Pandemic times: Faculty Life
First dog in my class delivers pet therapy to ease the stress of a final presentation. A super mom attends with perfect attention and preparation while telling her 3 year old to be quiet and her less than a month old infant periodically in her arms.
Grading has always been the part of my job I dislike the most, even as I enjoy giving detailed feedback on their work to help clarify their own thoughts. These unexpected windows into my students’ lives makes me see what I only felt intuitively before. If we had only met on our beautiful campus, as they and I wished we could have, I might never have had a chance to say to them how awesome they are as parents, seeing first hand how well behaved their children (pet) have been through the 8 hour long days. At graduation, we thank families attending as they celebrate. Yet, this witnessing and personal connection was different. It was more in the moment, when it was needed the most. The smiles on their faces made me wonder if anyone had ever told them that they were doing great, instead of juggling and struggling with unseen demands in spectate spaces. They are seen fully as humans now and not just as one of the many roles they have, as a student, an employee, a mom or whatever other roles that make up their multilayered identities.
When I was a graduate student, at the tough schools I accidentally selected by my lazy criteria of — I don’t have to relocate or travel too far to attend, I used to describe the experience as tapasya, loosely translated as self-selected-borderline-torture akin to the strict self disciple of a yogi. Having this window to zoom into their lives, I now more clearly see the power of my role as ‘an unintentional oppressor’ in the system. That intuition of how much the students cared about the grades and altered their behavior to earn them, and how many opportunities in life depended on these systems, used to make me offer a standard reminder to students in my experiential classes “I promise you no one will ever ask you (in any job interview) what grade you earned in Dr. Bachani’s course. Just do your best to participate the best you can.” In over a decade of teaching, the slacker students can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Might also be because my class is the last one in the program and slackers leave earlier in the program. I say showing up is enough. Revised now: showing up is great.
