly, in the couple’s own bed.
- One was a Quaker, two were Episcopalians, and two were Baha’i; most were apparently non-religious.
Based on this list, some might assume that I got to know my professors personally and that I saw them as “real people” rather than founts of knowledge raining down information from their pedestals (that is a student’s traditional vantage point, right?). But that was not the case, which is evident when one considers that the list above equates to 11 years of college and somewhere between 60 and 80 professors. Yep, those 15 bullet points are all I recall. So, no, I did not get to know most of my college instructors as “real people” — at least not while I was their pupil. [1] And what I mean by that is, I wasn’t allowed to (or maybe I didn’t make the effort to?) see them as anything other than teachers. They were “up there”; I was “down here.”
I’m not sure if this student-professor distancing is a bad thing or a good thing. I don’t know how it affects the teaching-learning process, or if it does at all. It’s just a fact that I’d like to explore further in light of how much my students, if they choose to, may currently know about me.
If my students follow me on Twitter and/or Facebook or read my blog posts, they know a great deal about my personal life, sometimes the exact time and place where it unfolds. For instance, they know that around 4:45 PM on Wednesday, June 23, 2010, I was visiting New York City and that I scored two tickets to a taping of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart:
Furthermore, they realize that for the past three weeks, I’ve been watching on DVD the (really good, but really jacked up) HBO series Six Feet Under. Moreover, most of this TV-viewing has taken place late at night, so my students also know how late I stay up. NOTE: the time stamps here are 3 hours behind, for some reason.
Also, they understand that, on occasion, I procrastinate as much as they do:
As well, if they follow me on social networking sites, my students know that I have two cocker spaniels named Baxter and Scout, that I frequently walk/run in the surrounding Toledo Metroparks, and that I rooted for Crystal Bowersox over (the always out-of-tune) Lee DeWyze on this year’s rather boring American Idol.
Moreover, my students must know that I have dreamed about Gene Kelly and Colin Firth, that I have a a thing for generational studies (Gen-X and the Millennials in particular), and that I sometimes have weird feelings when I hear Rick Springfield’s song “Jesse’s Girl.”
- my travels consist of weird destinations,
- at one time my husband was unemployed,
- I live-tweeted the Oscars along with 20 other media professors,
- I am conflicted over YouTube but am a staunch supporter of stadium seating,
- every Christmas (for roughly the past 15 years) I watch David Letterman and Jay Thomas tell stories about the Lone Ranger,
- and that I absolutely love it when my introductory film students discern gender disparities onscreen.
Again, I don’t know if it is beneficial or damaging or something else altogether that my students know these things, or if it makes a difference in how they perceive me, the way I teach, or what I say during class. For instance, do they think my love affair with Gene Kelly is endearing or odd (“She’s obsessed with a dead dude!”)? Are conservative students offended that I stood in line nearly four hours for tickets to The Daily Show? (NOTE: In the classroom, I do not discuss politics.) Am I lame or cool for watching American Idol and Glee? Do any of my pointed thoughts about their generation’s lack of respect bother them? Ultimately, does knowing and/or reading any of this information, which my professors mostly kept under wraps, color my students’ interpretation of our student-professor relationship?
At the same time, I wonder if any of them appreciate that I’m available to them via Twitter and Facebook? Do they like it that, if they want, they may engage with me as a “real person” (rather than strictly a teacher/lecturer) in ways that my professors and I could not, mainly (and hopefully) because the media was just not available? I still I have no solid answers to these questions, but I am hoping that if and when I do, they’re overwhelmingly positive.
Notes:
[1] To be fair, a PhD program does allow for more personal interaction and relationship-building than an undergraduate one; but on the whole, my grad-student/professor experience was largely professional. The personal relationships I formed with professors, three to be exact, happened after graduation.
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Professor of film and Shakespeare. Advocate of social media. Lover of popular culture,
It's a line I've debated myself. And I'll use a thread from my own life to illustrate.
When Alisa first requested to friend me on Facebook, I debated the issue with myself for a good 30, 45 minutes before accepting the request. I wasn't sure how much information I particularly wanted to share with her, nor was I sure about how she used the site for her own personal needs, and whether or not it was appropriate for me to have this sort of access to her (on-line) life. It turned out to be largely unnecessary concern, I think, for both parties.
Later, when we both adopted Twitter (and her use picked up far more at my urging) it opened up lines of communications between us more, though still largely school or media related. I've valued our exchanges, as they became conversations in person, normally at her office or at my desk (which was less than 15 steps from her office this year). I think, in large part, due to our on-line exchanges, I found a mentor in Alisa (even though we do pretty different things, academically speaking). So, in that regard, I see some real value in this type of openness.
That being said, I also think it takes a considerable degree of professionalism on both sides to make something come about as a result of on-line interactions, as well as a degree of maturity. Like you, I know very little about most of my professors' personal lives, though I have been to multiple professors' homes for both class and non-class related events, one invited me to her wedding a few years ago, while another (and this was in high school) agreed to take time out of his schedule during the summer and teach me to drive.
In the end, I guess my point in all this personal disclosure is that a meeting of the minds is necessary, a mutual respect between the parties to see anything really vital come out of it. I think the boundary between public and private blurs a bit, but I think your students, this day in age, are able to acknowledge that while your (charming) obsession with Gene Kelly and your mainling of Six Feet Under are personal things about you, they're also things you're choosing to make public, and like their tweets that you read (if you read any), you don't allow it to color you either.
Thanks for the anecdote! I completely understand that you had to debate yourself before befriending Alisa (not because she's uncool, of course!). The reasons you point out are also the reasons that I'm not Facebook friends with my students. While I really have no problem with them seeing my Facebook profile and pictures, I'm not so sure I want to see theirs — some of them, anyway. That's why, as you know, I created a Facebook Page, which still allows me to chat and share links, videos, pictures, etc. with the students but not those that would necessarily show up in our profiles.
I didn't peek in on students who joined my class' FB pages or Twitter feeds after the initial day (and really only to attach names with faces). Though, one student tweeted, in class on the first day, "What is it with male grad students and long greasy hair?"
I wanted to reply, "My hair isn't greasy, it's thinning, and my hair was long before I was a grad student."
This is really interesting. Your post made me think back to my college days.
My father is a retired Accounting professor. I spent two years attending the college where he taught. As a result, I had known many of my professors since I was born. This was not odd to me at the time (although it freaked out some of my fellow students), but I did need to learn to take a step back when I was at school. I was now their student and I made sure I was not overly familiar with them while at school.
My last name is unique and when some of my father's students met me they were visibly startled. I could see the moment when they realized that I was his daughter. More than one of them said to me "He has kids?!?!". This used to crack me up. It cracked my dad up, too (I never shared names with him. Only what was said.)
When I transferred to a different college and went on to grad school, I didn't have a personal relationship with any of my professors. Part of the reason was that I was painfully shy back then, but none of them encouraged it, either. This was before the days of the internet, so there was no way to get to know them except for talking to them.
I would have loved to have followed some of them on Twitter or read their blogs. I can think of two professors in particular that I thought were absolutely fascinating. I was too shy to sit down and talk to them, though. I know that following them online would have encouraged me to engage them in conversation. It would have given me a starting point.
I think your openness is wonderful. Do you ever censor yourself because your students might be reading?
Thanks for sharing your anecdote as well–interesting and funny!
Honestly, I don't censor myself too much; at least I don't think I do. I just try to keep this in mind when I post anything: "Put online only what you're okay with your grandparents seeing." Fortunately, my grandparents are pretty hip. =)
I blab a lot (too much) about myself in class, since I don't tend to lecture, so my students know a lot about me and way too much about my two children and all the cute things they do. So for me, at least, there's no real split between Web-life and classroom life in the personal revelation sense. That said, I don't ever allow Facebook or Twitter relationships with current students or students who could possibly be my students again. Too many of my comments in these forums are complaints about my job or my students, so I would feel censored.
Hi, Kenneth — thanks for the comment! Wow, are you concerned at all that your complaints, even within the confines of a forum, will ever come back and bite you on the rear?! =)
Actually, yes, but my complaints tend to be pretty generic and bland ("Stack of papers. Sigh!"), which is a reflection of my generic and bland feelings when I'm unhappy with teaching.
Oh, well that's not so bad. Even students understand that complaint. =)
What a great example of thoughts I've had over the past couple years. You are spot on about how different things were for us. I got to know some professors extremely well into grad school. Undergrad not so much. But the game is different now with social media.
At first I kept FB under wraps. Then I began inviting certain students at the end of a semester here and there. I use FB differently than many people. There's pics and stuff on there but mostly I see everything as platform, a public persona.
I have gotten a couple of messages here and there that may not have come through email, but nothing scandalous. I am a huge believer in relationships and that goes for teaching too. I'm enjoying the uses of social networking along those lines.
Wow, you've really got me thinking! Great post.
Nothing scandalous? Well, darn. ;o)