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What professors are like

I have to start by saying that Ashland is not much like a huge university such as OSU (Apologies to outsiders who are reading this blog). When I was a freshman, my chemistry, history, and biology lectures all had 200+ students, and we had discussion/lab sections that were supervised by graduate students. That’s pretty typical for a large university, but at Ashland, your history class is more likely to have 20 students. This means you have some hope of getting an answer to a question if the lecture has lost you.

I also have to say that those stupid movies such as Animal House or Van Wilder are just plain wrong. They have almost nothing in common with real college life. They are about as accurate as a Groucho Marx movie.

So what are college teachers like?

  • One similarity between high school teachers and college instructors: Almost nobody goes into teaching for the money; we genuinely like our students and the content of the courses—that’s why we do this.
  • College instructors are specialists in their field. To teach anything whatsoever in college, one must have at least a master’s in that field. The majority have doctorates. If you are taking a college course in English composition, you are listening to someone who has spent several years specializing in English—my own work includes four years studying composition pedagogy. Your college instructor certainly knows what he/she is talking about, has a passion for the subject, and probably has done some original scholarship in the area.
  • College instructors have a fair amount of academic freedom (at least at Ashland). We do have to follow a broad outline for each course, called the Master Syllabus, but we have a lot of leeway within that outline. One English 101 course might spend most of the semester on a book such as The Soloist, while another does a selection of readings on the environment, and another a set of readings designed to be examples of rhetoric and argument. (I have done all three in various 101 sections.)
  • College instructors think of you as adults. If you are over 18 years old, it’s actually illegal for me to discuss your grades with your mother unless you give me a signed waiver (Federal law). We generally assume that you are able to manage your own life, and if you don’t attend class, that’s your adult decision.
  • We don’t see you every day, but we do have office hours. Very few freshmen show up for office hours, and that’s a shame. Every one of us has office hours posted on the door. (It’s part of our job description.) You do not need an appointment or even a very good reason. Just knock on the door and you can chat with the teacher.

Some things college instructors are not

  • Vendors of points. You did not pay us to give you a certain number of points so you could get a job. Most teachers react badly when you come around demanding one or two points more on a homework because you fixed a comma.
  • Entertainers. Yes, some classrooms are more fun than others, but you came here to learn something, not to get a daily show.
  • Teenagers. The average teenager looks at a cell phone once every ten minutes and spends seven hours a day on that phone. College instructors aren’t like that. If you send me an email when I am driving a car, riding a bicycle, teaching a class, or washing my hair, I will not respond instantly. If you send me a message at 2 AM on Saturday, I will not respond instantly. I’m not a teenager. Get used to it. Cell phone addiction is an adolescent phenomenon.
  • Your servant. The “get over here immediately and do this for me” attitude will not get you very far.
  • Your enemy. You may have that attitude if you spent your high school years sitting in the back of the room and goofing off while the teacher wanted you to do something productive. You may have that attitude if you came to college with the aim of reshaping the institution to your personal religious or political viewpoint. But our basic attitude isn’t enemy. We would much rather work with you to further your education.
  • Your mother. High school teachers might track you down and badger you if you haven’t turned in homework or submitted a paper. College instructors probably won’t. We assume you know how to read a calendar and how to keep track of your own assignments. We assume that if you haven’t submitted something, you know you didn’t do it.
  • Your best buddy. Yes, I enjoy relaxed moments between classes discussing music or fountain pens or current events with students, but there should always be a level of decorum between us. Email messages which take the “How ya doin’ you old fart?” attitude will not get a very warm reception.

The bottom line here is to treat college instructors the way you would treat a respected boss at work. If you haven’t learned how to do that, you need to learn quickly. Teachers and bosses are human; we react best to those who understand the relationship.

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