Understandably, it hurts to be branded a squalid teaching-just-to-earn-a-bucker by an absolute stranger on the internet. So let's plan a little social evening!If I don't play favorites I'll need to host all 160 freshmen at my place simultaneously: let's say 40 in the living room, 40 in the bedroom, 40 in the kitchen, 20 in the bathroom and 20 milling around in the driveway trying not to bother the other tenants.
I live an hour away, so they'll need to carpool, or -- no, rent a couple of buses. This will be on one of the nights I don't teach at other schools an hour away in different directions. Maybe all of those people can come, too!
I'm thinking this will be potluck, if that works for everyone. No wine (that whole underage thing) but, inevitably, lots of hugging (that whole overcrowding thing). In fact, our social gathering will illustrate another good reason for thinking of the young 'uns as "snowflakes:" they' may be tiny and fragile as individuals, but get a whole bunch of them together under pressure and they become an irrestistible geological force, scouring and obliterating the Earth's surface!
Okay, let's not do this, actually.
Kate and Suzy, I like teaching, and because I don't have a Ph.D. I feel pretty lucky to be doing it. I tend to like my students, even the non-stellar. I worry that some of their laziness is passivity, that they're anxious to be fed the right answers partly out of reluctance to make mistakes. A lot depends on them growing some backbone. I let these people live their own lives BECAUSE I care.