A semester as a Federal University Professor
How it feels like to be one when two days ago you were just a student
Let me tell you a story that you may find it trivial from the outside, but it actually made a huge change on how I perceived the profession of being a professor.
Everything started soon after I graduated. It all happened too fast. I started my Computer Science majors in 2009. In 2012 I was abroad under a scholarship for a year, and by 2013 I graduated. Few days before the ceremony, I had noticed my school was lacking a professor and three classes of about 52 students were about to close.
Being waiting for the response for my PhD application , and having just taking away the title of undergraduate, I expected it to be just a job, like any other else I took as an undergraduate. In fact, as a T.A. and having given few classes, I wasn’t expecting nothing special at all. I was plain wrong.
Being the only person applying on the last and third call before the classes would close due to about two months of delay, I was formally accepted as a professor in the institution I graduated after a proper evaluation. Everything was normal until the first day of class.
Monday came, and with it the first day of two of the three classes. The first one, being of advanced undergraduates took me less than 6 hours to put something together and present it. Having most of the class being my former classmates, it felt rather just an individual presentation in class with some ghost professor sitting by.
It was with the class just afterwards that everything changed. Most students were on their second semester, and I knew little to no one among those 30 young people. I started explaining the material I created, and everything seem to be running fine until I realized there were many confused faces. I went with Plan B on the explanation and yet the expressions didn’t change.
Halfway the class I sat down and realized that wouldn’t work out. I wrote a summation symbol over the board and a student finally took the courage to say “What is this strange symbol?”. Other students then whispered “How doesn’t he knows that?!” and suddenly I felt that the tension towards what to do about the class was directed towards that single poor student. Few minutes later, the class would end, and the next day would be the second and last class day of the week. I had less than 24 hours to take action.
What to do?
At this point I realized that there would be no boss to tell me I was at wrong, or what should I do. More importantly, there would be no one to fix anything I did wrong along the line. At most, I would get more confused faces. I could teach something wrong, and perhaps most would just accept it.
I could just go on.
Later I could just complain students nowadays don’t try hard enough, make about 90% fail and say “well, it is a core course of this curriculum and it is known to be hard”.
To make matters worse, the next day a veteran approached me and said:
“they are different from you, you need to go easy on them”.
While I had realized during class I was the one at fault, others wouldn’t. As a matter of fact, I was known by my classmates to be a complete bookworm during undergraduate years. Yes, I had the “smart kid label”. It made therefore “more sense” to blame the students.
I could do that, right? They are just “not smart enough”. It is just a job anyway. Really?
Rather than taking an arrogant point of view I found it quite challenging and rewarding how to turn those confused faces into positive replies. Took me the day without sleep to figure it out, and just like a bookworm happy to get a grade 10 in an exam, I felt completed happy when by the end of the next day of class I would ask constantly students to answer questions and they were able to. Even better, when by the end of the day one said
“Thank you professor, I understood everything!”
Now let me ask you: How many professors along your way actually felt this way? I couldn’t use two hands to count mine. Well maybe they don’t express it, I don’t know. But I can assure you how many classes were a completely torture for myself with boring classes, classmates playing on their cellphones, and so on and none even realized or bothered to. I lost the count how many students drop out the course early on saying
I can just try the next semester
(Public schools in Brazil are free, so well..).
I also got to see, enough times to be scared of, teachers and professors in my life saying
Well by the end of the semester there will be just a few student’s left in class anyway.
The bottom line message is: Being responsible for so many people education is something you only feel the weight once you really step in as one and one of your old professors look at you and say 'here are the class code and student emails' and smiling at you leave all under your care.
You realize there is no one teaching you or telling you what is right or wrong to be taught. At most, there is a minimum set of words that very broadly compromise the bare bones of it but all else is entirely up to you.
If you teach it wrong, it will remain wrong in their heads god knows how long.
In the end of the day, it is up to you, and only you, to shape whatever will lie within their heads on those few hours you spend in the classroom with them. It is a very heavy responsibility that as a student I never realized, and that perhaps even not many professors realize themselves.
Maybe a professor who started teaching formally after a PhD after his 30s thinks differently. Perhaps they also feel different about this. I don’t know. However, I must say that being a Substitute Professor being a 23 year old does broad your horizons in a rather unique way. Besides, I spent 4 years being taught how to fish. It doesn’t hurt teaching others the same by myself.
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