How do I feel about my students? Nice kids, for the most part, but I’m constantly amazed at how much they don’t know. (Academically, not socially – everybody is clueless about people at eighteen, but students coming out of the NC educational system seem to be a couple of years behind where we were when I graduated from high school in another state.) Anyway, most of them seem quite bright in everyday matters and they’re great to have in the classroom, but I’ve started to cringe every time I see another stack of papers.
Are we unionized? Yes, in a sense, but since collective bargaining is illegal for state employees here, the union can’t do much. I’m a proud member, regardless, as I see it as one of the few campus organizations pushing for some badly needed changes. (And no, I have never heard any rhetoric about the oppressive academic-industrial complex.)
Professional students? Hmm, the only one I’ve ever met was a business student named Mark, who hooked up with me at a club, said he’d call and never did, and then e-mailed me asking for a date eighteen months later. I didn’t think very highly of him, but I am reluctant to generalize.
Secretly wishing I’d studied something different? No, but I kind of wish I’d had the guts to move to Europe after college, and I’m still toying with the idea of taking a year off and teaching English in the Czech Republic or Poland (but in my heart I know it would probably be a permanent move, and I’m not sure it’s what I want).
Anxious about all the foreign languages I have reading knowledge of? Nah, more anxious about the ones I’m supposed to and don’t.
Nightmares about giving exams instead of taking them? Nope. We don’t give exams in freshman comp classes anyway, and the prospect of my own PhD quals is much, much scarier than anything I’ve faced on the other side of the desk.