Grrr

I have to tell you that I am very close to that feeling of not being able to handle anything at all.  I almost cancelled class yesterday just because I couldn't muster up enough enthusiasm to get up and talk to them about monroe's motivated sequence and how to motivate people using emotional appeals.  It's kind of funny that I was supposed to motivate them to movitate others and I couldn't even show them how it's done.

Anyway, I think a couple of circumstances last week have lead me to this point of frustration.  Being an instructor, especially when you're a grad student and your "students" are a couple years younger than you at most, is difficult.  I have taught public speaking for a year now, and although there are students I love every semester, there are also students that are a bit harder to love.  And it seems they keep multiplying.

Maybe it's because I'm a female, maybe it's because I'm young, maybe it's because I try to make myself approachable and I try to be understanding.  But for whatever reason, there are these students who think it's appropriate to speak to me and treat me like crap (for lack of better words).  I have had a lot of training in how to take crap from people, thanks to my three years of being an RA while I was an undergrad.  But it doesn't get any easier, really.

I try to do the active listening thing.  Yes, it sounds like you're very frustrated about this.  It sounds like you think this grade did not reflect the effort you put into this speech.  Yes, I understand.  I try not to talk back at first.  But sometimes the things they say really piss me off.  And I am left with all this anger and frustration of being misunderstood and mistreated and being in this difficult position of trying to draw my boundaries in the right places.  The boundary of, this is okay for you to say and this is NOT okay.  I've never been good at boundaries...And it's been a life long struggle for me to try to be assertive about them.

And I've definitely gotten better.  But I still just don't know what to do about all this.  Some days I need justification.  So I talk to other TA's.  Here's what I did, does that sound okay?  Here's what I said, what do you think?  Here's my policy on this, is this fair?  Other days, I just need to vent.  Some days, I just want to cry or crawl in bed and put the covers over my head and call it quits.

I know other people don't let their job affect them like this.  But I care so deeply.  I really do believe in what I am teaching them: that being able to articulate an important idea in a compelling way gives you power to change things, the power to have a voice.  I try to get them to think about deeper issues.  What things are worth caring about in the world?  What groups don't have a voice and how can we speak up on their behalf?  What's the point of speaking up on someone else's behalf?  

I want them to realize that this isn't just an intro level course.  I mean, of course it is, but it can be MORE than that.  It's an opportunity to speak up for something you believe in.  An opportunity to find something worth caring about.  I read them a quote by Rabbi Hillel: "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I?"
 
I know I am being idealistic in a lot of ways.  To expect everyone to see public speaking as such a rich opportunity to use our voices to speak up for others or for important causes.  I know that's not always going to happen.  But, I hope to at least sway some people.  I hope at least some of them get overwhelmed with it all and finally admit, wow, there are a lot of important issues in the world.  Issues that are worth fighting for, that are worth researching and speaking about and most of all trying to DO something about.  I firmly believe this.

Anyway, this post is more for me than anyone else (as most of these posts are, I guess).  But it just kills me to be confronted with students who don't give a shit about anything in the world.  Who can't think of one cause worth thinking about.

My sophomore year of high school, we read Dante's Inferno and we had to write our own Inferno.  It was supposed to have a theme.  I wrote one called "The Attitudes Inferno."  We had to have levels of hell and symbolic retribution - the whole nine yards.  Anyway, in my innermost level of hell I had the apathetic.  They were so self-absorbed that they couldn't think about anything but their own suffering.  All of them were in separate rooms, laid out in a big circle.  Each room had a button in it.  The button stopped the suffering of the person in the next room.  Obviously, since they were in a circle, if everyone pushed the button for the person in front of him/her, then eventually their suffering would stop.  Kind of like a domino effect that would only work if everyone cared enough about the other people.  The person being punished in the middle of the circle also had a button that if he pushed it, would stop all the suffering in all the other levels of hell, including his own.

So that's my take on apathy from when I was 15 in high school.  Pretty cool symbolic retribution huh?

Okay, so back to my original thoughts.  I guess my frustration and anger today is two fold.  One, that there are these students that I just can't reach...that just don't care at all or that only care about things that affect them.  I wish it was more obvious how connected we all are - how caring about others does benefit us, too.  Not always, but even then, it's still is worth it. 

The second thing I'm frustrated about is this feeling of entitlement I encounter a lot.  I feel I am entitled to get an A on this speech because this is an intro level course and it shouldn't be difficult.  They tell me how smart they are in their major, how ridiculous it is that this class is a requirement for them to graduate, how inferior this subject is to the complex things they are mastering in their own fields.  Isn't this stuff, like, common sense?  they say.  But then, they take their tests and realize, oh this is harder than I thought.  Or they try to write their speech and are overwhelmed by all the different ways they could approach their topic.  It's not common sense.  There are so many subtleties in writing a speech, in finding just the right words to articulate what you want to say in a powerful and influential way.  I make them read MLK Jr's "I have a dream speech."  There are so many other ways he could have said these things.  The basic jist of his speech is that things are not as they should be.  But his combination of images and metaphors and his vocal inflection and his passion and his repetition...it adds up to something.  It builds and swells into a powerful argument built on values and logic and appeals to the most basic of human emotions.   Was his speech just common sense?  Could we all have just thought of that?  Oh, of course, throw in a little organization here and a thesis statement there and a few adjectives, and there you have it!  A speech for the ages.

No, it takes effort, it requires you to give something of yourself, put something of yourself out there to try to convince others to see things the way you do.  Intelligence comes in many forms.  And writing a speech takes a lot of thought and research that may be a different kind of effort than they are used to.  It's not that it's harder or easier, it's just different.

And so when they insult the way we are doing things, I take it personally.  Because I believe these things personally.  Today, we watched a sample speech on videotape and I let the students debate the topic, the media and women's body image, for a good twenty minutes.  We strayed from critiquing her exact message, but we talked about her topic, the issue at hand.  There were many different views held by members of the class, but they were getting involved and they were articulating their thoughts and using evidence to back it up.  I was impressed with their ability to have such a meaningful and well-thought out discussion and debate.  And then the voice from the back, why are we doing this?  I don't see how this relates to her speech exactly.  Okay, fair question.  I think every activity should have a purpose.  So I turn it back on the students.  Why do you think I let this debate go on for so long instead of making us watch the next speech?

And they come up with reasons.  I like to make them think of the reasons, so they can really try to decide why something is important.  Because her topic was obviously presented in such a way that sparked conversation and made us interested and got us thinking.  Because we can learn from her strengths and weaknesses.  Yes, good.  Because this is speech class and it's hard to fill the time, he says bitterly.  My stomach dropped.  A nervous giggle from one side of the room.  Why this constant undermining of everything I do?  I wished I could say so many things back to him.  This whole semester, these comments, this attitude, the way he talks to me and treats  me.  I am fuming.  I don't even know what I said, but I went on to the next person, who thank god, had something positive to say.

I am young and I am learning.  I realize this.  In some ways I hope it gets easier to deal with classes like this.  But in some ways, I hope it doesn't.  If I stop caring about this class, and get to the point where nothing they say will frustrate me or upset me, then I've probably become the type of apathetic person I don't want to be.  So for today, I'm just walking through the rain, trying to let this all go.  Reminding myself of the positive encounters I've had with teaching.  Of all the kind comments and thank you notes and success stories.  I know there's a lot of lessons here.  I just wish they didn't put me in a bad mood so often.