The emotional drain of teaching August 26, 2011
Posted by mareserinitatis in education, teaching.Tags: body language, emotions, students, teaching
3 comments
I have it from a good source (my husband) that I am hypersensitive to body language. I can usually tell approximately how someone is feeling, but I can seldom figure out why (without asking directly) or what to do about it. It’s horribly frustrating when someone is obviously not in the mood to talk with me because it leaves in an uncomfortable position: do I ask what’s wrong? do I want to know? does it have to do something with me?
I will sit there and analyze every snippet of conversation to see if I can figure out whether I am somehow related to the emotions I’m picking up, particularly if they are negative. Over time, I’ve learned to just try to ignore the negativity and assume the person is having a bad day and may or may not have to do with me in particular. (On the other hand, that’s not such a good tack to take if you’re dealing with someone who is passive aggressive and rather annoyed with you.)
When I stand in front of a classroom, this is at least an order of magnitude worse. I have a set of 20 eyes staring at me, and each of them is conveying some emotion. I think that, most of the time, it’s simply that they would rather be someplace else. (I can’t blame them, having been in that position at one point.) I try to deal with it by cracking jokes and making the students at least amused if not actively enjoying being in the classroom. It’s very effective, I’ve found…although I’ve noticed there are a few students who think it’s somehow inappropriate for a teacher to let on that they have a sense of humor, especially a geeky one.
The tough ones, however, are those who, no matter what you do, really don’t want to be there and convey a feeling of hostility. It doesn’t matter what you do to lighten the mood. I’m not sure what to do about them other than to keep making eye contact (if they’ll even look at me) and smile. But it’s kind of hard when you’ve been doing it all semester and start wishing they did have somewhere else they could be.
Quantifying my emotional roller coaster February 24, 2011
Posted by mareserinitatis in engineering, work.Tags: emotions, graph, widget
2 comments
A couple months ago, I came up with a great idea for widget. (I talked about it a bit on Engineer Blogs.) Since then, I have become extremely emotionally invested in the outcome of my little project. While the widget itself is sort of cool, part of the reason I’m invested in this is because it’s based on some physics that is well-understood but not ever used in this particular way (that I can tell). It’s pretty big stuff.
For fun, I thought I’d give you a graphical representation of the past few months. Unlike FrauTech, I’m cheap and refuse to use Office to make fancy graphics. Sadly, this means you’ll have to suffer through my equally effective but far less snazzy looking OpenOffice generated plot:
The vertical scale is my emotional well being. Zero is the worst, five is neutral, and 10 is elated. The legend is as follows:
| 1 I have this great idea! |
| 2 Boss agrees and gives me funding |
| 3 Initial results okay |
| 4 Tweaks not helping much |
| 5 More tweaks making it worse |
| 6 Trying some new things |
| 7 One of them worked! Order of magnitude improvement! |
| 8 These changes aren’t improving much |
| 9 Oh look! That was awesome! |
| 10 Oh crap. I was using the wrong stuff |
| 11 I have an idea on how this needs to work |
| 12 I’m sick of doing simulations, need to make something |
| 13 I can’t order the stuff I need |
| 14 They want me to sign an NDA before they’ll even tell me if they have what I want |
| 15 Stuff shows up |
| 16 Minion puts prototype together |
| 17 And it sucks |
| 18 Minion improves design, works much better! |
| 19 But still needs lots of improvement |
I knew things were going to be a bit rough and that they’re would be ups and downs. I had no idea that it was going to be this bumpy, though.
I also blog at Engineer Blogs, home away from home to some of the best engineering blogs.
The Crying Game December 14, 2011
Posted by mareserinitatis in education, engineering, science, societal commentary.Tags: emotions, students, teaching
2 comments
You know that stereotype about girls always being the ones to cry in the professor’s office?
Not true.
I’ve had two criers this semester, and both of them were men. I’m getting more comfortable with this. If a woman cries, you offer her a tissue, empathize a bit, and then set down what needs to be done. Most of the female students were relieved that I didn’t blow up at them for something or another, although I think I had one who despised me for noticing. However, with the male students, I’ve learned that they don’t want you looking at them when they’re about to have an emotional breakdown. They remind me of ostriches, looking for a way to hide themselves, but lacking one, can only refuse to make eye contact with you. Worse yet is acknowledging that this is happening in any way, shape, or form. Best to just pretend things are fine and talk about how to deal with the problem at hand. And did I mention not to look at them?
I wish these things were confined to crying, but they’re not. In general, I seem to get more emotional behavior from male students than female, although the most extreme behavior seems to be representative of the gender distribution of the class. In one particularly bad year, I had a student who gouged out her hand during class and another (male) who had a series of offensive behavior, including showing up drunk to a make-up lab. The chair of the department asked me why I get all of the difficult students.
The student who was the hardest to deal with, however, was one who I caught cheating more than once. One day he came to my office, and the way he started yelling at me made me wonder if he was going to get violent. I was particularly happy my officemate and the prof next door were both in. This student kept it up for an hour, going from trying to intimidate me to giving me a sob story.
The worst thing about dealing with this student is that it became apparent that his really obnoxious behavior was confined to me. I was a TA for the class, but there was one other TA and the instructor, both of whom were male. When these problems got to the point where they were impossible, he was switched to the other TA’s section and had to deal with the instructor. He was immediately caught cheating again, but when confronted by the other TA and, later, the instructor, his attitude was completely different. There was no hint of belligerence in his interactions with them.
It’s made me realize that a lot of students are apparently more comfortable around me than my male counterparts, and thus feel it is alright to be more emotional in my presence. I think it doesn’t matter if the emotion is frustration, sadness/depression, or anger: whatever filter they put in place for other people, particularly if those people are male, seem to disappear when dealing with me. Not that I’m saying they know this; I suspect most of them don’t realize there is a difference in their behavior.
This semester has been one of my better semesters as far as dealing with emotional students. I can handle a couple of students who are obviously having a tough time, especially when there are medical issues involved or other situations where the students are dealing with stressors that are out of their control. I do sort of wonder, however, if I’ll manage to get through one semester without some sort of emotional outburst.