About two weeks ago in chemistry class, I was feeling really overwhelmed by the material. I have told this anecdote many times since.  It felt like my brain just melted—or parts of my brain anyway—and there is even a sound effect that goes with it.  The sound is an imaginary circuit simply melting with a very small “tsssst.” I have been disgruntled and frustrated ever since.  I can’t seem to get back on my game. My motivation has flagged and my interest nearly disappeared. I suppose I should mention that until this point, I actually really liked chemistry.  It has been a hard slog, but I find it fascinating. For two weeks, I have ascribed my meltdown to simply “hitting the wall,” intellectually speaking.  I felt—or perhaps thought—that I simply had received too much information and was burned out. As a result, I found excuses not to study as hard as I usually do and bombed a quiz. Really bombed it—I was lucky to get a 60%. This, after having just posted an “A” as my midterm grade in the class. Today, I am studying for a chemistry exam. As part of that, I went over the quiz. For several of my mistakes, I just thought, “Doh, I am such an idiot.” Not terribly self-deprecating, just kind of foolish. Like I should have known better. But there were one or two errors that infuriated me. I became quietly enraged with my professor. The voice in my head (not hallucinations, just pretty ordinary conversation with myself) said things like this: “That sneaky fucking bastard. He makes it seem like its so easy, no big deal, right, and then he throws these problems on a quiz that are very tricky. Practically trick questions. What an ass!” I also thought/said things like: “I take back every nice thing I’ve said about you to my classmates and friends.  You are a jerk. You are not a good teacher. You rush through things too quickly, do not explain things clearly and then expect us to read your mind. I hate you!” I suppose I should pause also at this point to add that I have loved my chemistry professor and his silly antics. I have enjoyed his style and have considered his tests to be extremely fair. I reflected on the situation and realized that yes, I had fallen out of love with my professor. Not THAT kind of love, but you know, the kind where you idolize someone—it could be a friend, a teacher, a therapist, and so you are in a sort of romantic love stage. Once you get to see beyond the idolization and idealization, your feet land on the ground and you realize your friend or teacher or therapist is not perfect in every way. That’s what I mean. Yes, I fell out of love with my professor. But then I reflected further and was able to pinpoint exactly when that happened and what caused it. A small digression. I cop 100% to my own desire for recognition. This is particularly true academically. While I can put on a humble face at times, I am always extremely proud of my academic achievements. Moreover, this part of my personality has been fed by an array of teachers, friends, family, and lovers lauding my work. What I crave is recognition that I am not your average bear, intelligence-wise. And I often get it.  I like my teachers to know my name, who I am and what I am capable of. I liked it when my lab professor in microbiology put the word “wow” next to my perfect score on the “identifying unknowns” exercise that we’ve been working on for half a semester. I like when the professor calls on me by name. I also try to find a balance. I try to refrain from hogging q and a time to create space for classmates who may not be as outspoken as I am. I try to avoid ridiculous digressions (although I am tempted, and succumb) every now and again). In short, I try to avoid being a nuisance. And suddenly it dawned on me, amidst these reflections, that my chemistry professor does not love me. I mean this in the most symbolic sense. But specifically, I mean is that I do not feel recognized. He never calls on me by name; never writes a word of encouragement on exams or quizzes; and never treats me as unique in any way.  Don’t get me wrong: He treats all his students very respectfully. Problem is, I want to feel special. And despite all of my charming efforts to stand out to him, I have been denied. And then I thought about that day in class when my brain melted down. And I remembered more about how it happened. It happened when I was completely puzzled by a particularly difficult problem. Class was ending, papers were rustling, and the professor wanted to finish a particular section. I did not push him to address my confusion (which was shared by others, I learned later). I did not stay after class to discuss it. I did not go to office hours. Instead, I did what so many middle schoolers, high schoolers, or college students do—I sulked, lost interest, and was on the verge of quitting. I bombed a quiz, and kept going on sheer tenacity because I am not a college student, but a 46-year old woman for whom this is serious business.  The stakes for me are higher than ever before. Blowing it is not an option. I’m writing this down because I wanted to get it out of my system. I thought talking about it would be helpful—there is a chemistry exam tomorrow after all and I’ve got to get back into the game. But as I’ve been writing I’ve noticed something else. My professor is a decent guy. I like him. He’s not perfect. Nothing he did was particularly bad teaching—it was just a busy day in chemistry. It was just a moment when I really needed some help—some very little help—and it was not available. Not a big deal in the long run since I am fortunate to have many resources and supports as I return to school again.
But I am a teacher too, and this whole thing makes me wonder—again—about them. Some of them are far more fragile than I am. Some of them have already been battered by a series of obvious—even violent—and discouraging behaviors by teachers, would-be mentors, and elders in general. So this is just a reminder to myself to never forget that. As for my fellow students, just know that there are many excellent teachers out there who will not give you exactly what you want. If you are really disgruntled, think about why. Maybe it is something you need or want that can be asked for, or maybe you just need to resign yourself to the fact that you won’t get it from a particular teacher. Sometimes, you have to get in the scrum and fight for yourself; sometimes you just have to get through the class with dignity; and sometimes you just have to understand the humanity in both yourself and your teachers, accept each others’ shortcomings, and keep studying.

Today I was clocking some hours at the tutoring center, taking in a few hours of training on a variety of topics designed to make us better tutors.  I learned some really interesting things—not just about how to be a better tutor, but also how to improve my own skills in note-taking, testing taking and time management. The final presentation of the day was on “giving presentations.” I sat through the training session nodding my head, shaking my head, sometimes sighing, and all the while visualizing the road I took not. I left the higher education administration racket to start my own business in communications consulting.  This blog and the website are some of the last remnants of that effort. I still do some freelance editing and writing. I still teach writing. But I am not actively pursuing the growth of my small business. 

During tutor training, I was reminded of my primary reasons for wanting to start that business in the first place: communications are essential to our life as a community and culture, and yet there is so little helpful training in how to be a good communicator.  Most of the trainings I’ve seen are fairly superficial and cookie-cutter.  Today’s presentation on presentations was a perfect example: there were some great tips and basic advice about how to become a better public speaker; I had spent many semesters in the classroom trying to teach the same things . . . and my students’ presentations invariably sucked. So what moved me today was this: at the end of the session, our trainer said that in the US, the number two fear of adults (after number one: death) was “public speaking.” One of my fellow tutors responded: “I get that. I hate public speaking. I really suck at it.” And I thought: that is just crazy talk. I mean, the young man may hate it, but why? First of all, he is a paid tutor, which means he is already a teacher, which means he is already a professional communicator. Second (and important because I don’t think teachers are natural-born communicators), he had actually demonstrated his capabilities with well-spoken, interesting and thoughtful contributions to the training session discussions. I wondered where the disconnect was. How can this be?  We are a nation of chatters. Yes, this chat is increasingly taking place via bits and bytes of information flying through miles of power lines and via airwaves in ways that I can’t possibly understand. But we do a lot of F2F talking as well. And so it has been in my classrooms: all around me, outside of the classroom, there would be gaggles of student everywhere—on the steps of buildings, in cafes, in the dining halls—talking. And presentation time on the syllabus and it was one big collective fail. 

That’s not what I am going to blog about, exactly. But I figure that since I had put some work into strategic planning for a communications consulting business, had thought through programs and practices and even begun to write a book, and that since I had this blog, maybe I should throw out some of my thoughts and observations on communications. 

So perhaps this is my first thought: why, with all the talking, chatting, and discussing that goes on at work and play and school, are more adults in this country afraid of public speaking more than anything else, save death?