Not Quite Professor Loves Crickets and Crying

My first received email as an “instructor” all by myself for undergraduates seeking to become middle school teachers. Subject Heading: Professor Hughes. OH YEH! I clicked on the email thinking to myself how LONG it would be until I could actually call myself “professor” Hughes, but I clicked with excited anticipation anyway. “Professor Hughes,” one of my precious undergrad preservice teachers wrote, “I will not be able to attend your first class this Friday because one of my close friends just passed and I am signing in the funeral.”

It’s 7:00PM three nights before my first class teaching undergrads EVER and she addresses me as professor. Dignified, I think to myself. Respectable. Freakin’ Hysterical! I like it. I can do it. I WILL BE a professor one day, I think to myself with honorable and exhausted pride. My response to my student was something about how she could just call me Hilary as I was not a professor just yet, but I liked the sound of it (she could give a hoot, I’m sure), and something about how honorable it was that she was singing for her friend’s funeral, and if “there was anything I could do, just let me know.” Like she was going to call me and say, “Well, actually, could you bring a dish to the after-party?” (or whatever those things are called). What are they called? Wakes? Post-funeral-supper? Whatever.

And then it’s Friday morning. 6:00AM. Three days later. Morning of my first class as a college instructor. NPR is playing in the background; I’ve just exited the shower, have my brand new suit skirt on with a linen sleeveless shirt to accompany the skirt (professional, but not Too professional, as I will be leaving the suit jacket at home due to the ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHT degree weather—no joke, people, it’s been HELL, literally). SO, I’m applying my last coat of mascara (a few extra coats, I’ve decided, to make myself more…distinguished? No hooker jokes here…), and I’m looking into the mirror doing that thing that most of us probably NEVER tell others: I’m looking at myself saying (in my head) “You can do this. You are a soon-to-be professor—that one girl even said so. You look professional and old enough to be doing this. These college kids will NOT eat you alive. You can do this. You taught 7th and 8th graders for God’s sake! You can do ANYTHING!” I’m serious, by the way. I’m not just writing this to enhance the story. This self dialogue was taking place in my head and any of you who had to face this class that I was going to teach would have been doing the SAME DAMNED THING! So anyway, I’m Dr. Phil-ing myself into security while at the same time absently listening to the morning story on NPR. The story just happens to be about a mother who has survived THREE different cancers (did any of you hear this one? Freakin’ tear jerker, right?) and they’ve asked her to have an open conversation on NPR about what it meant for her son growing up with her going through the horrors of three cancers. His fears, her fears…you get the tear-freaking jerking gist, right?

So there I am, leaning into the mirror to get a closer look at this one eyelash that won’t cooperate on my first day and match the “look” I’m going for with my suit and linen and shit, and I hear a mother and a son having a conversation about her cancer and what that means for their relationship. (Can you guess what’s happening by now? If you guessed water in eyes and non-water-proof black stuff, you win the prize.) At the same time I’m leaning into the mirror to get that ONE eyelash to cooperate with my Ultra-black mascara, I’m fighting off the quivering lips and tear-filled eyes. There I was. 6:15AM on my first day as a “pseudo” professor/undergraduate instructor.
Crying.
From an NPR story.
Trying to cowboy up in my new duds.
Crying.
My cat sitting behind me with that confused look on her face communicating her true annoyance (like she’s giving me right now as I write to you instead of challenging her to a game of ‘fishing pole’) of my tears instead of our usual game of 6AM chase around the house. Oh, but the tear-stained face is just the beginning of my first professional day as a new teacher.

You know those reality TV comedian shows they have now where you get to see the REALLY bad comedians trying out for the shows? And they say something horrible and everyone in the audience just sits there. And you can insert crickets into the silence to calm the mood? Do you have that visual in your head? Good.
That was my first class.
Twenty students averaging twenty years of age. Straight-faced. No smirks, no smiles, no nothin! Eight in the morning after a long summer, I’m sure. No coffee yet because they woke up too late to have time to stop for some. And me. With my tear-stained face in my new suit skirt and cute linen sleeveless top fumbling around this horrible room that’s too small for all of us—a room with NO personality--talking to people with NO personality, (save their amazing instructor) and cracking myself up for about an hour straight. And I mean CRACKING myself up. Slapping my knee after some comments. Looking around the room after something FUNNY as HELL was said…um….BY ME…. and seeing the most sullen faces staring back at me in the history of sullen-ness. Seriously, will this be my life? First day jitters? No chance. First day WHAT THE HELL was more like it! All I kept thinking to myself was, “I could go out and grab twenty other people who would think I was freakin’ funny you freaks!” Fun first day.

After that wonderful first class, I went home and set up the email communication that I’d have with my students, set up our web course that we’ll be using, and emailed their first assignment to them (along with fifteen other emails just to chat—y’all know how I love the email) and around 7:00PM with my last email (seriously, this had to be done for them for the purpose of the course), I made some off-the-cuff comment about how I’d been on line trying to figure out the whole WebCT thing (our online course stuff at UGA) for hours while they were probably out being social. Then I made some depressing comment about “Oh, how our lives change as we grow older…with me at home at 7 trying to figure out computer stuff and you all out on the town.” The FIRST email I get back from a student: blah, blah, blah, “Oh, and by the way, Hilary…our going out fun doesn’t start till 10 or after usually.” Oh, good Lord! Of course it doesn’t. Drat! Foiled again! Couldn’t even respond to that one. L-O-S-E-R old lady…

Later that night (probably not even 10 yet when they’d all be beginning their evenings—more like 9, probably): watching TV—High School Musical II—don’t laugh—it’s good. Watching the debut with breaks during commercials where the stars are giving some insight to the making of the movie. Me? What am I doing during the movie and commentary? Oh, I’m dabbing my eyes trying to get rid of the fresh tears that have developed from the greatest love story EVER on the new High School Musical. Loser? You betcha! And I’m not talkin’ misty-eyed here, folks; I’m talkin’ tears streaming down the eyes multiple times during the cheesy sing-alongs with the two main kids…whatever in the hell their names were, little bastards.

And here I sit, one year forward in my PhD program. Maybe just a little smarter than I was just one year ago, yet feeling a decade behind in my astute-ness with this generation of new people who are NOTHING like me. My 7th and 8th graders were so simple. Drama, reacting in big ways to nonsense, and more drama. I fit right in. This age group—who knows. We’ll see if my immaturity stirs the crickets in the room to become those frogs that are so obnoxious you can’t even listen to them on those educational CDs.

Last year: vocabulary words so large I thought they might knock me off my big plan-pedestal of hope because I felt so….dumb……
This year: need to get waterproof mascara; keep up the suit skirts; learn how to NOT cry when watching horribly cheesy movies about teenage love; and acknowledge that my own classes have started and I will have to endure the HELL of being a PhD student at the same time as I endure the torture of twenty students who might not think I’m as funny as I think I am. What in the hell is the world coming to?